I now have a V10 money pit, thanks to compudub!

Last May, I did a cross country road trip and stopped by a number of TDIer's houses and family in Michigan. Did a fair bit of work along the way on people's cars to pay for it. One of the stops was to my buddies VeeDubTDI and compu_85's place in Virginia to take a look at the V10 Touareg. They were complaining about a bad vibration under load and had already replaced the driveshaft and even thought at one point maybe it was torque converter shudder and did a fluid service and valve body on it in an attempt to fix the problem to no avail.

I suggested I had been seeing a number of PDs at their age with bad injector seals causing issues now and then. Franko6 relayed to compu_85 that worn cams have been known to do that on V10s as well. It is a 2V/cylinder PD after all...

As usual, Frank was right:





Last fall, they made me an offer I had a hard time refusing to take the Touareg off their hands. So, now it's my expensive problem.

I ordered a set of Colt cams from a company in Canada last fall and FedEx promptly lost them somewhere in New York. I fought it out with them for awhile to get a claim paid, and have so far received a check for only 10% of what I actually paid for the cams... So, I think a trip to small claims will eventually happen, in the meantime, I got too impatient of waiting for that to resolve and got another set of cams on the way.

So, cams have now shown up, and I started to amass the rest of the parts required to do the job and had purchased the absolutely necessary special tools as well. Time to drop the drivetrain:



Pardon the disaster zone that is my shop bay at the moment. Honestly can't remember my last day off not at the shop.



With that done, time for disassembly:



Bank 2 (driver side bank) was definitely far worse. Surprisingly bank 1 is almost completely unworn. Go figure.

Slowly but surely I'm getting it back together, ordering some more parts along the way and finding my crank lock tool was more meant for the Euro 2.5L 5 cylinder than the V10. Came in a kit that had cam locks for both engines (V10 bank 1 uses the same cam lock as the 5 cylinder, bank 2 uses a different lock).

Also while I'm in there, might as well do injector seals too:



Just as it was being loaded on the hauler to come to California, compu noted that it suddenly went into limp mode and stored a turbo related code. When I received it, the code was for turbo control module "defective."

Oh great...

Well, I did replace a pair of turbos on a V10 last year for a customer and noticed that even on his West Coast Touareg (2006--two years newer than this one) one of the turbo's had a rusted external linkage and eventually it popped the E clip off altogether and came disconnected.

The Touareg I just had, both modules were still connected to the linkage. I decided to remove the linkage from the module while everything was still in the truck and found I couldn't move the VNT mechanism easily at all. Having noticed that the turbo control module defective code returned every time I keyed the engine on, I decided to try an experiment. With the VNT linkage between lever and control module unhooked from the control module side (only side you can really reach with the engine still installed) I cleared the codes, keyed it on and off a couple times and noted every time you key it on, the control modules cycle min to max. And if one of them can't go through its full range of motion, it sets the "control module defective" code. But with the VNT linkage completely disconnected from the control module and the module able to go through its full range of motion, the code didn't come back.

So, now with the engine out of the vehicle and I have the ability to better see the linkage and mess with it, it turns out the way it had corroded it wasn't allowing full movement from an external issue, i.e. not sticking vanes inside the turbo.

So, I took the arm off entirely, used one of those small, relatively soft grinding stones in a Dremel kit to clean the corrosion on the inside of the arms, tore a thin strip of sand paper and used it to clear the corrosion off the arms on the control module and VNT mechanism, used some high temp synthetic caliper grease on the joints and reassembled. Slathered some more on the outside too in hopes a future recurrence of this issue is staved off.

Having seen this issue on two V10s now from opposite sides of the country, I'm beginning to think the "fragile turbos" rumor about the V10s is mostly bullcrap. I think if whoever services these trucks takes the chance everytime they're under one of these to try and dab a little grease around these joints, it could stave off the corrosion on the VNT linkage that eventually causes various codes and limp mode. At least that's my theory. So, instead of replacing turbos now, despite the job being massive to remove and reinstall one of these monsters, I'm tempted to see just how long I can get the stock turbos to last on one of these with just that little bit of preventative maintenance.

Anyway, back to it. I've got plenty of work to do after the 'Reg is back moving under its own power. But I can't wait until it's done, I've driven it, got readiness monitors to set and then get it titled and registered in my name finally. Really neat truck.

Nice job Matt!

My friend and mentor recently traded his 2010 V8 T'reg in for a Tiguan (poor sap). His $65k money fire ended in a $4500 trade in value, then to find out through another dealer friend it was wholesaled off at Manheim for $3200! It is shocking how cheap you can pick these things up now.

