2010 Golf TDI, serpentine belt failure DESTROYED MOTOR

[IndigoBlueWagon]

Upon reviewing this thread I have to wonder what you told the dealer when you brought it in. If they were lead to believe that there was valve to piston contact (regardless of what the engine timing looked like when it arrived) they may have thought it prudent to pull the head and ensure there was no damage. Yes, they could have set the timing, seen the engine run, and sent you on your way. But if there was contact you may have been back with a dropped valve in a few hundred or few thousand miles.

I don't think I have the full story here, and I'm not defending the dealer costs, but I do think they may have a reasonable rationale for what they did. If you were convinced there was no valve to piston contact and the engine was fine then you could have simply put on a new serp belt and driven on. But it didn't seem you were comfortable with that option, nor am I sure I would have been.

These cars are far more difficult to work on than earlier cars. IIRC the hours allocated for a turbo R&R is about 16, compared to 4 or so for an ALH engined TDI. So the costs add up fast. Again, I'm not defending the charge, but I'm not surprised.

 

[gmcjetpilot]

(1)Upon reviewing this thread I have to wonder what you told the dealer when you brought it in. If they were lead to believe that there was valve to piston contact (regardless of what the engine timing looked like when it arrived) they may have thought it prudent to pull the head and ensure there was no damage. Yes, they could have set the timing, seen the engine run, and sent you on your way. But if there was contact you may have been back with a dropped valve in a few hundred or few thousand miles.

(2)I don't think I have the full story here, and I'm not defending the dealer costs, but I do think they may have a reasonable rationale for what they did. If you were convinced there was no valve to piston contact and the engine was fine then you could have simply put on a new serp belt and driven on. But it didn't seem you were comfortable with that option, nor am I sure I would have been.

(3) These cars are far more difficult to work on than earlier cars. IIRC the hours allocated for a turbo R&R is about 16, compared to 4 or so for an ALH engined TDI. So the costs add up fast. Again, I'm not defending the charge, but I'm not surprised.

Please don't get defensive. I mean nothing personal, appreciate your comments, but I could not disagree more.

(1) WHAT? You don't assume anything, you verify. First they COULD HAVE put a new timing belt on and do a compression test or leak down test. (May be they did?) Second, there are bore scopes or small camera probes that are widely available, for not much money, they could stick through the injector or glow plug ports. You can look into the cylinder. His engine may have had internal damage, but what? If the valves were not bent, what was the issue?

(2) Sure you are making excuses. VW dealer service is legend, atrocious and well known for being expensive, poor to incompetent. I don't know the whole story here, and it is not fair to good VW mechanics. It's a stereotype, but a deserved one. I have stories. This forum is full of them. Your "rational" does not ring true to me. There may be reasons; kids don't want to take a trade, "Dirty Jobs", so dealers can't hire and retain good talent. However the VW dealers try to maximize profit and likely don't pay much. Why work for VW when they can more money at Chevy or Ford or Kia or Toyota, Honda and make more money on more reliable cars.... These brands have better reliability and customer satisfaction. VW is not in the top 10.... Sorry.

(3) No! That's rnot true. Sure a TURBO engine has more ducts and manifolds and other associated items. Sure there is a wiring harness and a computer; you need a diagnostic tool (which I bought for $400 + laptop). SO WHAT? It is not that hard to understand, and internal combustion, gasoline or diesel, is well understood for +100 years. Sure there are more probes and electronics to go wrong, but it's not rocket science or brain surgery, not magic. Now accessing parts to repair can be an issue; it is either tight or you have to take a lot of things off to do the job. For the VW you have to take the engine mount off and support the engine to change the timing belt! The DSG transmission service has you shoved oil up hill from the bottom and "burp" it at temperature. Could they make it more convoluted? Still it is not difficult. Time consuming yes! Oil change? You have to take a belly pan off and deal with a oil cartridge, so I use an oil suction tool through dip stick.

