Broken Timing Belt...UGGGGH

jettawreck

Top Post Dawg
Joined
Aug 2, 2004
Location
Northern Minnesota-55744
TDI
2001 Jetta and 2003 Jetta
The engine starts w/o the ECU controlling the injection timing (thus why it's critical to get that correct during the TB procedure). As the engine actually "runs" the ECU takes over control of injection timing (within a range available).
Seems that if the timing was "close enough" for it to start it should be within range of control to continue to run, although perhaps if it's very far off it doesn't know what to do.
Doesn't sound like a timing issue as much as air restriction (ASV stuck, etc) or air/fuel leak.
 

krivs388

Member
Joined
Dec 29, 2019
Location
RI
TDI
05 Golf TDI
OK guys, the car is all set!

The issue I was having was the cam sensor being way out of range. Thank god for VCDS. My regular scanner wasn't picking up the fault for the sensor. The car fired up with the sensor unplugged and wouldn't start with it plugged in. When I did the new belt I must have missed something and it was almost a tooth off again. I reinstalled the timing belt perfectly down to a T and the car fired right up without issue.

The car seems to run perfectly fine, thank god. What I think originally happened was the car went into limp mode and when I popped the clutch it ripped the teeth off the belt and made it skip a tooth. It was a tooth behind, so the timing was retarded a bit. I'm hoping that since the TDI's cam is adjustable and with it being centered in the adjustment, it didn't allow the valves to kiss the pistons. I'm willing to risk it since the car has paid for itself almost twice already and it's very clean and totally rust free. If it grenades 10k miles later, so be it. Used motors can be had for 500-800 locally and I have my own lift and garage. Plus it would give me an excuse to put a new clutch and flywheel in anyway lol.

So just for future reference, if your car starts for a split second then dies like an inmobilizer but you have no light, check your timing. I was ripping my hair out until I bought a generic vag com cable and downloaded VCDS.

I was just curious if you guys happened to know why I wasn't able to see the cam torsion value in KW on VCDS. Block 4 should show it, but all I saw was timing info in BTDC (before top dead center). I checked every other block, but couldn't find the torsion value. The switch to basic settings button is greyed out too. Has that happened to any of you?
 
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