But at least yours has the novelty cool factor of the V10 TDI, which is just too neat of an engine not to try and save and bring back to life.

I have had several chances to pick up cheap first gen T'reg VR6 with chucked chains, but have resisted because there is just no market for them. The V10 will probably enjoy some niche following for a long time to come. And they make a neat sound, too.

Glad to see this truck in good hands.

If I has the time / space I would have loved to tear into this, but I just don't right now. And I know if we'd have tried to trade it in, it would have gone on to a flatter place.

PS: We never replaced the driveshaft. We did have all the motor mounts replaced trying to cure the vibration. The PO had replaced the driveshaft 3 times over the course of the trucks life due to the carrier bearing bushing going bad.

-J

compu_85 said:

Glad to see this truck in good hands.

If I has the time / space I would have loved to tear into this, but I just don't right now. And I know if we'd have tried to trade it in, it would have gone on to a flatter place.

PS: We never replaced the driveshaft. We did have all the motor mounts replaced trying to cure the vibration. The PO had replaced the driveshaft 3 times over the course of the trucks life due to the carrier bearing bushing going bad.

-J

Click to expand...

Ah, good to know. The driveshaft center diff bearing does still look good. I do have an interesting aftermarket axle I got my hands on I can swap to should this one go bad. It gets rid of the center diff bearing altogether.

CV joint on the back just like OE (which also allows a little slip) but U joint up front where the flex disk is. This also means the middle slip joint is gone completely. Makes enough sense to me, in theory these should need minimal axle shaft length change anyway since both drivetrain and rear diff are fixed. Will be interesting to try should (or when) the current driveshaft have the middle slip joint go bad and tear up another center support bushing.

OH: I still see some V10s pop up on the local Craigslist here for somewhere around $10k and they don't seem to stay long. The one that has stuck around for awhile was a 2006 the owner was asking $16k for. Was very low miles (70k and change or so) and looked in great shape, though. Nice color combo, too.

This will be a truck to take on trips into the mountains as well as tow/haul stuff... and just weekend duty in general. Will still have an older 4 pot TDI for daily duties. Couldn't rely on this as a DD, that's for sure. Wouldn't want to pay that fuel bill all the time, either!

Saw your pics on Facebook the other day, is that really the harmonic balancer? It's the size of a normal flywheel!!!

Interesting observation that the driver's side camshaft lobes wore far differently from the R bank. That fact lends support to the theory that the camshaft wear issue is primarily a process control problem during the original manufacture. The rating/quality of the oil has been taking the heat for a long time now (and it may still have SOME effect) but it is very obvious that these two camshafts and their lifters saw IDENTICAL oil and identical service conditions during their lifetime. It is probably an issue with the camshafts and NOT the lifters because it is hard to see how most of the lifters for the L bank would have been processed during their manufacture any differently from the lifters that ended up on the R side.
It is very easy to visualize how a batch of camshafts for the R side got made and processed on a different day, under different conditions (and perhaps at a different plant) then those for the L side.

Fourdiesel said:

Interesting observation that the driver's side camshaft lobes wore far differently from the R bank. That fact lends support to the theory that the camshaft wear issue is primarily a process control problem during the original manufacture. The rating/quality of the oil has been taking the heat for a long time now (and it may still have SOME effect) but it is very obvious that these two camshafts and their lifters saw IDENTICAL oil and identical service conditions during their lifetime. It is probably an issue with the camshafts and NOT the lifters because it is hard to see how most of the lifters for the L bank would have been processed during their manufacture any differently from the lifters that ended up on the R side.
It is very easy to visualize how a batch of camshafts for the R side got made and processed on a different day, under different conditions (and perhaps at a different plant) then those for the L side.

Click to expand...

This is no different than how one lobe/lifter on one cam can be completely wiped out, yet all the rest are perfectly fine.

I just did a BEW with 190k miles, NOT maintained by me until recently, that had a solid measured 3mm worn off the #2 intake lobe, with another 2mm worn in that lifter. The other lobes as checked with a micrometer against a new cam had essentially zero wear, and the lifters (I do not have a good tiny dial indicator to measure these) had no visible wear on any of them.

It certainly remains a mystery.

I had purchased an aftermarket special tool kit, which was largely just fine for the cam gear clamps and cam lock down, but the crank lock was definitely not right for the V10. Had to special order the OE version--or more accurately I found someone who was charging double what VW normally does on eBay and was willing to overnight it... VW doesn't have it in stock on tools.vw.com anyway...

USPS dropped the ball and my overnight delivery turned into 2 days. Could be worse I guess.