We can get into "German" VW design issues. Look at the picture I posted. Anything can get into the crank pulley and foul the timing belt. I have never seen anything so open and unprotected for such an important part as the timing belt on an interference engine. A shield on the back of the serpentine belt pulley would be easy and save it from jamming the timing belt (but there is limited room). They could extend the crank shaft and have the serpentine pulley mount direct (verses bolting Serp. pulley direct to the timing belt cog pulley), and then make a cover that really seals the area. Just because it is "German" does not mean lack of serious crap engineering/design. This is CRAP~! I'll stop ranting, but bottom line there is a WHOLE LOT OF THINGS one can do before pulling a head to determine if there is damage.

 

[IndigoBlueWagon]

No offense taken, and don't be offended when I note that you didn't respond to anything I wrote. What did you say to them when you dropped the car? And even if the compression tested fine that doesn't mean valves weren't contacted. A scope might have been a good idea, but they may say the results aren't conclusive.

Your response to #2 is simply a rant about dealer reputation. You don't have to sell me on that: If it weren't for the cost and quality of dealer service in the US we wouldn't have a business model. But I still think they could make a case for what they did.

And you have no factual data in #3. Talk to any experienced independent mechanic here (not dealer tech) and they'll tell you the common rail cars are far more time-consuming to work on. You mention suspending the engine to replace the timing belt. That's been true on all TDIs since 1999.5. But on the common rail one way to remove the turbo is to take the engine off its mounts and tilt it forward to get enough clearance to pull the turbo out the top. Or you can take it out the bottom by first removing the exhaust system. Also time-consuming. And time is what costs in any hourly rate environment.

And your car is the first I've heard of having this type of failure. It would be interesting to figure out why it happened. I'm not sure it's necessarily a design flaw.

One last thing: VW diesels are relatively complex cars. Even my '97 Passat is far more complex than a similar vintage gasser, even a VW gasser. That means they have more items to fail, are harder to diagnose, and take more time to repair. There are many posts here that point out why owning a TDI is not a good way to save money. Unfortunately you've just experienced this first hand.

 

[gmcjetpilot]

No offense taken, and don't be offended when I note that you didn't respond to anything I wrote. .

You need read again or write in a manner that one can understand, sorry. I addressed your "rational", that what the customer said MADE them do the wrong thing. Again I DON'T KNOW if they did the wrong thing. I addressed how HARD it is for the POOR dealer to work on cars.... Bull.

 

[IndigoBlueWagon]

I don't know if they did the wrong thing, either, but I was suggesting that possibly they embraced the customer's diagnosis that the timing was off and therefore decided to pull the head. I'm obviously speculating, too, as neither of us know, nor will we probably ever know, what was said to whom. Perhaps the OP can help us out here.

Oh, and:

Rational: based on or in accordance with reason or logic.

Rationale: a set of reasons or a logical basis for a course of action or a particular belief.

I meant to use the "e".

 

[JettaBlue]

I did have a case with Customer Care, and I mentioned the lawyer, and gave VW EVERY opportunity to cover their asses on this. But no, the final "offer" from Berge/VWNA was a $1,600 payment by me on a $3,600 bill. I can tell you here and now, I will be documenting and web paging every bit of this DEFECT in Volkswagen's part, so that prospective VW customers see for themselves how the company treats long term customers. I now have to inform the 3 people that bought TDI diesels on my advise to damn well make sure their serpentine belt is in top shape.

 

[JettaBlue]

Actually, today I was poised to trigger the lawsuit, but the thing that changed my mind was the pictures Berge took of the pistons once they removed the head. All 4 valves clearly left imprints in the carbon on the piston. Maybe I did get get new valves/head and it was all covered up by Berge/VW? All I know is that if there is any sort of grief with the motor, hand keys to Berge. What a incredible fiasco.

