2014 TDI Timing Help

I suspect that isn't near the top of his list of priorities after all of the wrenching he's been up to.

would be the first thing i would do. and record the teardown. Just in case nothing is bent.

realistically you could pull an injector and put a camera with a mirror on it and shine a light into the intake and exhaust and see if any light shines through.

turbobrick240 said:

I suspect that isn't near the top of his list of priorities after all of the wrenching he's been up to.

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DivineChaos said:

would be the first thing i would do. and record the teardown. Just in case nothing is bent.

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I’m curious myself too.

I just got this motor up and running. I’m putting the car fully back together as I write this to get it out on the road again. It’s looking good!

As for the one I took out, I’ll start tearing down that one next week and am going to record every second of it. I am really curious to see what I’ll find


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Just got around to pulling the head off.










Thoughts from these photos?

This is definitely where I lack in knowledge so I’ll need some help from you guys here.

I’ll probably take the valves and springs off tomorrow.

Can I tell if I have bent valves from these photos? Everything looks fine to me, but like I said, I don’t know this stuff.

When taking the rest of the rocker arms off, a lot of them were soo brittle that they were falling apart as I was taking them off from the center parts. It was kinda weird actually. They looked normal but as I grabbed them they just broke in half. Since I’m rebuilding this motor, I was going to replace the broken rocker arms but since I can’t really tell which ones will hold up, I’m buying all new ones. That’s $700 though! Jeez...

Anyways, thoughts?




Still so weird that it never started.


-2014 Passat TDI SEL
Malone Stage 2 "Econo" Tune.
Rawtek DPF, EGR, DEF Delete Performance Kit. Straight Pipe. No resonator and no cat.

Maybe you've proven the rockers are weaker than the valves, those cracks do kinda look like the weak point where they'd fail.

But, from the picture of both the valves and the pistons, i can't say i see any contact made between the two which would be the dead give away indicating timing was off. So I'm kind of scratching my head why the rockers would fail like that.

How many miles on her?

Looks to me like the engine ingested a small handful of gravel or some other foreign objects. What do the cylinder bores look like?

turbobrick240 said:

Looks to me like the engine ingested a small handful of gravel or some other foreign objects. What do the cylinder bores look like?

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It looks like some sort of deposit on the piston. Can’t figure out what that is. It’s also been sitting for two months now before I did anything so not sure if that had anything to do with it.

Taking them apart soon to really inspect it.

What I still find weird though is that I drove the car in with no problems whatsoever. Then once I changed the timing belt and fluids, it never started again. There was no gravel around when I did the work and nothing around when I went to start it. Something foreign would have had to have gotten in there before I even parked my car.

740GLE said:

Maybe you've proven the rockers are weaker than the valves, those cracks do kinda look like the weak point where they'd fail.

But, from the picture of both the valves and the pistons, i can't say i see any contact made between the two which would be the dead give away indicating timing was off. So I'm kind of scratching my head why the rockers would fail like that.

How many miles on her?

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125k miles.

I’m scratching my head too, and I’m not an expert by any means. I don’t see any contact made either. Taking everything else apart to fully inspect everything.

How do I test for bent valves from this point?


-2014 Passat TDI SEL
Malone Stage 2 "Econo" Tune.
Rawtek DPF, EGR, DEF Delete Performance Kit. Straight Pipe. No resonator and no cat.

joshferrer said:

Can I tell if I have bent valves from these photos?

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I can't tell from the photos, but as 740GLE said, there are no indicators on the pistons that there was an unfriendly introduction.

But what you could do is put the head on its side and fill the intake and exhaust ports with water (or something similar) and see if there are any signs on leakage.

Or you could take it to a machine shop and they can do an actual leakdown test.

I was half joking about the gravel- the head would be beat up too if that were the case. My hunch is that it hydrolocked on fuel/water/coolant.

turbobrick240 said:

My hunch is that it hydrolocked on fuel/water/coolant.

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How would that destroy the roller rockers?

It could jump the timing. I think I can discern some faint witness marks on some of the valves. The simple answer seems to be that the timing was incorrectly set and the starter caused the carnage.

The intake valves look bent as they sit off center in their seats. Its curious that the end cyl appears very wet?

I would appear that the end cyl was having a problem prior to the timing disaster. Was it using oil previously?

thundershorts said:

The intake valves look bent as they sit off center in their seats. Its curious that the end cyl appears very wet?

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Agreed, but looking closer at the chamfer, looks like the chamfer of the head is opposite sides of those larger valve, prob for better swirll/flow.

Also if they made contact wouldn't some of that carbon be popped off either the piston or valve?

Just got a call from the machine shop I took it to today.

They did a leak down/pressure test.

It checked out and did fine. No leaks and the head is fine.










