Hello all allow me to regale you with my tale of Jetta woes if you do not mind. I'll get right into it I my 2006 Jetta TDI with roughly 160,000 miles is barely running after I replaced the timing belt. Stumped with this one any advice will be much appreciated.
I'll just say I've done this job before with the same diesel geeks timing belt kit and the car ran fine with no issues for 6 years. As for the install the crank and cam were timed with the metal nerds tools everything lined up, installed the tensioner tab in the hole and tightened it clockwise till the arrow was centered. Overall nothing during the install was a cause for concern, turned the engine over twice it was good. Started the engine idled fine, took the car out for a test drive first 5 minutes went smooth got on the main road put in 3rd gear accelerated then "bang" followed by loss of power....... damn.
Immediately thought the worse, belt jumped a tooth interference engine valves crashing into pistons. The car did not stall however it seemed somewhat normalish at lower rpms but when I accelerated usually over 1500 rpm the bucking would occur. No check engine or anything like that were thrown. Limped back home inspected the timing belt it didn't jump at all. Belt and cam were still in sync verified with the metal timing locking tools. Only thing worthy to note was the tensioner arrow was no longer centered it moved to the right slightly.
Thought well the car ran fine with the old belt so threw that on went for a test drive same story first few minutes ok then progressively worse where the car hardly runs. At this point I'm convinced I must have smacked a valve or something so removed the head and cam to look but too my surprise no damage at all! Aside from 3 lifters starting to grove everything looks fine.
I really think the car is worth saving at this point I'm just going to pull the engine I'm half way there anyways. I'll clean it back up and throw it back in the car. I'm glad there is no internal damage still scratching my head trying to figure out whats going on here. Hard to believe its not related to the timing belt job and not something else totally random. At this point suspecting tensioner related.
I have genuine sympathy for anyone who works on these engines for a living, unreal how impossible some of these bolts are to get at
I'll just say I've done this job before with the same diesel geeks timing belt kit and the car ran fine with no issues for 6 years. As for the install the crank and cam were timed with the metal nerds tools everything lined up, installed the tensioner tab in the hole and tightened it clockwise till the arrow was centered. Overall nothing during the install was a cause for concern, turned the engine over twice it was good. Started the engine idled fine, took the car out for a test drive first 5 minutes went smooth got on the main road put in 3rd gear accelerated then "bang" followed by loss of power....... damn.
Immediately thought the worse, belt jumped a tooth interference engine valves crashing into pistons. The car did not stall however it seemed somewhat normalish at lower rpms but when I accelerated usually over 1500 rpm the bucking would occur. No check engine or anything like that were thrown. Limped back home inspected the timing belt it didn't jump at all. Belt and cam were still in sync verified with the metal timing locking tools. Only thing worthy to note was the tensioner arrow was no longer centered it moved to the right slightly.
Thought well the car ran fine with the old belt so threw that on went for a test drive same story first few minutes ok then progressively worse where the car hardly runs. At this point I'm convinced I must have smacked a valve or something so removed the head and cam to look but too my surprise no damage at all! Aside from 3 lifters starting to grove everything looks fine.
I really think the car is worth saving at this point I'm just going to pull the engine I'm half way there anyways. I'll clean it back up and throw it back in the car. I'm glad there is no internal damage still scratching my head trying to figure out whats going on here. Hard to believe its not related to the timing belt job and not something else totally random. At this point suspecting tensioner related.
I have genuine sympathy for anyone who works on these engines for a living, unreal how impossible some of these bolts are to get at
