Injector rocker snapped!

Hello all,
After driving 1500+km through many high mountain passes to Vancouver and back at 130km/h+ I was back home. Next day (today) after a few km around town I accelerated hard from a stop through a busy intersection. The car suddenly began shaking pretty hard and sounded like it was running on 2 or less cylinders.
I pulled over and pulled the engine cover. The cover was cracked and the injector head visible through it.
I pulled the valve cover and the injector rocker was cracked clear off! I've talked to some people more knowledgeable than me and they have never seen this before. The guy who sold it to me is sending replacement parts for free but I am wondering, how the hell did this happen? Is there something I should check to to ensure it does not happen again? Any tips for installing replacement parts and things I should check out first?
My engine is not a normal B5 Passat engine. It is an engine code AVF PD130 from Europe but very similar. It is a 2003 with 120 000KM or so on it.
Some pics:

Ouch! No idea why...but the rocker may have had a stress crack or a defect at manufacture and it finally failed (obvious, of course).

Wow. Is the plug still present in the end of the rocker shaft?

Not sure what you mean by the plug in the end of the rocker shaft. Give me a bit of a description and I will check.

runonbeer - you being the the head expert, what would you say the risk to my head is here? One friend says there is a big risk that the valve is shot and I should turn the engine over by hand and look for any space between the head and the lifter As you can tell I am not too competent or knowledgable about engines...

I'm no expert. I just work on these things.

Once you get the old rocker shaft unbolted look at the ends. On one side there is supposed to be a little metal plug hammered into a hole. I believe this is the plug for the oil supply gallery in the rocker. I've seen these pop out. Could explain the failure.

You'll certainly want to have a close look at the cam lobes and lifters while you have it apart. If only because it's a PD and they generally eat cams.

How come I haven't seen this car before? Where is the build thread? Why have you been keeping it hidden? ;-)

Is the injector still bolted down into the head?

Yes it's still bolted down. It snapped off in the center basically where the axis is that it rocks on.

As for the build thread, I didn't build it, a guy in Kitchener Ontario did. It is all he does - imports TDI engines and trannys and puts them in 4motion Passats and Audis

Here is the build thread. Unfortunately the photos are gone:
http://forums.tdiclub.com/showthread.php?t=339150&highlight=w8

I can see that the rocker shaft is still bolted but it looks like maybe the injector itself pushed out of the head. Didn't think the plunger spring would be allowed to contact the valve cover if it was fully installed. Like the hold down bolt snapped. Those things are pretty whimpy

Best I can guess is that the injector rocker adjust was in too far and caused the rocker to hammer against the stop until boom.

Wonder if someone was in this engine before?

That seems reasonable.

I suspect somebody replaced the cam and didn't set the injector lash correctly.

That injector is probably ruined. The plunger will have over-extended and more than likely damaged the internals.

Also, the injector bore depth will have to be checked. It is possible the injector compressed far enough that it caused a crack in the head...Not gonna be easy to inspect.

Start with measuring the injector bore depth, then plan on replacing the #1 injector with a new/used one.

The cam may need to be replaced, but first inspect the rocker lobe for any flat spots. If there are, the shock this will create will cause another fracture to occur.

I highly suggest getting this to somebody above your average wrench, to prevent further expensive issues from cropping up later on.

Confession time...this happened to me shortly after doing my own camshaft/lifter replacement. I was lucky it broke one block from home.

Franko6 had sold me the parts and coached me some, but I over-tightened the adjusting screw on the injector. He had another rocker arm to use, and showed me how it's done, and we reset the others.

My car's been running well since, about 50,000 miles later. For what it's worth, the pattern in block 13 in vag-com stayed the same before and after!

Oh yeah, I used magnets both in and below the oil pan to encourage a couple of small pieces to GTF out

Stuck nozzle valve can overload rocker too.

Or maybe as simple as a flaw in the rocker and it just failed.

I'd just try another rocker and see what you get.

Thanks for the tips guys.

Unfortunately the nearest "guru" mechanic is at least 3 hours away. That would not be an easy tow. I think I will have to trust my local mechanic to do a godd job for now. This is beyond my capabilities.

AFAIK no one has opened up this engine on this side of the pond. Who knows what happened before it was imported here from Europe. Unknown history...

runonbeer said:

I can see that the rocker shaft is still bolted but it looks like maybe the injector itself pushed out of the head. Didn't think the plunger spring would be allowed to contact the valve cover if it was fully installed. Like the hold down bolt snapped. Those things are pretty whimpy

Click to expand...

I see what you are saying. That injector bolt should not be able to come in contact with the valve cover. Funny thing is that when I removed the cover the injector must have reseated itself. They appear by eye to all be level with each other. I will have someone ensure it is seated properly.

The parts are in and the car is at the mechanic. I will update you as to how things go..

As some of you predicted the injector needs to be replaced. Fortunately the guy who built the car has access to PD130 injectors and is helping me out. Not sure my local mechanic is up to the full inspection so as soon as the new parts are installed I will make the 3 hour drive to the nearest guru and make sure everything is ok in there...

So I finally have the car back. Turned out that an injector did fail, but not in the usual way: the plunger stuck and therefore broke the rocker. Strange. We managed to unstick the plunger but replaced the injector anyways as a precaution.

I managed to get a used injector for $300 but it turned out the part # was different than the original. It is from a newer AVF engine.

The car has great power but does not run as smooth as it used to, particularly at idle. I wonder if the injector has a different flow rate or something that is causing this? The person who supplied the injector says he has used them interchangeably with the older model with no issues...

Plunger depth adjustment? Group 013 readings?

You are going to have expand on that. I had a mechanic do the install.

How would I make a plunger depth adjustment? How would I know if I had to and how much/which direction to adjust?

I have VCDS. Group 13 where exactly in the program?

Thank for the input.

ok, figured out what group 13 is. Your patience is appreciated....

Cylinder 1(the one that was replaced): -2.3
Cylinder 2: 1.7
Cylinder 3: 0.3
Cylinder 4: 0.2

That's a pretty wide deviation.

Plunger adjustment is outlined in the Bentley manual. It's a straightforward procedure.

What is the effect of such a wide deviation? What are the possible causes? How can it be remedied?

Will doing a plunger adjustment remedy the deviation?

I think I should get this thing to a guru for diagnosis. A three hour drive....

sounds like the injector is not from same engine type. used passat injectors are not nearly as plentiful as injectors for other engine types. Unless the injector/nozzle is same as others, you will continue to have problems. If you had sent injector to franko6, or someone as competent, you might have avoided all this.

Yes, that is likely the problem. Does it explain how out of whack injector #2 is though?

Also, this is an AVF engine, not like the one in your Passat. I am not sure FrankO6 can help with this? I have the old injector if anyone would like to have a look at it.

The injector I got was pulled from a 2006 AVF engine. Apparently they changed the injectors slightly since my 2003 AVF engine. A new injector for this engine would have to be shipped from Europe and costs aroun $1100...

When one cylinder is out of whack, others such as your #2 are involved in the smoothing, too. So once you get #1 sorted, #2 will probably even out also. Maybe.

Part numbers different between injectors? Could you get the other three out of the 06? Was hp the same on the two model year engnines?

Thanks for the info about the evening out by the injectors. Good to know.

I don't know all the details about the 06 engine. No, I can't get the rest and that would likely cost more than buying a replacement one.

There are some used ones on ebay.uk for about $300 but none of them want to ship to canada. I am trying to talk them into it...