Hard Start / No Start - Is your intercooler frozen? Check Here!

tomo366 said:

This is probably a bigger problem than the Failed HPFP's.......has anyone started a case wit the Highway Traffic safety agency??

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I also believe it is more widespread in occurrence, though it remains to be seen what if any significant number of vehicles will suffer damage as a result. I filed my original incident with NHTSA at the time. Even a year ago, they were very interested in anything I had to say that might have been fuel pump or bad fuel related - I made a special point to explain that this was a seperate unrelated issue.

VeeDubTDI said:

Now that you've blown it all out with a few WOT runs, pop your intercooler open and see how much is left.

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Scheduled OC (@10k mile interval) is happening tomorrow (Saturday) in the warm weather (supposed to hit 50F in NH) so I might get to look at it after I finish the OC.

TwoTone said:

Look there's a;ready a post about someone having this problem outside of warranty and getting screwed. Any of you that have this problem, just get it towed to the dealer to force there hand.

If you keep waiting and not getting it documented, VW will leave you out to hang since it's a TSB and not a recall.

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I'm currently at 59812 miles....88 miles away from being out of original factory warranty.

n1das said:

Scheduled OC (@10k mile interval) is happening tomorrow (Saturday) in the warm weather (supposed to hit 50F in NH) so I might get to look at it after I finish the OC.



I'm currently at 59812 miles....88 miles away from being out of original factory warranty.

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They'll probably screw you anyway since you're past 3/36 and the IC isn't lubricated by engine oil... sort of... well

tomo366 said:

This is probably a bigger problem than the Failed HPFP's.......has anyone started a case wit the Highway Traffic safety agency??

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An engine that doesn't start from cold is not a traffic safety problem. If it is not a safety problem then it is not within NHTSA's domain. ("S" = "safety")

One that stalls without warning while driving is quite another matter.

Don't contrive stories about how the failure of your car to start might cause you to be unable to get your child to the hospital in time or some such nonsense. They won't buy it. Car that won't start ... is not a traffic safety problem, because it cannot get out of the driveway to get into traffic in the first place. Therefore, not a safety problem.

People have reported severe loss of engine power while on the road from this issue. Some are close to home when the engine misfires or stumbles, others report lack of acceleration on the highway. It very well could be a safety issue, although I agree it's not as big of a safety issue as the HPFP... but on the flip side, more people reporting icy ICs than failed HPFPs.

Just sayin' it's worth at least pursuing... let the NHTSA decide whether or not it's within their domain.

Well, it happened to me.

It was cold, ~20F or so, and my car had been sitting for about four hours.

I try to start it up, it catches, idles roughly for about five seconds, and stalls. I try to start it twice more, and it just spins. The fourth time, it does the same as the first. No codes.

I call roadside assistance, they flatbed it to a local dealer. There, the techs have no problem starting it, but after my description, they seem to know what is going on. It's currently having the kit installed.

--------------------

Fortunately I have a reliable 23-year old toyota ('89 MR2) that works, every day.

I'm a little miffed that I paid $26,000 for a new car, and I can't drive it at 12,500 miles.

VeeDubTDI said:

People have reported severe loss of engine power while on the road from this issue. Some are close to home when the engine misfires or stumbles, others report lack of acceleration on the highway. It very well could be a safety issue, although I agree it's not as big of a safety issue as the HPFP... but on the flip side, more people reporting icy ICs than failed HPFPs.

Just sayin' it's worth at least pursuing... let the NHTSA decide whether or not it's within their domain.

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I'm aware of that failure mode for a frozen intercooler. Consider reporting it for a loss of power or stall while driving. Don't bother for a no-start. Although VW appears to be taking action on this one, having it reported might coax them into doing some of them out of warranty.

There have certainly been a flood of reports of the frozen-intercooler situation lately. They were probably happening in the last couple of winters, too, but nobody had put a finger on the issue yet at that time. Now that it's known what causes it, every time there's a run-rough or hard start, people are getting the heads-up.

I know a couple of CR-TDI owners, one of them being my dad, and I've given them the heads-up about this.

n1das said:

This sort of happened to me during the cold snap we had earlier this week in the New England states. D@mn!!! Car started fine at 10F in the morning, hauled arse on the highway 55 miles to work on the highway with temps at 15F. Temps were still below freezing when I left work in the evening but a warming trend was underway. Car started fine and I hauled arse home from work. My g/f and I went out later for some dinner and temps were now a few degrees ABOVE freezing. Car started fine but stuttered and sputtered during the first turbo spool-up when heading out. It was accompanied by a huge thick cloud of steam out the exhaust. All was fine after that. Later when we came out of the restaurant, a little bit of the same thing happened briefly when starting to drive thru the parking lot.

