Took the car in because of a scrubbing / brushing sound from the engine

mopower said:

Small update today - the car is still at the dealership. VW instructed the dealer to replace the timing belt, tensioner, rollers and waterpump. Dealer didn't replace the waterpump but did replace the belt, tensioner and two rollers. The sound is exactly the same as before.

Click to expand...

When they do replace the water pump, try to find out if the new one is the same variable flow design or is a conventional style without the sliding shroud around the impeller.

I'd bet the noise disappears if you take the serpentine belt off before starting. My car makes the same noise, and with now 75k miles I'm convinced it's either the AC or alternator. If the dealer did not try that as a test before going straight to recommending a new timing belt, then that seems like they just want to throw parts at it.

Sent from my Pixel 2 using Tapatalk

To review:

mopower said:

Now at dealer #2 they had the car overnight and were able to hear the noise. The problem is they have no idea what is making it. They took off the serpentine belt and the car still makes the noise, ruling out the a/c or alternator.

Click to expand...

mopower said:

Dealer #3 also told me that he has heard the noise before and I shouldn't be concerned as it is the way the rubber timing belt is riding on the pullies. (it doesn't really sound like that to me but I wouldn't rule it out without checking) And the service manager said that if he sprayed some liquid on the belt the noise would go away. Lucky for him the tech had 5 minutes before showed me how he checked under the upper timing cover, so I suggested that they go ahead and spray the timing belt right now... The noise didn't change at all.

Click to expand...

mopower said:

Small update today - the car is still at the dealership. VW instructed the dealer to replace the timing belt, tensioner, rollers and waterpump. Dealer didn't replace the waterpump but did replace the belt, tensioner and two rollers. The sound is exactly the same as before.

Click to expand...

I believe I hear the same sound as well, and it does sound like it's coming from approximately the location of the water pump. It has been like this for a couple years.

Mine started doing the same thing or noise a couple weeks ago.
It has 39K on it. Will mention it when I bring it in for 40K service.
Thanks

mopower, are you taking a breather on this or does the dealer still have it?

Did there end up being a resolution to this? Was it the water pump as suspected?

so I know this is an old thread now but im hoping to help people as ive been looking into this myself for a few weeks now but my mk7 GTD engine code CUNA which is a EA288 engine has been making this belt or pulley type squeal I replaced the serpentine belt then the tensioner then the alternator over run pulley because they all looked as though they had a few years on them anyway the noise persisted from stone cold when I got the car it had had the timing belt replaced with a genuine vw belt and water pump with the variable shroud over the impeller. yesterday I decided to bite the bullet and replace the belt and water pump I put on a gates power grip kit that came with everything tensioner pulleys and a non variable water pump. on start up there was no noise which I thought was great left the car from 7 pm last night to 815am this morning with an outside temperature of 10degrees c and there's still no noise I can only assume the shroud around the water pump must have deformed slightly and when the car is in warm up it touches the impeller as there is no noise at all now. I hope this helps people now as I was racking my brains for weeks

cheers

Peter

I'll take a stab at the noise....cam spur gears, when it warms up, they expand enough to get quieter.

Surely would be interesting if others that have swapped to the non-variable pump could confirm the noise gone as well. I have a non-variable Geba pump going onto my new engine, and will delete the rear auxiliary pump and piping as its sole purpose is to circulate coolant through the head and heater core/lp egr circuit when the shroud is covering the OE impeller.

If it was a sound from the cam spur gears, it will probably run forever but the sound will be there, as the gears warm up they expand and sound decreases.

MOPOWER, curious, but did you eventually find out what was causing this noise?