Drilling a drain hole in the intercooler plumbing

$2 is the cost of the drill bit to do this mod. I'm guessing all it's going to take to fix the intercooler icing/water hydrolocking problem is drilling a pinhole at the lowest point of the system. That's what we did with my dad's Volvo, after we drained about a glass of water out of the intercooler.

Anyone do this yet?

I am not going to read the entire 100+ page thread on that. I felt like banging my head into a wall after only about 10 pages, so much completely incorrect info and complaining with no solutions.

I will probably do this on my car soon, as it's done the hard start thing twice now. Crank crank fire then sputter sputter stall. Crank crank crank dead. Like a dead battery. Can't crank anymore. Wait. Crank crank sputter sputter, 2 cylinder idle, even when revved, still on 2 cylinders, then cleans up. Last time it wouldn't fire, but it would still crank. Just held the starter on waiting for it to clear out. Ugh. Don't want to bend the rods.

Most people probably think this is gelled fuel/weak battery, or fuel gelling in the HPFP making it hard to crank, but it's not, I know that now. It's the motor inhaling water melted in the intercooler after sitting. With a pinhole, the water *should drain out. It does with my dad's Volvo.

I'll link or post video/pics of this later..

I wouldn't drill a hole in the intercooler no matter how small it is.

The intercooler is AFTER the turbo, i.e. under boost/pressure. Drilling a hole will cause you to loose boost, therefore power and efficiency.

If you plug it back up, sure why not.

There's a thread where someone made a hook for this exact purpose; did wasn't a hole but it allowed you to drain the intercooler... Let me have a look around.

Found it:

2micron said:

Reserved for the “Drain Flow” Intercooler Kit.

Coming Soon!!!

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Go Ahead, Click Them!!!!!

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All the best!!

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CjGaughan said:

I wouldn't drill a hole in the intercooler no matter how small it is.

The intercooler is AFTER the turbo, i.e. under boost/pressure. Drilling a hole will cause you to loose boost, therefore power and efficiency.

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Real world, correctly sized hole, the amount of boost you'd lose is not really measurable.

I would think that a small hole would whistle under boost - that would be a annoying.

I would be more inclined to use something like the pull-valves on truck air tanks:



You would just need to route the pull cable somewhere you could access.

I think there would be enough positive pressure in the intake tract idling to force out any water, as long as it isn't frozen.

I'm talking about a hole like under 1/32", really small. The idea of 2micon's kit and the valve itself is legitimate, I just want to keep it as simple as possible, and have it work on its own. I don't want to engineer a "VW like" solution, in other words!
As I said, this worked on my dad's car, so I'm hoping it will on the tdi.

Would probably work fine. The amount of boost you would loose would be small. Just make sure the hole is at the lowest point of the charge air pipe.

Of coarse you could always plug the hole with a rubber insert or a small screw...

This is how much water poured out of the hose going up to the intake manifold. Not much. The driver's side hose had no water at all.



This is the intercooler side of the hose going up to the intake. relatively clean, not too bad inside. 68k miles.


And here is the very small hole I drilled. I thought I had all the water out, but as soon as I pulled the drill bit out, drip drip drip drip drip

Should work fine.





And, since I already had the car on the lift, I figured I might as well pressure wash the underside and spray it with gear oil to keep the road salt in check. Damn pressure washer tore the protective rubber right off a little section of my parking brake cable, so I threw some liquid electric tape on it.

As for the tiny hole drilling mod, it will allow the water to drain, until the sludge clogs up your hole. Then the sludge will build up, along with water that can't drain out, and you'll have to take it apart and clean it. At least, that's my prediction.

The sludge that I'm referring to is the emulsion of water (from the condensate) and oil (from the crank case vent).

Whoever took my thread and put it here, thanks, now I'm considering quitting this forum. No one wants to sift through 100+ pages of this, you've basically taken my info and thrown it away. You want to do something right? Take out 99% of this worthless thread and distill it down to something worthwhile. Otherwise, leave my threads alone.

Chill out. You drilled a hole.

2011tdiproject said:

Check out my thread $2 intercooler water/ice fix, I just did it tonight, but I bet it'll work..