Temps around home were now several degrees above freezing and I hauled arse on the highway and did several long hard runs at WOT to try to clear as much stuff out of the IC as I could. It's been fine since driving it like I stole it but I also haven't had another cold snap yet.

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I guess most of the water stays the I/C. When the car takes off or goes up a hill the water gets suck up the intake.In your case the ice build while you were driving to work.The LP/EGR comes in during high RPM and load as you know so you had the perfect storm.

BurpleTDI said:

Independent of the driveability issues, this gunk must be killing the efficency of the intercooler if its coating the entire inside of the core...

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You will allways have some oil or water in the I/C.They will not change, how the EGR works

While I agree that right now most people are describing over-night problems, there can be other situations of failure, and I seem to rembember someone posting something similar to the following.

I think the safety issue can be just as broad as the conditions that cause the issue of intercooler frosting / water formation / thaw water formation / freezing of thaw water / hydrolocking / missing / de-rated performace (limp mode), in a days driving experience.

You can evidently leave your house and have a mid trip stop (for a time), possibly thaw during stop, leave the store (whatever) and as entering traffic have any number of symptoms. I see no way to say that the symptoms only happen at home. A warm engine after a 1 hour stop (?): with the right amount of ealier intercooler existing frosting, with an engine heat de-frost can have water available for injestion. Park for two hours and I can imagine the thaw water, in the right parked location, start to partially freeze and cause problems in trying to enter traffic.

You can have many ways that water can not cause problems till acceleration (RPM) / driving up or down ramps / on angle surfaces / etc......helps the water be drawn into the engine intake manifold.

I am not trying to make up fictional situations. I am trying to make sure we do not define only one situation where a problem exists. There are temperature, humidity, barometric pressure, etc. operation graphs for ice formation; and time can be very short in the worst situations. Everyone does not just drive straight to work and straight home. Every stop is not just 10 minutes. A stumble leaving home might not be much of a safety issue, but leaving a parked situation entering a busy street sure might be a problem.

As awareness grows, there may be more owners describing all sorts of failure situations.

eddif

El Dobro said:

Since there is a valve between the intercooler and the intake, has anyone ever looked at it to see if all the water and goop has had any effect on it?

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El Dobro said:

And now back to my original question. Has anyone ever removed the pipes and looked at the valve to see if all that crap in there has affected the valve?

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Is this following post the answer you were seeking?

tomo366 said:

I talked to my buddy who is a Master Tech at Martens VW in Md this morning,
he didn't know of this problem...... he did however speak of EGR blades being stuck causing no start situations......(a common problem in MKiv's).....Anyway I told him and he read the TSB and told him I would keep him Posted

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I am usually open to multiple causes of problems, and I do not know totally why I resisted talking about the valve.

Other than:

I still think we should work on keeping the water and goop from the valve, I will say that the goop could freeze up the valve. Putting the blame partially on the valve IMHO would just get us off the track of dealing with the moisture, frost, water, ice generation and removal.

But:

Yes the valve could freeze shut. Sorry if I shut down a good observation. Sometimes Mississippi folks are just slow to think through things.

eddif

Grace Intercooler Defrost Cycle

I have been looking for a way to defrost an intercooler.

I have a question.

In an engine off or especially non vehicle moving condition (off and / or non moving / non main fans running condition..... to prevent possible problems), could a small added fan blow radiator heat over the intercooler to defrost it? I am talking about a limited time situation (possibly at the end of the driving day). Prevented by computer control from allowing overheating or driving the car during the defrost cycle. Small logic control device running the whole operation with sensors deciding when to end the cycle.

Of course after the de-frost / thaw it would be best to drain the water right then.

This is similar to a refrigerator coil defrost that is timer controlled. You would just use engine heat to defrost rather than resistance heat strips, and use sensors rather than a timer. The moisture would be inside the intercooler instead of outside like the refrigerator coil, but have the same basic moisture removal in mind.

If a road shut down occured the system could be used to restore a running situation (?).

I wonder if VW could do this?

eddif

The other thing is, what about simply reversing the position of the radiator and intercooler? (Actually, I think the stack is currently intercooler -> AC condenser -> radiator, I'd want AC condenser -> radiator -> intercooler.)

It would, however, mean that the intercooler would be less efficient in warm weather.

I like the strip heater idea. Just have the strip heater integrated with the I/C winter kit.If the I/C still cools off to fast add a louver system to the bottom grill.How does this sound?

eddif said:

Is this following post the answer you were seeking?


I am usually open to multiple causes of problems, and I do not know totally why I resisted talking about the valve.

Other than:

I still think we should work on keeping the water and goop from the valve, I will say that the goop could freeze up the valve. Putting the blame partially on the valve IMHO would just get us off the track of dealing with the moisture, frost, water, ice generation and removal.