Got it all lined up, just like doing a TDI timing belt, the cam gears themselves are NOT keyed to the cams. And it's not even a cone seat. There's a special disk that grips the hub on the end of the cam and the gear sandwiches into that as well. There's one large bolt that ties fuel pump drive, cam gear and camshaft together and it's torqued in 3 stages. It's very tight.

Bank 2 (driver's side) does NOT have a cam sensor. It wasn't too bad to do, especially since the special tool that holds the gear in place just rests on the head to counterhold any tightening or loosening forces on that bolt. Pretty slick.

Bank 1 on the other hand wasn't so easy. Both sides you are removing not only the cam gear but also effectively the "compensation gear" as well. There are these large brass bushings for both the end of the cam and where the very end of the head where the fuel pump drive is that also act as pivots for two large arms for the compensation gear. These have to be loosened and removed to get the cam gear and camshaft out. At least for removing the cam gear on bank 2 the arms can stay in place for that step, but the bushing and arm on the cam side do need to be removed to pull the camshaft out.

On bank 1, the gear and the transmission/fuel pump side bushing and arm have to come out WITH the gear because there is inadequate clearance to only pull one at a time. This made reinstalling even trickier. The reason for this is because the cam gear for bank 1 contains the tone wheel for the cam sensor. The only cam sensor in the entire engine... only bank 1 has it.

Even more fun? There's a little notch mark on the tone wheel that is supposed to line up flush with the bottom of the head when you got it in there right. But the arm and bushing for the compensating gear, which you can only install at the same time as the cam gear, blocks your view of this hash mark. So, I had to make an etching that extends that mark to where I could actually see it with the bushing and arm in place.

So, that's where the real fun begins, trying to line up the 4 arms for the compensating gear and the compensating gear itself while also installing the cam gear with one of those 4 arms and its bushing that sits under a cam cap while also making sure the cam gear itself is going to line up correctly when it's all said and done...

Yeah, that took a lot of retries. Either I'd get it all in place only to find the cam gear wasn't lined up right or as I'm trying to maneuver the one compensating gear arm and the cam gear in, one of the other 3 arms would move to where you can't rotate it back without removing everything all over again... So that was fun.

Plus, when you do finally get everything lined up and you have the hub for the arms and compensation gear installed and you've now got the bolt that holds the pump drive, cam gear and cam together run in, the nice special tool for bank 2 that counterholds the gear for you against the head doesn't fit bank 1 due to the tight clearance between tone wheel and gear. There's another special counterhold tool, but it does require you to hold a 1/2" large ratchet or breaker bar into it while you torque the bolt to high heaven. Just one of those jobs that feels like you need 2 more arms, you know?

Other than that, the rest of the job is just nuts and bolts. It's a lot of steps and very time consuming, but beyond that nothing that made me really frustrated.... Other than today where I was prepping the engine to go back in and had to drill and tap out a tiny bolt that holds up bank 1's turbo inlet piping... and then broke a tap.

Anywho, it looks like I pretty much have it ready to get bolted back in. Going to save that for tomorrow.

Engine back in and running, lifters have now quieted down after a little break-in.

Blew some smoke out the first couple times putting my boot to it, that's cleared up nicely now. No more shudder under acceleration like we experienced last May.

The one odd thing I had to take a little extra time with today was figuring out glow plug and glow plug module codes.

I started looking at diagrams and prodding around the glow plug relays for voltage and ground where it's supposed to be. The main power, not switched/straight from the battery only read 6V. Only took a couple minutes to figure out that the reason why is because that circuit is powered by the second battery under the spare tire. New dealer sourced AGM replacement installed, cleared codes and all seems happy.

Drove it home and so far so good. Feels like it could maybe use a little injector cleaner. Doesn't quite feel like it has full grunt yet, but it's no slouch either.

I had deegingerkid look at a little data using OBDEleven as my scan tool to see boost and MAF while I drove. Sounds like bank 1's MAF might be underreporting a hair, but overall, it's close. Boost control looks great.

Only comprehensive components for readiness hasn't set yet, hoping it will after another drive cycle from a cold start tomorrow will do it, then I can smog it and go to the DMV.

How many miles are on this Treg?

Good stuff Matt! Now I can go buy one and bring it to you with confidence

Seriously. If you see a decent one or have someone try to sell you one, let me know!

JETaah said:

How many miles are on this Treg?

Click to expand...

About 165k.

-J

Passing the torch! Don't burn yourself.

I'm glad you got the engine repaired and back together. It's great to see you working through the issues and learning all of the ins and outs of this monster. Hopefully your expertise will end up keeping some more V10s on the road instead of ending up in the junk pile.

Have fun ripping up the mountains!