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So is this hose under pressure or vacuum when the cars running?

Nice job, looks good. I recently pulled my cold side hose after two hours of highway driving in 20-25*f weather, while running both the upper and lower IDparts grille blocks (I also have the IC tsb installed). Some goo, but no water. Let us know how this hole mod works! Did you drill a small hole in the plastic belly pan too?

2011tdiproject said:

Whoever took my thread and put it here, thanks, now I'm considering quitting this forum. No one wants to sift through 100+ pages of this, you've basically taken my info and thrown it away. You want to do something right? Take out 99% of this worthless thread and distill it down to something worthwhile. Otherwise, leave my threads alone.

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X2 how are questions supposed to be answered when you put them in this way to long tread

2011tdiproject said:

Whoever took my thread and put it here, thanks, now I'm considering quitting this forum. No one wants to sift through 100+ pages of this, you've basically taken my info and thrown it away. You want to do something right? Take out 99% of this worthless thread and distill it down to something worthwhile. Otherwise, leave my threads alone.

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Nope. Your assumption that starting new threads on a subject that is already being discussed ends up making it harder to find information. What's worse, one thread with all of the information, or fifteen (or more) threads with information duplicated and spread out between them? This is your one-stop intercooler discussion thread. Yours wasn't the only one that got merged in... three others were, as well. If that gets your knickers in enough of a twist that you're going to quit, then so be it.

Ppolaris1010 said:

X2 how are questions supposed to be answered when you put them in this way to long tread

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Ask a question and it will be answered. If you have a specific question, you can search within a single thread to find the information. If you look at the banner at the top of each page, you'll find a button that says "search this thread."

When real fixes come along, the first post of the thread will be updated with the pertinent information. So far, there have been no real fixes to this issue. Despite that, the first post has been updated with the various intercooler TSB information so that people can find the important information quickly. Everything else is discussion.

VeeDubTDI said:

Nope. Your assumption that starting new threads on a subject that is already being discussed ends up making it harder to find information. What's worse, one thread with all of the information, or fifteen (or more) threads with information duplicated and spread out between them? This is your one-stop intercooler discussion thread. Yours wasn't the only one that got merged in... three others were, as well. If that gets your knickers in enough of a twist that you're going to quit, then so be it.

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Maybe I did over react in a little too emotional way. I still do absolutely believe I was justified in being annoyed though.

Cutting right to the truth, the reason why you are writing to me this way is you do not believe what I did will work. In fact, not only that, you're probably really hoping it doesn't work, and you'll be annoyed if it does! Same with the guy who said "chill, you drilled a hole".

I will post up if it does not work. But considering the tube is right next to the warm oil pan, how little "sludge" I found in there, (nothing that would even remotely clog that hole), and that this same idea worked on my dad's car, and that I observed water dripping out even after I thought I had it all empty, I'm betting it will.

I shouldn't have to argue about whether it will work anyway. You should be willing to wait and see, before criticizing. Did I tell a single other person to do this? NO. And will I post back and let people know if it doesn't work? Yes. But you know what? Now it'll get lost in this 100+ pages of who knows what. What is the point in you saying my idea won't work, just to make yourself feel better that you haven't solved it yourself, or what?

What has anyone else done to solve this? You know what, I honestly don't know, because I'm not going to read 100+ pages, and neither is anyone else!! Reality check. Since you think we're all writing the same things, "duplicated information" as you said, has anyone else drilled this hole? You tell me. Otherwise, if this idea isn't a "duplicate" of anyone else's, my thread should have remained separate, and I have a reason to be annoyed.

flyboy320 said:

So is this hose under pressure or vacuum when the cars running?

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The charge air side of the system, ie, everything after the turbo, is at atmospheric pressure, or boost when the turbo is spooling, never vacuum. Obviously you wouldn't want to drill a hole if it could pull in unfiltered air. I believe the turbo makes a small amount of boost going down the highway, but I don't have a gauge so I don't know how much. Either way, water will be pushed out while driving, in addition to dripping out while parked. Unless VeeDubTDI is right and it gets clogged.