 

[JettaBlue]

The hilarious thing is that the Dodge Challenger (392 HEMI) I bought to replace the Golf has a 100K power train warranty, as does all GM brands and Hyundai/Kia. You would think that VW would want to put the quality horrors of the past behind them, but I guess not. Good Luck with that!!!

 

[ATR]

I'd like to see those pictures of the pistons and head...
Indigo did have a point when he said that the "full" story isn't being told. And I think the dealership should be telling you the entire story in detail! They seem to be leaving big question marks raised at what exactly happened.

 

[ihatespeed]

its amazing that the engine could skip that much time without destroying the timing belt or completely mangling many of the valves, You made out pretty good if you got a top end rebuild and a timing belt for 1600, most places will jam you a grand for the timing belt alone.

Did they ever come up with a cause for your serpentine belt failure? Obviously your climate in Phoenix takes a phoenix to make it out of summer, and its not like it was brand new, although even in harsh climate 70k sounds low.. if you spend a lot of time in trafic that could skew the #'s I wish cars had hour meters.. are all your accessories in good shape? ac, alternator?

 

[Derek@Exklusiv]

Just to add some clarity to this thread/problem.... Today the SECOND car that Ive seen ingest a shredded serpentine belt was towed in. I thought the first was a fluke and very bad luck - on that car we removed the head - noted marks in carbon on pistons from valve impact - tore down head--- no bent valves sourced a core head to inspect... turns out on the end of the cams are driven by gears and the exhaust cam has sort of a spring washer/rachet mechanism. They jump out of phase of each other in the event of a piston-valve collision - Re-phase cams and all was well on car one.

On car two I just finished clearing out all the serp belt pieces and reset the belt... turn it over and theres a bit of resistance that doesnt feel like compression.. turned the car over with starter and clearly there is no compression. Next step is to pull the cams and re-phase them and I will report back.

 

[UberVW_TDI]

Interesting...Thanks for sharing. I'm surprised this design detail hasn't been discussed before. So you're saying the cam has some kind of ratcheting feature to allow the cams to jump out of phase to save the valves in a cylinder - valve collision?

Do both intake and exhaust cams have the ability to jump out of phase? I would guess.."yes" If the intake valves don't jump out of phase they would be bent once timing with crank is lost?

 

[gmcjetpilot]

Just to add some clarity to this thread/problem.... Today the SECOND car that Ive seen ingest a shredded serpentine belt was towed in. I thought the first was a fluke and very bad luck - on that car we removed the head - noted marks in carbon on pistons from valve impact - tore down head--- no bent valves sourced a core head to inspect... turns out on the end of the cams are driven by gears and the exhaust cam has sort of a spring washer/rachet mechanism. They jump out of phase of each other in the event of a piston-valve collision - Re-phase cams and all was well on car one.

On car two I just finished clearing out all the serp belt pieces and reset the belt... turn it over and theres a bit of resistance that doesnt feel like compression.. turned the car over with starter and clearly there is no compression. Next step is to pull the cams and re-phase them and I will report back.

I had Serpentine belt foul the timing belt. Dealer said engine was shot, but.... So I got an independent shop to remove engine and got my own replacement engine. All is well. However with engine out, I checked compression myself. I found it had great leak down compression (99/100) on all but one cylinder, and that cylinder was only down 10%. WHAT? Just because of the one cylinder, even though acceptable, I pull head. I found nothing but faint hint of valve circles on piston in soot, but no marks. In retrospect the hint of valve in soot maybe the combustion pattern due to flow in cylinder. I am guessing if my timing due to the serpentine belt wrapping up on crank pulley, it only got out a tad. I don't know for sure, idiot VW dealer never checked, just cut the timing belt off. The slight leak on one of the cylinders was due to carbon build up.

Anyway, it is true the CAMS are hollow with pressed on lobes and gear drive. The cam lobes and drive gears can spin. I checked mine with an eyeball check, it seemed to be OK. The pairs of intakes and exhaust are slightly offset on all cylinders as they should be. I screwed up and removed the cams before knowing enough to check them. I did it because I thought cams needed to come out to take the had off. Turns out the cams over divots on the shaft to make room to get at the head bolts. So I never checked if my cam timing was off or skipped.