Interesting data point: it's my understanding that the truck was run on 5w-40 synthetic (Mobil TDT or equivalent) for its entire life.

Yup, until I started using Mobil 1 5w40 when we got it at ~120k

Nice! Is there room for for the MK IV to come over soon?

Any updates on this?

mogly said:

Any updates on this?

Click to expand...

Yes! Not so many photos, though. I may have a few I can add in later.

I've been driving it since mid March, trying to not daily drive it, but sometimes when my daily is low on fuel, I'll jump in the Touareg instead.... or if it's a weekend I'll usually drive it... And it's now seen road trips to the red woods/Avenue of the Giants in Northern California back in March when family was in town and has made two trips to Oregon (just got back from the second trip yesterday).

It had 169,000 and change on it (169,7xx or 8xx if I recall) when I got it. It rolled over 180,000 yesterday on the way home. So I've already put over 10,000 miles on it since March... so much for it not being my daily driver, huh? lol

I do try to limit my commuting with it just to save on fuel costs. With commuting, it gets around 19 MPG (hand calculated, not relying on the readout in the cluster which is usually 1-2 MPG optimistic). Longer road trips it tends to be 21-22 MPG.

The drive home from Oregon yesterday was a perfect example of what makes this such an amazing vehicle to drive. As Dee and myself were driving down route 97 from Oregon, she looks ahead on Google maps and notes there's a large traffic back up due to a construction lane reduction and possibly an accident on Southbound I5 near Dunsmuir in far Northern California. Mt Shasta looms large in our view. We pull over a rest stop at Grass Lake right on hwy 97. I poke around on maps and find a forest road that goes behind Mt Shasta. There is some street view photos of the road and it looked paved for the couple spots I checked. Sure, let's try it.

The turn off for it is only a couple miles after that rest stop. We make the turn and go on our traffic avoiding-venture. Should have known, eventually the road did become dirt, although reasonably well maintained. Only a couple little rough patches and some spots of washboard. Put the dampers into comfort mode and the truck just glides right over all the rough stuff, largely unperturbed. Nothing even cringe-worthy. Anytime I could see far enough ahead I'd pick up speed. Easy squeeze of the throttle and it's not long before you're over 50 on a dirt road.

We eventually get back onto pavement, get on highway 89 near McCloud and head back towards I-5. The backup seems to loosen up at exactly where 89 interchanges with I-5. We get to the overpass and there's a long line of traffic on 89 barely moving waiting to get onto 5. Crap.

Consult maps again. We find what appears to be a side road that takes you alongside the Dunsmuir air port and there's another road that allows you to pass under I5, unfortunately the ramp there back onto I-5 South was shown as closed, but you can go another couple miles further down the same road that parallels 5 and find another ramp. So sure, let's try it out.

Ominously, there were several cars on this side road trying to turn back into the long line of traffic trying to get onto I-5. Then we see signs for "Not a Thru Road" and "Residential Traffic Only". Strange, maps seemed to make us think the road goes all the way through. There's another car ahead of us with the same idea. We'll just follow and see what happens.

We get to a large cul de sac/turn around point and a large sign that says "END". But, there's a dirt path that continues. Maps apparently didn't feel the need to let us know that bit of information, but we also weren't using the navigation, we were just using it as a map trying to figure out an alternative route. So... whatever.

There's a Nissan Rogue in front of us pondering whether to continue. Then I see that there's a Pontiac Grand Prix coming the other way on the road and since it's a single car width track, I better understand why the Nissan hadn't started yet. The driver of the Nissan talks to the driver of the Pontiac for a moment, and once the Grand Prix continues on, the Rogue driver decides to start going ahead on the dirt trail.

Slow, rocky, bumpy, some brush might touch the side of the car on occasion. Then we get to a short, but steep and very uneven and rocky decline. I see a large Chevy Suburban slowly bouncing down the hill and the Nissan lets him get to the bottom before attempting his own descent. He tries going way left, attempting to find a route that might not require as high ground clearance, then I see his reverse lights come on. I back up as well trying to give him space and he then waves me through.

Of what I know of how the truck operates, once you put the transfer case into low gear and put the shift selector into tiptronic mode, the ESP system switches into off road mode and will also individually brake wheels for hill descent control. Plus, being in low gear means much more engine braking. In order to make it easier to control on such rocky, uneven terrain, I was going to do exactly that.