But:

Yes the valve could freeze shut. Sorry if I shut down a good observation. Sometimes Mississippi folks are just slow to think through things.

eddif

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Yep, that's where I was going with my questions. With all that moisture floating around I was thinking it's doing more than just settling and may be icing up the EGR valves and since I don't know how much force the actuators have against breaking ice formations, it may be locking them.

Maybe, but I doubt it - all of the relevant valves are pre-turbo, so before anything's getting refrigerated.

eddif said:

There are temperature, humidity, barometric pressure, etc. operation graphs for ice formation; and time can be very short in the worst situations. Everyone does not just drive straight to work and straight home. Every stop is not just 10 minutes. A stumble leaving home might not be much of a safety issue, but leaving a parked situation entering a busy street sure might be a problem.

eddif

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There is also the role of the EGR valve in all of this. That is the valve that diverts moist exhaust gases back through the intercooler. This valve does this during high load situations. So driving style would be on of many other factors that can lead to icing of the intercooler.

I commute 70 km monday to friday to work for a total of 140 km. At least half of that is highway. The car is not used on weekends or evenings - just for commuting. Rarely are there any stops and if there are, they are followed by a highway drive. I drive in such a way the EGR valve is no used much if at all.

So far, so good. About 110,000 km and I haven't had any problems. It might be useful for those who have had problems to adjust their driving style during humid conditions (where the dewpoint is close to the ambaient air temperature).

I used to be a meteorologist and anytime you have pressure changes in moist air is bad news. This is a well known phenomena that is drummed into the head of Canadian pilots. Icing inside an engine under cold moist air has brought down of them down. It is one thing to have icing stall a car in the garage, it is a very serious to have plane's engine to stall on takeoff.

bhtooefr said:

Maybe, but I doubt it - all of the relevant valves are pre-turbo, so before anything's getting refrigerated.

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There's valves in the intake manifold.

I think the safety issue can be just as broad as the conditions that cause the issue of intercooler frosting / water formation / thaw water formation / freezing of thaw water / hydrolocking / missing / de-rated performace (limp mode), in a days driving experience.

You can evidently leave your house and have a mid trip stop (for a time), possibly thaw during stop, leave the store (whatever) and as entering traffic have any number of symptoms. I see no way to say that the symptoms only happen at home. A warm engine after a 1 hour stop (?): with the right amount of ealier intercooler existing frosting, with an engine heat de-frost can have water available for injestion. Park for two hours and I can imagine the thaw water, in the right parked location, start to partially freeze and cause problems in trying to enter traffic.

Click to expand...

I had two experiances where I was accelerating hard in traffic and the engine just goes bang! and stops running. The car still steers and brakes, but yeah... I'm deffinatly just coasting along as traffic behind is quickly approaching. Scary feeling. Not very safe for me or others.

I've checked both sides of the intercooler and have found water.

Hopefully this weekend I can take a look at the valve just before the intake manifold and see if the sludge / water is making it up that far and causing problems...

Tooef, putting the intercooler behind the radiator totally negates its function and will result in 200F IATs in the summer. At that point, you may as well bypass the intercooler completely for the winter time.

On my F-350, it's A/C, Intercooler, Radiator.

Jack Frost said:

I used to be a meteorologist and anytime you have pressure changes in moist air is bad news. This is a well known phenomena that is drummed into the head of Canadian pilots. Icing inside an engine under cold moist air has brought down of them down. It is one thing to have icing stall a car in the garage, it is a very serious to have plane's engine to stall on takeoff.

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And in my plane I have two very simple and useful tools to counter carb icing: a carb temperature gauge, and a knob on the throttle quadrant labeled "Carb Heat".

I wish we could come up with such a simple solution for our intercoolers.

The air cleaner pulls in heat from the bottom, but it's no good if you can't get the engine started.

PlaneCrazy said:

And in my plane I have two very simple and useful tools to counter carb icing: a carb temperature gauge, and a knob on the throttle quadrant labeled "Carb Heat".

I wish we could come up with such a simple solution for our intercoolers.

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Maybe a few things could be drawn from VW air-cooled history.
1..Back in the day you monitored all the cylinder temps with a rotary switch and guage, or you just chose the hottest cylinder for the guage. Today you could view four sensors at one time and have an alarm for a certain range of temperatures or situation. You could also know when to drain the water by temperature, and possibly sense water with a warning light.
2..A thermostatic bellows closed off air flow to warm the engine and opened to allow more air flow when it heated up. Probably not that hard to control the air flow over the intercooler.
3..Exhaust heat was used to keep the passengers warm. Why could we not use exhaust heat beyond the exhaust treatment to warm the intercooler when needed.

eddif

El Dobro said:

The air cleaner pulls in heat from the bottom, but it's no good if you can't get the engine started.

