Hesitation and lots of smoke - blown turbo?

Ok, so in the past week I've had the car start going into limp mode with heavy acceleration. Things seemed to perform better with the MAF unplugged, so I ordered a replacement MAF.

I replaced it and things seemed to be going OK yesterday until I got the WW bridge and I started getting some hesitation and surge from the car. It got worse as time went on and I pulled off. After examining the vacuum hoses, I found the one going to the anti shutter valve had a nice hole in it. So I got some tape and got it covered as much as possible. After some fooling around, the car seemed to run fine, so I was able to get it home.

Today, I go out to buy a new vacuum hose and replace the old one. Problem now is that the hesitation and smoke are still there.

One of my neighbors, who seems to be a young VW enthusiast, thinks that it is a blown turbo. Before I figure out where to take it (suggestions welcome), can we conclude that this is a blown turbo?

Certainly, I'm at the point where this is beyond me to address myself, and I really don't have the time to wander around in the dark.

Pull the hose from the turbo to intercooler and see how much oil there is.

If you don't see any oil and don't feel much play in the shaft, then the turbo is probably ok.

If the turbo seems ok, then take a look at my sig for the low power / limp mode link.

To be honest, it's much more common for one of the issues you see in my sig to be the problem than it is for it to be a blown turbo.

Ok, this is strange. I just got around to hooking up VAG-COM to the car, and it is coming back with 16487 and 16485, which are codes for the MAF. I cleared the codes after I installed the new MAF, so apparently there is something wrong with the new MAF?

I'm going out to see if I get the behavior with the MAF unplugged....

Where and what kind of MAF did you get?

It was indeed the new MAF, since the bad behavior went away when I unplugged the MAF. I then replaced it with the old MAF and everything started working correctly again. Even took it up to highway speeds. (no limp mode either, so I suspect that the vacuum hose I replaced was the real problem.)

NB_TDi said:

Where and what kind of MAF did you get?

Click to expand...

Ordered it from Impex. It was the Bosch part that was supposed to be equivalent to the OEM part. ( 038-906-461-C)

http://www.worldimpex.com/item_detail.html?sku=274174

It didn't quite look like the old one, tho. The sensor was enclosed in its own tube. I just thought it was a minor difference in design. I guess I need to talk to Impex to figure out what happened here.

Nah, you got the correct one. I wanted to make sure you got the newest revision, which is "C".