Just to be safe for ground clearance as well, I switched the air suspension into off road mode, which gains you a couple inches of clearance, shift into neutral, turn the transfer case knob into low gear (but not locking center or rear diff--not necessary for this) shift back to drive, put it into tiptronic mode. The transmission starts in 2nd gear when the transfer case is in low. And, from messing around with it previously on another trip in the Sierras, 2nd gear in low is shorter than first gear in high. I would end up putting it into 1st anyway and didn't touch the pedals once I started the descent. The truck just very easily and slowly crawled over the uneven terrain with zero drama. I didn't hear the ABS pump at all, so I'm assuming the extra aggressive engine braking from being in 1st gear with the transfer case in low basically did all the work.

Get to the bottom of the hill, shift back to neutral, transfer case back to auto/high and motored on. Not too long after, pavement re-appeared, switch the air suspension back to normal and motored on and eventually found our I-5 South on ramp, merged on and there was no back up.

The highway is still pretty curvy with plenty of elevation changes through that segment between Dunsmuir and Lake Shasta. The truck easily does 80+ if you want and handles surprisingly well around corners. In order to avoid too much wallowing from the suspension, I have the dampers back in auto mode instead of comfort. If you really want to get aggressive, you can put them into sport mode, which also further lowers the air suspension and greatly firms up the dampers. Sometimes it's a bit overly harsh for my taste, but it does make a difference in handling response for sure. Auto mode generally makes it comfortable and still handles and responds amazingly well.

The quietness at highway speeds is what really gets me with this thing. Doing 80+ at times you only hear some muted wind noise. That's it. You don't even hear the engine at that speed. It's doing a hair over 2000 RPM at that point.

I have never driven a vehicle that can do what this does on rough roads and off road and drive as well as this does at speed and through corners. And be very comfortable and quiet as well. It's a rare combination for sure. Usually you have a vehicle that excels at off road OR excels at speed and in corners, to have them both in the same vehicle and to do both with ease and comfort on the same day with no physical changes to the vehicle is amazing. Thoroughly blown away at what this truck can do.

The handling front does need a little tweaking. For starters, the Pirelli tires currently on there are fine for road use, but if I were to do more serious off roading, they would definitely have to go. I have been looking at more aggressive for off roading tires that still maintain good road manners as that's what this thing is about. I will likely get a set of Continental Terraincontact A/Ts.

When I did the alignment some months ago, the camber spec in the front is very tight. Its total range is 0 degrees to -0.3 degrees with it at its normal ride height (and it likes to adjust all the time, so trying to find a way to keep it where it should be is typically a little tricky--even following VW's instructions it still adjusts the ride height as I'm in the middle of making alignment adjustments). As I was trying to find the happy balance between getting caster perfectly even side to side, it just happened to be easiest to have camber right at 0. But if you really push it hard in corners, the front does give up grip a little easier than I'd like. So, once I put new tires on, I think I'm going to dial some negative camber back in at the front. I do have caster on the high side of the specification (9 degrees is where it's at currently, acceptable range is between low 8 degrees and low 9 degrees if I recall). More positive caster does help with camber roll when turning the wheel (camber changes favorably for handling purposes when cornering) but some extra static camber will definitely help more, even if it's just -0.3.

Even with it getting the front tires to squeal a bit too easily when cornering, it's still a very well composed chassis being hustled around corners. It handles and brakes in a way that absolutely defies it's surprising heft (with fuel and driver in it, it will tip the scales at over 6000 lbs). Some days it does genuinely feel like it might be breaking some laws of physics to be able to do all it does as well as it does with that much weight. It's something else, it really is.

Oh, I will also add that the power level feels about what it should be after all these miles. I did put new MAFs in there, which helped a little, but the biggest improvement has come with continual use of good fuel additives, every tankful.

Mostly Stanadyne Performance Formula, I did do one large bottle of Howe's MPK over several tanks as well.

Yeah man! Love the story and I’m glad you’re enjoying the truck! I didn’t get to go off-road nearly as much as I wanted.

A touch of negative camber should go a long way. It’s impressive how well it can carve through corners, given its heft. The air suspension and active damping really shine in the mountains and on undulating roads.

Setting Cam gear notched ring

Matt,
I have a question on setting the notched ring on the passenger side cam gear.
I am doing the cam replacement with the motor in place, So I was only able to lock the cams. I was not able to lock in the crank.
I have the valve cover off. So on the #1 cylinder should the cam lobes be pointing up (compression stroke) or when the cam lobes are pointing down (intake stroke)?
What I did, is before I removed the gear I marked it, and as luck would have it, I accidentally wiped off the mark, So now I am not sure on how it should go in.
I have the cams locked with the #1 cylinder cam lobes pointing down. I have aligned the "line" on the notched ring to the cylinder head as shown in the manual.
To your knowledge is this correct or is it 180 degrees out?
Thanks,
Peegeez