I'm not saying that it won't work. I am saying that it doesn't need its own thread. Perhaps after enough time to unequivocally say "THIS IS FIXED AND HERE'S HOW," we can start a new thread and even make it a sticky. But until that time, this proposed fix goes into the thread with the rest of the proposed fixes (including another guy back in the beginning who suggested drilling a hole in the boost pipes, just like you have done).

So yeah, I'm not criticizing your efforts. I think it's great that you're on the ball trying to remedy this situation that has plagued five years of TDI models. I wish you the best, and please provide periodic updates of how much water is dripping out, how much sludge is in your intercooler plumbing, and how well your car starts.

It rubs me the wrong way when people say "I don't know because I'm not going to read the information that has already been posted" A quick scan of the thread takes a couple of hours (when viewed at 100 posts per page), and you can be caught up to speed on the intercooler issue and proposed/attempted solutions - more information than you probably thought possible and ever wanted to know.

Samcar222 said:

Nice job, looks good. I recently pulled my cold side hose after two hours of highway driving in 20-25*f weather, while running both the upper and lower IDparts grille blocks (I also have the IC tsb installed). Some goo, but no water. Let us know how this hole mod works! Did you drill a small hole in the plastic belly pan too?

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Thanks, and I will post back and say whether it works or not. I did not drill a hole in the plastic belly pan, because I don't think the amount of water will be enough to matter, but I suppose I could easily enough.

2011tdiproject said:

Thanks, and I will post back and say whether it works or not. I did not drill a hole in the plastic belly pan, because I don't think the amount of water will be enough to matter, but I suppose I could easily enough.

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I don't think a hole in the belly pan will do much good. I would imagine that the water will get all over the place when the vehicle is in motion anyway.

Thinking about this some more, and given the information that we know, I think that drilling a small drain hole in the pipe is probably one of the most economical and promising options for this problem (assuming it doesn't get clogged with goop, of course). I'm looking forward to seeing more results from you and others who have done this.

It's obvious that VW's solutions only slow the problem down, without completely eliminating it. Water will still accumulate (although at a slower rate) to the point that it gets ingested by the engine.

If anyone else is thinking about doing this, make sure it's in the lowest point of the system, and not in the intercooler itself. If something goes wrong, it's cheaper to replace an elbow than it is to replace the entire intercooler.

Why not install one of these?
After your oil change you can open this up, take it for a spirited drive then close it back up and be done.



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JASONP said:

Why not install one of these?

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Because there is no access to it without removing the plastic belly pan and once you have removed the belly pan, you may as well open up the hose clamp in the far end of the intercooler outlet pipe and drain the water.
Otherwise you would have to cut a rather large access hole in the plastic belly pan, which I am not in favor of!

drilled 3 mm hole

https://www.flickr.com/photos/37674324@N07/sets/72157649706285690/ first pic is what I collected when I removed the intercooler hose, I drilled a .3cm hole in plastic section, replaced hose started car. It would pee then stop then pee some more when the RPM's were increased water would stop for a second or 2 then continue peeing, I quilt after about 3 minutes. I removed the left side hose but nothing came out. I assume my original no-start then dead battery was water ingestion?

arto_wa said:

Because there is no access to it without removing the plastic belly pan and once you have removed the belly pan, you may as well open up the hose clamp in the far end of the intercooler outlet pipe and drain the water.
Otherwise you would have to cut a rather large access hole in the plastic belly pan, which I am not in favor of!

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You may be able to make a small hole in the cover and use a petcock socket to open the valve.

My guess would be the hunk of ice that was in there melted. So how'd you plug that hole?

I took my intercooler tube off and got nothing out of mine. Some oil residue but nothing out of the norm. 34k miles never been checked before, outside all the time in Chicago weather.

elitegunslinger said:

My guess would be the hunk of ice that was in there melted. So how'd you plug that hole?

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if you read my post which got shuffled into the tail end of the 300plus "hard start" thread, temp was 45 degrees when I refueled, car would not start, well it started but died immediately, after 3 tries the batt quit I had to jump it. Today I drilled and released the intercooler water. Didn't cover the hole and went for a ride, didn't notice any change? Guess I'll just leave the hole. I'm in south TX, 45 degrees is a cold day for us.