Evil Beetle: The Road To Recovery

[GeWilli]

a good idea dc.

A collective ECU that can be shipped around. not just the chip- the whole damn box! Yeah Yeah thats the ticket

 

[Bob Norris]

Mickey, so sorry to hear of your trouble and I hope the Evil Beetle will be carving canyons again soon! A couple of thoughts:

I don't remember what sort of HP and torque you've gotten from the EB since doing all your mods, but wouldn't it be comparable with the 110 and 115 hp European engines, which are identical to ours (same block, head, crankshaft, valves, etc) and differ only in having differently tuned injection and a higher output turbocharger? I would think that your mods haven't done anything that your engine wasn't designed to handle. I've looked in my intercooler and the cooling tubes are so thin it seems unlikely that any significant turbo parts could get past it, although oil certainly can. In an optomistic view, the engine is hydro-locked only and the unusually noisy idle was from the engine burning some of the oil flooding in before it locked up, and it never locked severely enough to break anything. We can hope, anyway....

Good Luck!

 

[cars wanted]

mickey, I'm so sorry to read of your Evil Beetle's present misfortune. Sorry, I have no constructive advice to offer now, it seems that many people before me have offered reasonable diagonses, advice, and offers of help and support!

If the worst came to worst, I could offer a donation to help get the Evil Beetle back to good health.
This idea of a substitute drop-in ECU for forum members sounds nice. However, aren't there hardware differences between A3/B3 ECUs and A4 ECUs? Would the connectors be identical with identical pin-outs? They must match, or else we will need 2 or more ECUs to cover most every contingency.

 

[SkyPup]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Ric Woodruff:
I fully agree that Mickey is a large part of the forum, but him getting off scot free would be like rewarding a kid who left his bicycle in the driveway (that got run over & destroyed) with a BRAND NEW bicycle. A kid that was warned about leaving his bicycle in the driveway, at that.

"If you want an omlette, you gotta break some eggs"

Omlette = increased power

Broken eggs = risk of catastrophic failure.

Mickey, I certainly hope the failure has nothing to do with mods and is covered under warranty (legitimately). And the above applies to only if the failure is due to mods.

I wish you the best of luck, Mickey.

Ric


[This message has been edited by Ric Woodruff (edited October 18, 2000).]<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

sick

 

[dparnell]

Ric, you're an Awipe---while I believe in taking responsibility for our own actions, I DON'T believe on adding to someone's misfortune.

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Forum's only distributor for nasty pills and suppositories

 

[Turbo Steve]

Dear

and or drunk or whatever it is, Turbo Ric:

Why even speak negatively about Mickey when we don't even know for sure what caused the problem?

Never judge an individual like that. Instead, look at all the facts and then make a decision for yourself if those results (actions) are for you or not.

This is in essence, discerning between truth and error.

Furthermore, stating that Mickey's "getting off scot free" is totally uncalled for, as if your going to punish him or something.

In conclusion, there's gotta be at least one active brain cell that's alive. Try to did deep and resurrect it if you can and then use it!

 

[tom]

Mickey, sorry to heard about this trouble. Talking about the warranty situation, if you open up the motor to do a failure analysis could VW void your warranty and void their obligation to repair it?
It seems like this failure should be fully compensated, at least that's my impression.

 

[Torqster]

In the "Food for Thought" thread, Ric said the facts speak for themselves. Problem is he doesn't want to listen carefully and critically to what they say but rather hears what he wants to hear.

Personally I think his post belongs in the OTHER thread "Food for Thought" which speculates, generally on the connection between mods and failure and not in this thread, anyway. It comes off too much like "I told you so, nyah nyah!"

Get a clue Ric.

 

[Vin]

Such aweful news. Best of luck Mikey. Let me know if you need a hand.

 

[BeetleGo]

Man, this thread has been so difficult to read! Say it ain't so!

I kept wanting to just scan for your follow up there, Mickey, to find out how things are going.

Meanwhile, it's very clear just how much goodwill is being pointed in your direction.

My sincere regards and sympathy.
Hope this is quickly resolvable.



------------------
BeetleGo, "whoa!"

"You said this was a DIESEL?!"