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When the temp and water sensor were noted you could drain the water. This would proobably be after shut down when the radiator heat defrosted the intercooler, but the drain would take place before the water re-freeze. Electronics today could do that with little trouble. Today we do not have to do everything manually.

I know it is another system to fail. Guess what? They will not allow you to take complicated systems off the car, so the only thing is to make it more complicated. Please note that the complication level has been going on for years. LOL.

I still sugest grill fresh air over exhaust heat to keep the dust level down for the air cleaner.

eddif

Well (I feel like a broken record after reading all this) I had an iced up IC yesterday. I live in northeastern ontario and we have had below -15C for about the last 2 weeks. Well my wife and I planned a trip to the eastern seaboard of the US for a week. Well we made a stop in syracuse for a night and that morning as we were about to continue our drive I turned my car on and it died. Tried it 4 more times same thing. One last time and she turned on, big puff of steam behind me. Don't have the tools with me on my vacation to check inside for water/sludge but I know some must have went through my engine. I will take it to the dealer when I get back but this is definetly something I did not want to worry about on a vacation. Any trusted dealers in South New Jersey? Thanks.

Barkbuster82 said:

I had two experiances where I was accelerating hard in traffic and the engine just goes bang! and stops running.

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BarkBuster - are you sure there isn't something else wrong with your car? If your engine has literally shut down, meaning stopped turning and had to be restarted, under hard acceleration I would think if it were due to water/ice you'd have nothing left to drive by now. These "Bangs" you've described are not typically what water going through an engine would sounds like, unless you truly hydrolocked it and did some pretty catastrophic damage, which would most likely render the engine inoperable. Something doesn't sound right to me....

Barkbuster82 said:

I had two experiances where I was accelerating hard in traffic and the engine just goes bang! and stops running. The car still steers and brakes, but yeah... I'm deffinatly just coasting along as traffic behind is quickly approaching. Scary feeling. Not very safe for me or others.

I've checked both sides of the intercooler and have found water.

Hopefully this weekend I can take a look at the valve just before the intake manifold and see if the sludge / water is making it up that far and causing problems...

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Were you taking off from a stop when this happened?

Bill

BarkBuster - are you sure there isn't something else wrong with your car? If your engine has literally shut down, meaning stopped turning and had to be restarted, under hard acceleration I would think if it were due to water/ice you'd have nothing left to drive by now. These "Bangs" you've described are not typically what water going through an engine would sounds like, unless you truly hydrolocked it and did some pretty catastrophic damage, which would most likely render the engine inoperable. Something doesn't sound right to me....

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It could possably be another problem. Dealer checks it out every time but found no codes and couldn't get it to act up. They won't yet look into the intercooler or intake manifold to check for water. Which, I guess does make sense, they can't just go poking around looking for random problems.

Your right, I guess "Bang" isn't the best discription. A better discription would be - Accelerating hard from a complete stop, clutch full pedal fully disengaged, tires starting to chirp, revs build, car accelerating normal, and then the engine instantly stops running.

Its tough to describe... I go from "being pushed back into the seat from acceleration" to "almost hugging the steering wheel". Its pretty sudden.

I've never heard an engine hydrolock before so its tough to compare the sound and feeling.

Car runs fine most of the time.

Were you taking off from a stop when this happened?

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Yes. Car is idling. Light turns green. I punch it. Rev to about 3 - 4 thousand. I never make it out of first gear and engine shuts off.

Thanks in advance for all your help guys. New to this car. New to TDIclub.

Barkbuster82 said:

Your right, I guess "Bang" isn't the best discription. A better discription would be - Accelerating hard from a complete stop, clutch full pedal fully disengaged, tires starting to chirp, revs build, car accelerating normal, and then the engine instantly stops running.

...

Car is idling. Light turns green. I punch it. Rev to about 3 - 4 thousand. I never make it out of first gear and engine shuts off.

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For clarification "Stops running" and "shuts off" means engine completely died, and had to be restarted by cycling the key. Is this whats happens? Or does the engine lose power and stutter yet continue running after it sorts itself out?

Barkbuster, can you take one of the dealer techs for a ride while you drive? Perhaps you can reproduce the problem that way.

Do most of you that are passionate about this situation believe that a drain valve would be the answer? Simply a drain valve being mounted in an ideal location that could be controlled either with say a 12V timer, a manual switch, or possibly a boost controller to drain when a pre determined psi is reached?
I think it is doable with already available parts from other industries....



If this is a BIG Yes, I'd like to see the inter-cooler itself outside of the vehicle as well as a picture of the FMIC in the vehicle to see the front for clearance issues.



What is the estimated labor on removing the FMIC out of the vehicle?