This is strange to realize I left this hanging for going on 3 years...
First, I don't know when I can get a 2015 vehicle into the shop to repeat the process. More than that, I really don't care it it shows up anyway. To be quite honest, I find that engine particularly obnoxious. The engine work is so obscenely difficult when removing the cylinder head, it's cheaper to replace the engine. VW calls it marvelous engineering. I call it insanity.
The Common Rail engines don't exactly 'flow' through my shop. Most of the time, I'm dealing with cylinder heads that have blown all the exhaust rockers and bent all the exhaust valve, then twisted the pulley end of the exhaust camshaft so it no longer lines up. Last look, the average Exhaust cam is $420. The question.. Can the pulley end be returned to the proper angle, or even more important, can the same issue of the cam pulley part of the cam that holds the cam sprocket on, be installed so it does not ever spin out of line when the timing belt blows off. I think it can.
The method of design for the common rail engine's cylinder head, that has been adopted by Mercedes Benz, Volvo, BMW, along with Audi and VW is to place the hardened cam rings, properly aligned in a fixture. When the cam tube is filled with liquid nitrogen, -300 degrees, and the lobes, journals, gears and pulley end are induction heated to about 450 degrees, the cam tube is slid through the cam 'rings', etc. The nitrogen and heat are turned off, the tube expands and the rings 'shrink to fit'. There are no pins, flats, splines or any other method to keep the cam lobes and accessories in place except the friction of the interference fit of the parts.
The reason for the conversion from conventionally made cams to this new process is purely financial. They are cheaper to build. As I have often said, "The Bean Counters are building your car." It's purely the cost of heat treating an entire cam compared to how many 'cam rings' can fit into the same space. I would roughly guess that 3x as many rings could be placed in the same space of a single cam. Induction heating a single cam compared to mass-heating a hundreds of cam rings is a big cost savings.
That turns out to be a big problem virtually every time the belt breaks, the cam sprocket holder shifts in relation to the cam tube. The relationship of the two cams; the sprocket is removed, the keyway should be at 12 o'clock when the sprocket is removed, . The dents in the camshaft should allow all of the head bolts to bypass both camshafts, without having to relocate the cam position. If this does not happen, the most common occurrence is the exhaust cam (sometimes also the intake) have shifted from their proper position and the valve opening is happening at the wrong time.
TDIClub member 2, if you got someone to put in a timing belt, complete, for that price, they must be very hungry for business up there. The issue of replacing the belt being so necessary, as long as the mechanic doing the job realizes the absolute necessity of the replacement of the stretch bolts and the belt and other components need to be the highest quality. I also would suggest the fancy water pump electric shield cover, which makes the engine warm up quickly is more of a problem than an advantage.
DO NOT believe 120,000 miles or 190,000 Km is realistic to run the timing belt, particularly in the less moderate climates. What VW completely discounts is TIME. I don't think it's a problem to run the timing belt for 6 years, but 8 years is a bad idea. That would put the last of the TDI engines from 2015 in the category that the engine could suffer catastrophic failure from the breaking or skipping of the timing belt. Are you ready for a $7500 engine replacement?
The heat of summer exacerbates the failure rate. In case you hadn't noticed, it's been a particularly HOT summer in the South Central US. Don't be one of those who are sorry they didn't listen.
Figure it out. 1. Get an expert to install the timing belt. 2. Get high quality components.
Questions?