 

[gmcjetpilot]

Interesting...Thanks for sharing. I'm surprised this design detail hasn't been discussed before. So you're saying the cam has some kind of ratcheting feature to allow the cams to jump out of phase to save the valves in a cylinder - valve collision?

Do both intake and exhaust cams have the ability to jump out of phase? I would guess.."yes" If the intake valves don't jump out of phase they would be bent once timing with crank is lost?

Well what I found out when I pulled my head, is the cams are hollow and the lobes and the gear drives are pressed on. So they can slip, twist, rotate. I checked my head and cams. Not having a degree wheel or cam specs, my eyeball test showed it was OK. The pairs of intake and exhaust lobes are off set a few degrees. The separation between the exhaust and intake (lobe separation angle) in generic terms is about 110 to 120 degrees of crank rotation typically. So that is half of that or about 60 degrees cam rotation. Other than that I don't know how you detect a ratcheting... As I stated above, before I knew of this I took the cams out and lost the original timing. However putting them back in, they seem to make sense.

There is an index at the front of the exhaust cam, where the timing belt pulley attaches. Then the divots for the head bolts in both intake and exhaust cam shafts will all be vertical.... that is all I know. I am sure the VW factory manual must have more specifics. However leave it to say the cams (or the drive and lobes) can shift. Once that happens I don't think it is simple to re-set cam timing.

 

[Bulldogger]

2 micron makes a timing belt cover that should prevevt this type of occurance. I put one of my wifes beetle at 200 miles then I did the rest of the mods. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. 75 bucks for the modified cover seems like it's a worthy investment just to side step the aggrivation not even considering the money for repairs at this point.

 

[flyingnut40]

re indexing cams

I am facing a similar challenge with a car I bought cheap. The exhaust cam is ok and the reliefs in the shaft (for head bolt access) is vertical but the intake side is not. What is the method of indexing the two cams...... there are no marks I could find and standing the reliefs vertical could work.... I believe there has to be a more precise method. Anyone with a Bentleys care to look it up please? Dennis

 

[flyingnut40]

Cam Indexing

I answered my own question after finding an online manual that shows all the special tools that VW would like you to buy (NOT!)

I hope I can add pics, if not email me and I'll send pics and someone else can post them.

First thing I needed to do was deal with the anti backlash gear on the end of the exhaust cam.... I was planning to spread the gears with a couple of knives and put some small drills between to keep the pressure off the ramps but I GOT A SURPRISE.... Spread the gears a bit and the tension washer POPS over center and inverts and VOILA! no more pressure on ramps..... no need for special tool to hold gears aligned!

Second...... Aligning cam divots so both cams are straight up while in head saddle (frame)
For this I found what fit the divots in the cams.... turns out that 1/2" copper pipe fits O.K. so I cut 2 pieces at 12" and used some spring clamps to hold them in place while I measured for parallel. This was with the cams set in the saddle while inverted on the table. A difference of one tooth either way is VERY obvious.

Third.... once I have the divots vertical I marked the end of the gears with paint so if I needed to take the cams out I would get them back in easily. Never actually took them out again... oh well....

Fourth.... how to hold cams in saddle while inverted while I set it onto head ..... for this I took 3 bamboo chop sticks and cut them to length and spanned across the saddle and used tie wraps to secure in spaces between the cam lobes.

Now the cams are geared and secured to the underside of the saddle and it was a matter of silicone on the mating surface, set the cams/saddle on the head and snug up the bolts and then torque to specs. using the pattern set out in the online manual.... but it was too complex for me to use so I reverted to what works most of the time, start in the middle and work outwards in a circular pattern.... worked out fine.

Next was to cut the tie wraps off and remove bamboo sticks.

Last thing was to take a couple old steak knives and pop the tension washer on the exhaust cam over so the anti backlash gear would work.