-2014 Passat TDI SEL
Malone Stage 2 "Econo" Tune.
Rawtek DPF, EGR, DEF Delete Performance Kit. Straight Pipe. No resonator and no cat.

did they offer any guess what could have happened to the rockers?

Looks like light witness marks on the intake valves. Like you might get from the starter cranking a mis-timed interference engine.

joshferrer said:

Just got a call from the machine shop I took it to today.

They did a leak down/pressure test.

It checked out and did fine. No leaks and the head is fine.

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Did they pull the valves and check for bent stems?

I started reading this thread before actually tackling my own CRUA engine TB job. I have to admit, even after doing 2xBEW and 1xBRM timing belts I was nervous with this one.

Perhaps that insecurity helped me at being extra careful and double/triple check all my steps, but my wife 2015 Golf Sportwagen started right up and sounds beautiful.

greengeeker said:

Did they pull the valves and check for bent stems?

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Not yet. That’s my next step. I’m trying to take this step by step according to what the dealer tells me what they think it is.

When I contacted the service guy and showed him pictures saying everything looks okay in here, he said that if I were to leak test it, it’ll leak because it has bent valves. So I got it tested since he was so sure it would leak.

The guys at the shop too said that it’s the next step. They also did say it’s rare they see bent stems and a head that checks out and passes a test.

At this point, it’s all a loss but if I can go step by step by this “he said she said” thing, maybe I can get VW to recoup some of my losses since even they couldn’t tell me what it was and everything they continue to tell me checks out.

Pulling the valves out is my next step!

740GLE said:

did they offer any guess what could have happened to the rockers?

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The shop did say that it’s a possibility that the rockets broke because of bent valve stems. My gut is telling me that’s the case now. I’ll pull them out and check them out


-2014 Passat TDI SEL
Malone Stage 2 "Econo" Tune.
Rawtek DPF, EGR, DEF Delete Performance Kit. Straight Pipe. No resonator and no cat.

turbobrick240 said:

Looks like light witness marks on the intake valves. Like you might get from the starter cranking a mis-timed interference engine.

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This is all beyond my knowledge so I wouldn’t know what to look for when seeing marks like this.

Even though I did everything by the book (like I have times before), my gut is that this is most likely what happened.

I just don’t understand broken rockers on both sides. Also rockers that appeared to be fine were so fragile when I pulled them off that they fell apart. I should have lots of bent valves, or at least now valve stems, if that’s the case? That’s next to find out!

The one thing I didn’t do was mark which rockers belonged to which valves to double check once I took them out. Dang it...I’m usually thorough too.


-2014 Passat TDI SEL
Malone Stage 2 "Econo" Tune.
Rawtek DPF, EGR, DEF Delete Performance Kit. Straight Pipe. No resonator and no cat.

pedroYUL said:

I started reading this thread before actually tackling my own CRUA engine TB job. I have to admit, even after doing 2xBEW and 1xBRM timing belts I was nervous with this one.

Perhaps that insecurity helped me at being extra careful and double/triple check all my steps, but my wife 2015 Golf Sportwagen started right up and sounds beautiful.

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You and me both!

I would have never thought this was going to happen after doing 2 on this engine and 1 other. That’s why when it didn’t start it was all a mystery. When I put the new engine in and timed it, I myself was scared. I triple checked everything and even said it out loud lol. It started right up of course but I was like, I didn’t do anything different.


-2014 Passat TDI SEL
Malone Stage 2 "Econo" Tune.
Rawtek DPF, EGR, DEF Delete Performance Kit. Straight Pipe. No resonator and no cat.

joshferrer said:

Not yet. That’s my next step. I’m trying to take this step by step according to what the dealer tells me what they think it is.

When I contacted the service guy and showed him pictures saying everything looks okay in here, he said that if I were to leak test it, it’ll leak because it has bent valves. So I got it tested since he was so sure it would leak.

The guys at the shop too said that it’s the next step. They also did say it’s rare they see bent stems and a head that checks out and passes a test.

At this point, it’s all a loss but if I can go step by step by this “he said she said” thing, maybe I can get VW to recoup some of my losses since even they couldn’t tell me what it was and everything they continue to tell me checks out.

Pulling the valves out is my next step!





The shop did say that it’s a possibility that the rockets broke because of bent valve stems. My gut is telling me that’s the case now. I’ll pull them out and check them out


-2014 Passat TDI SEL
Malone Stage 2 "Econo" Tune.
Rawtek DPF, EGR, DEF Delete Performance Kit. Straight Pipe. No resonator and no cat.

Click to expand...

Well I'm interested to hear what you find. I've often wondered if the rockers were intentionally made weak to serve as a fusible link in an effort to save bent valves. Problem is they get jammed between the camshaft and head and destroy the much more expensive camshaft(s).