2010 TDI stumbling problem

woofie2

Veteran Member
Joined
Feb 11, 2004
Location
Republic of Southern Illinois
TDI
Former TDI owner
I have a Golf TDI with a stumbling problem,
I was wondering if anyone else had the issue or similar problems,

My car will seem to miss or stumble when driving at a constant speed, such as 30 MPH in 3rd gear. Only when maintaining a constant speed. It seems to be worse when driving up a slight incline.
the car seems to jerk slightly, and if you are quick and press the clutch in during this stumble the motor will die.

This combined with the light tendency to Lope (hunt& surge) at stoplights on occasion, VW has taken the car to figure out what was wrong.

I was wondering if anyone else has had this or a similar problem?
 

OverSire

Member
Joined
Dec 14, 2009
Location
Sacramento
TDI
2010 Jetta Sportswagen TDI
from what I have been able to determine so far there is a reflash for the ECU, but to get the dealer to perform the reflash the car has to have the check engine light on and a stored code.
Mine has the same issue,, I am starting to get used to it :)

Over
 

woofie2

Veteran Member
Joined
Feb 11, 2004
Location
Republic of Southern Illinois
TDI
Former TDI owner
Called the dealer, they said it appeared to be something mechanical, but they could not figure out what. They opened a service case with VW, and had to do quite a few computer logs to send to the engineering staff.


When I find a problem I find it good. :eek:
 

darrenf

Veteran Member
Joined
Sep 19, 2008
Location
Durham, NC
TDI
09 JSW TDI Black/Black, Pano, Avignons
Having experienced the "stutter" since getting my TDI a year ago, I can say that this sounds worse. I never get more than one stumble per trip it could be weeks between occurrences.

I have a lopping idle from time to time, but infrequently and only during a regen (ie if I park, I can smell that classic regen smell and hear the fan).

-darren
 

woofie2

Veteran Member
Joined
Feb 11, 2004
Location
Republic of Southern Illinois
TDI
Former TDI owner
Apparently VW now acknowledges this is a problem, but VW does not know how or what to do to fix it. I think everyone needs to take or mention this to the dealer when they take their cars in for service, else they will not work to fix it.

Remember misfiring is a driving hazard, especially if the car bucks like mine does at times.
 

IMAAaron

Veteran Member
Joined
Jan 19, 2010
Location
PA
TDI
2013 JSW - Third time's a charm
woofie2 said:
Apparently VW now acknowledges this is a problem...
Not trying to argue here, but just curious: how is this apparent again?
 

woofie2

Veteran Member
Joined
Feb 11, 2004
Location
Republic of Southern Illinois
TDI
Former TDI owner
IMAAaron said:
Not trying to argue here, but just curious: how is this apparent again?
My Dealer (gosh, that sounds bad) Has an open Case with VW engineering, and a case number, they have sent several log files in and run several extensive tests. (or so claimed, but I did get a copy of the response from engineering about trying a new software file in the ECU which did not repair the problem.)

In the log file for my car the timing map goes to a point when the timing is bouncing to implausible for a few milliseconds of time. this repeats every few seconds, and is felt when the car jerks back to life.

it is there at 60 mph but the inertia of the car keeps the jerking to a minimum, at 30 mph it appears to be more noticeable.
 

Pelican18TQA4

Veteran Member
Joined
Sep 7, 2002
Location
Philadelphia, PA
TDI
'13 Jetta Hybrid
Yep, same thing happens with the '09 TDIs as well. 3rd gear, part-throttle seems to be the worst offender. People that have had the updated ECU flash performed seem to have noticed that this "stutter" doesn't happen anymore. But, as others have already posted in this thread, dealers won't proactively flash the ECU; there has to be a CEL and codes. I have heard the suggestion to unplug the coolant level sensor, start the car to set a CEL, and then plug the sensor back in. Performed at your own risk, of course.
 

woofie2

Veteran Member
Joined
Feb 11, 2004
Location
Republic of Southern Illinois
TDI
Former TDI owner
That's interesting, my stutter and resulting jerk were bad enough to get them to give me a rental car for 5 days sofar, and they have been logging and sending information back and forth with VW.

The phone call today was "we are still working on it, and it has kept a technician busy for 2 full days thus far"
The way it sounds they have been driving my car so much I hope they chip in a few bucks for fuel. :D

What got me was a couple of days ago it was doing the lope and die at stoplights, and the motor felt like it was really moving around, then it would stall, upon restart it was fine but at the next stoplight it was doing it again.

I thought it was an injector failing or misfiring, then the other thought was the fuel pump not holding pressure.
 