I can't add pics (apparently) so if anyone needs them let me know with a personal email and I will send to you.

In Summary, I was lucky.... my alternator pulley overrunning clutch seized and caused a serpentine belt failure, which fouled the timing belt. I took the engine apart down to the cams and through careful observation of cam action while an assistant cranked it through 1/4 turn increments I observed that the intake cam was opening the valves for nearly the entire compression stroke.... no wonder the engine had no compression! There were no failed rockers in my engine so while the cams were out and all valves SHOULD be closed I did a poor mans leakdown test with a jig I made from an old ALH glow plug (hollowed out) JB welded to a piece of pipe to a 1/4 turn valve to a air hose fitting. After reinstalling an injector and pressurizing the cyl. I was able to confirm the valves were O.K.

If doing it again, I would do the leakdown test first as no matter what the cam indexing there will be a spot where all the valves should be seated and if the cyl. holds pressure the valves are no bent.

I bought the car cheap because the belief at the time was that the engine (head) was toast, but I can tell you that in THIS case the intake cam was off about 30 degrees from straight up and that stopped it from running. It IS running with NO check engine lights and I can report back after I get the car on the road, but all looks fine at this point.

Feel free to ask questions if anything is not clear enough.
Dennis

 

[ATR]

Tdi club has picture hosting here:
http://pics.tdiclub.com/

Great news that the car is working

 

[flyingnut40]

Pictures are in the how to section of photo gallery.... although as a newbie I messed it all up.... but there is something to see......

 

[BramaleaTDI]

I can comment on this TDI as it was mine when the failure happened and diagnosed by the mechanic as Toast. It was a decision based on time, money and need of a car. If I had the luxury of a spare running car I would have likely gone a similar route instead of a mechanic at my own time and labour. However that being the case with the timing belt jumped and it not starting once realigned the sound decision was get out fast and replace the car as the risk of lots of money was to great. f-40 was aware of situation so he took the gamble and lucky won on a steal so far (he deserves these as he took the risk and I'm glad he's ahead).

At least I get to see my old car on occasion and know that it will be looked after.

As to the replacement. Well VW Golf Wagon (off lease) with the 2.5L automatic (automatic to keep the wife happy this time).

 

[gmcjetpilot]

flyingnut40, that is great. So I understand it, there was no damage, no issue with the camshaft lobes or drives slipping... ???

(NOTE: Cams have the lobes and drives pressed-on. It is reported they can slip, if you ever have a valve/piston contact situation regardless of reason)

 

[turbocharged798]

Pressure testing for smashed valves on a TDI is an invalid test since the valves mushroom and don't bend. I have seen squashed valves seal just fine until the stem breaks off a few thousand miles later. Once then happens, engine is a pile of scrap metal.

 

[flyingnut40]

After Repair Report

As of today I have about 400km on the repair. The car went through the Drive Clean test with ease (in Ontario it is an OBDII test) and I can report that the car is smooth and powerful and the first 1/2 tank of fuel has seen about 500km so far.
I am feeling very fortunate to have had the opportunity to own this car and allow the updating of my 2006 BRM Jetta which has about 680,000km on it.

I also want to let you know that I put one of Andrew's timing belt covers on the engine as well. I got the only one I could find off Ken and at least I know I will never have a serp. belt foul the timing belt again!! Thank You 2micron!!

I can think of about 480,000 CRD VW owners out there that need this cover..... VW can I please get a copy of your recall list?

It is very gratifying to have one of these newer CRD Jettas...... now, if we only knew what VW has up their sleeve to resolve the emissions scandal.....

Dennis

 

[ATR]

The humble mechanic just posted a video about this:
https://youtu.be/ZrqSOa6W2zs

 

[gmcjetpilot]

The humble mechanic just posted a video about this:
https://youtu.be/ZrqSOa6W2zs

Hope he does not get is beard caught in the belt... ouch.