Last edited:

woofie2

Veteran Member
Joined
Feb 11, 2004
Location
Republic of Southern Illinois
TDI
Former TDI owner
talked to the Service department and they are pulling the transmission out and checking some things,
something about missing teeth on the speed sensor or something.

what the heck is going on with a car with less than 4000 miles on it? Had I realized it was this big of an issue I would have taken it in sooner, but it is a 130 mile drive to the dealer.
 

skevimc

Member
Joined
Sep 28, 2009
Location
San Francisco
TDI
Coming soon 2010 Jetta Sportwagen
I don't have an issue with stumbling so much, but there are times when I come to a stop light and it seems like the car is going to stall. Kind of like a manual transmission and you forget to put the clutch in until the last possible second.
 

woofie2

Veteran Member
Joined
Feb 11, 2004
Location
Republic of Southern Illinois
TDI
Former TDI owner
After 60 miles of driving, three days of technician time, and many many tests, they found the flywheel had failed,

That is weird that my car was shipped with a bad DMF flywheel, apparently it had a problem.
 

woofie2

Veteran Member
Joined
Feb 11, 2004
Location
Republic of Southern Illinois
TDI
Former TDI owner
I got my car back and it is fixed.

The problems is the vibration from the detonated DMF flywheel caused a repeating misfire, first time the shop manager had a flywheel cause a misfire. It also made the car prone to stalling when taking off from a dead stop. Huh? I never knew had that problem :D

So I saw the old DMF and 3 of the rivets that hold the plates together were sheared, the springs were not working correctly, the tech had a hard time getting the bolts and holes lined up to remove the old DMF.

Not bad for a car with 4k miles on it.
The thing is I think I know when the rivets let loose...
 

Ryephile

Veteran Member
Joined
Jul 15, 2009
Location
Metro Detroit
TDI
MkVI Golf
Glad to hear your TDI is working A-OK for the first time! A broken flywheel would make the fact there was no CEL make sense. I hope your car is an isolated incident and not a sign of a batch of bad flywheels.
 

wsktdi

Well-known member
Joined
Jan 6, 2010
Location
Topanga, CA
TDI
2010 Jetta Sportwagon
skevimc said:
I don't have an issue with stumbling so much, but there are times when I come to a stop light and it seems like the car is going to stall. Kind of like a manual transmission and you forget to put the clutch in until the last possible second.
I have this same issue. Like the DSG doesn't downshift soon enough. Have you put it in S mode to see if this still happens? It does not happen in 'manual' mode.
Anybody know if this will eventually damage the transmission?
 

Mosquito

Member
Joined
Jan 3, 2009
Location
Saugerties, NY
TDI
2010 JSW TDI - Graphite Blue with Panoramic roof.
HI y'all
This is my first post to this forum and unfortunately not a good one. However, I am not new to V-dubs by any stretch. I've had every model, diesels as well as gas, from old school Beetles to a farm of rabbits, Dashers, Passat VR6 and several GTI & GLIs . My 04 Passat Wagon 4 Motion was the only auto I ever owned. I haven't had a Toureg... too much $ :eek: .

Anyway, I did a search for "Shattered Flywheel" and this thread came up.
Turns out I’ve had a few things occur that are very similar to the symptoms in this thread that I believe have rendered my TDI dead. The strange "bucking" on a slight incline if I lift off the throttle to modulate the speed. Couple times the car stalled coming to a stop when depressing the clutch at low RPMs for a slip into first. I thought it was my relaxed driving demeanor and pondered whether I was the actual cause of it. I didn't think to much of it until the bucking became more persistent and pronounced at ~1500 miles. I finally took it in and they found that the throttle body came loose from the manifold. My dealer refastened with some lock tight and asked if they could keep it for a couple extra days to have a VW manufacturing rep look at it and eventually on I went. Same "bucking" symptom persisted but it was mild I thought it was just a characteristic of the TDI ECU.
Then a couple weeks ago, at 32k miles, my flywheel "shattered" which precipitated the bearings in the 4th cylinder rod assembly to go bad. They told me that the vibration from the flywheel starved that cylinder of oil causing the berrings to crush. All in a matter of 5 miles / minutes.
VW has concluded that a complete engine replacement is nessasary but not the transmission.
 

Mosquito

Member
Joined
Jan 3, 2009
Location
Saugerties, NY
TDI
2010 JSW TDI - Graphite Blue with Panoramic roof.
Sorry, 2009 TDI Jetta manual...

With the exception of this car, I've driven all of my VDubs hard. I've trained my wife and kids to drive a standard transmission on them. I've thrashed them on the race track and never did something like this occur. I drive my TDI like it was going to be the last car I was gonna buy and I'm in my mid 40s.
 

dpg

Veteran Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2010
Location
Chi-Town
TDI
2013 JSW TDI, 2010 JSW - retired
thanks. its wierd because i noticed the car stumble a tad at idle and it did stumble a bit in 4th gear. I'll keep an eye out and see if it gets worse
 

woofie2

Veteran Member
Joined
Feb 11, 2004
Location
Republic of Southern Illinois
TDI
Former TDI owner
Mosquito said:
HI y'all
This is my first post to this forum and unfortunately not a good one. However, I am not new to V-dubs by any stretch. I've had every model, diesels as well as gas, from old school Beetles to a farm of rabbits, Dashers, Passat VR6 and several GTI & GLIs . My 04 Passat Wagon 4 Motion was the only auto I ever owned. I haven't had a Toureg... too much $ :eek: .

Anyway, I did a search for "Shattered Flywheel" and this thread came up.
Turns out I’ve had a few things occur that are very similar to the symptoms in this thread that I believe have rendered my TDI dead. The strange "bucking" on a slight incline if I lift off the throttle to modulate the speed. Couple times the car stalled coming to a stop when depressing the clutch at low RPMs for a slip into first. I thought it was my relaxed driving demeanor and pondered whether I was the actual cause of it. I didn't think to much of it until the bucking became more persistent and pronounced at ~1500 miles. I finally took it in and they found that the throttle body came loose from the manifold. My dealer refastened with some lock tight and asked if they could keep it for a couple extra days to have a VW manufacturing rep look at it and eventually on I went. Same "bucking" symptom persisted but it was mild I thought it was just a characteristic of the TDI ECU.
Then a couple weeks ago, at 32k miles, my flywheel "shattered" which precipitated the bearings in the 4th cylinder rod assembly to go bad. They told me that the vibration from the flywheel starved that cylinder of oil causing the berrings to crush. All in a matter of 5 miles / minutes.
VW has concluded that a complete engine replacement is nessasary but not the transmission.
All the more reason to pay attention to your car and listen, smell, feel and basically observe for changes in operation, Typically you can feel or hear a change before something brakes, most people tend to ignore these warning signs.
 

Mosquito

Member
Joined
Jan 3, 2009
Location
Saugerties, NY
TDI
2010 JSW TDI - Graphite Blue with Panoramic roof.
I couldn't agree more. I act as diligently as I can when it comes to paying attention to all the operations of my machines ( cars, motorcycle, computers, chainsaw etc..) as I can to mitigate the risks associated with maintanence procrastination and general mechanical ignorance. I had no indication other than the one's I've described before my Jetta went south of cheese in one of the most dangerous locations imaginable. You can only act with the resources you have and in most cases, for most people the dealer service desk is it especially with the latest developments.
 

woofie2

Veteran Member
Joined
Feb 11, 2004
Location
Republic of Southern Illinois
TDI
Former TDI owner
Just got my car back Monday, Fresh off a 14 day stay at the Dealership-

they found-
Control module J31 (fuel pump controller) needed replaced

they replaced it, the car ran great....

until this morning, and it died on my way to work, dead, radio off and everything off. I turned the key off and back on and the MFA said COMM Error, then the cluster went into a "Service" mode(?, for lack of better term) [all the gauges started doing a full sweep, they swept all the way up, then all the way down, and repeat, then went to the center and stopped.
 

Hwy_Demon

Veteran Member
Joined
Aug 7, 2008
Location
Milton, Ontario
TDI
2010 Jetta TDi
Dude That sucks. I have the same problem with my 3rd gear. on my 2010 Jetta TDi. I also noticed it stalls alot. Im no rookie manual driver either. It could be a flywheel issue as well.
 

flylow2

Veteran Member
Joined
Jan 17, 2010
Location
Hillsborough, NJ
TDI
2010 White Gold JSW TDI 6M (build date 23Feb10)
I get this stumble from time to time and it is always in third gear when the car is cold and traveling at a steady speed (not accelerating or decelerating). It behaves as if there was a slug of water that passed through.

This observation and the characteristic total lack of power when pointing downhill or on change of elevation from uphill to downhill resulted in the dealer doing the reflash. This was only several weeks ago. There were no codes but they reflashed anyway. I have to say, it made no difference in the symtoms.

I suppose drive more and worry less applies here. As long as it is not a symptom of an impending HPFP explosion, I won't get too excited. Time will tell. Love the car otherwise!
 

woofie2

Veteran Member
Joined
Feb 11, 2004
Location
Republic of Southern Illinois
TDI
Former TDI owner
So last week my car stumbled and died in traffic and would not restart,
Sent the car into the dealer on a flatbed truck, they cleared the codes, and the car operated and drove fine, (for the 20 miles they drove it). They said "Non-Specific issues" was the cause, that it was a software glitch.

I picked up my car and on the return trip, about 70 miles after I left the shop it died, but restarted, with blinking glow plug light and check engine light,
the car operated with a top speed of 50 mph, and had no power.

I drove it and randomly it would be evil car or good car, depending on it's mood and the temperature outside. above 80*F and it was bad car, no power, no torque. Then below 75*F and it was "Normal" even the CEL was not on. Then again this morning under 80% throttle acceleration as "Normal car" it sputtered and died pulling away from the stoplight. I pulled over and cranked it for almost 2 minutes and it fired again, so I was able to get it off the road. Although it was sputtering, coughing and what sounded like a backfire.

back she went to the dealer.
 

BASS

Well-known member
Joined
Aug 12, 2010
Location
bartlesville,ok
TDI
none
Where does it stand now on your car? I am trying relentless to get a white 4 dr and dealer still cannot produce one for me. Man I want that car found today!!!
 
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