 

[HowardZ]

My condolences Mickey,

It reminds of the time I drained the oil out of my lawnmower in the fall, and forgot to pour oil into it in the following spring. The result was a dead engine within minutes.

All that oil that leaked into the air intake means there was little or no oil left in the engine. Even if the engine didn't sieze and even if there wasn't billowing white smoke from under the hood, even then the engine will still be toast.

I am surprised you didn't get the low oil pressure idiot light.

Maybe we should all get full instrumentation like Karl has? Probably the first sign of trouble was a drop in oil pressure followed by a rise in oil temperature and water temperature. It's also possible for the oil temperature to have droped very low if there was no oil touching the oil temperature sensor.

Yes, the more I think about it, the more I think that Karl's full instrumentation is essential to prevent a bad problem from quickly turning into a disaster.

 

[Jim Williston]

Never met you Mickey, but I feel I know you anyway. Wish I could say or do something to help. If positive thoughts help, count me in, and so be it. If monetary assistance helps, I'll contribute. I have no ideas as to the cause of the failure, but I hope it is temporary, minor in nature, and won't keep you or the EB off the streets for long.
Good Luck Mickey, hope to see that yellow Beetle at Fest 2001.
Jim Williston

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"chugger'00/NBsilver5spd

 

[mickey]

Again, thanks for all the kind words! (And I forgive you, Ric. Now go away.)

I am almost certain the turbo is blown. Big time, because there is oil splattered around the firewall near the turbo. It'll be interesting to yank that sucker out of there, to say the least. Best case scenario: Blown turbo, plus "hydrolock" which has left the rest of the motor undamaged. Worst case...let you imagination soar!

From here I plan to yank the turbo/exhaust manifold. I will immediately e-mail BG and see if that turbo is still available. I've wanted it since I first saw it for sale, but lacked the funds. Now I NEED it, and the funds will have to be found one way or another. (Very nice Heritage Les Paul and a Matchless Lightning 15 amp for sale, by the way. Seriously!)

I will also pull the cylinder head. I've toyed with the idea of compression testing, etc, but I've always wanted to see the engine's innards anyhow, so what the hell! It'll only cost me a head gasket.

I've GOT to get me a PowerStroke, by the way! That think yanked the Evil Beetle over the summit yesterday (8500 feet) like it was nothing. I set the cruise at 65, which equals about 1600 rpms in overdrive, and just forgot about it. Amazing!

Further details tonight. This is going to be a LONG process since I'll only have an hour or so each night to fool with it. I've settled into a "seige" mentality.

-mickey

p.s. Many questions about "chipping", "altitude", etc. Frankly, I don't think I'll ever know exactly why this happened. Garrett builds excellent turbos, but anything is subject to failure. Even if there was a manufacturing defect the turbo's demise was undoubtedly hastened by chipping, VNT modding and extreme service at high altitudes. I guarantee there is nobody in this forum that tortures a VNT-15 more than I do on a day-to-day basis. High altitude + full load + high rpms...that's as bad as it gets. I basically tested the turbo to failure.

I'll be starting a "brainstorm" thread in the Power section to come up with reasonably cost-effective ideas to bulletproof the Evil Beetle. I'll start another thread in this section as more of a "general update" section, with photos.

p.p.s. Why am I taking this so well? PAXIL! Great stuff.

 

[Hesh]

Good luck Mickey, try St. John's Wort, also good for those bad hair days.

HowardZ, most oil warning lights are really "you're f*cked" lights -- damage is already occuring by the time they get activated. Not sure if this is the case with the TDI though.

Chris

 

[VeeDubTDI]

I guess I'll call myself the semi-turbo expert of the forum (i'm sure there are others who know way more about them then I). A few weeks ago, my neighbor's father blew the sh1t out of the turbo in his 1991 Eagle Talon. He had purchased the car used from his friend's sons. They had changed the inards of the stock KKK K03 (i believe) and beefed it up to a KKK K04 (since the two have the same size housing). (I'm pretty sure that the turbo is a KKK, but not positive.) Anyway, to get to the point, the thing was pumping out about 13 psi into a stock unleaded 4 cylinder.

Well, when my friend's father had purchased the car, it needed an oil change, in a MAJOR way. It was some nasty stuff. Now, just keep in mind that he purchased that car about a year ago... he did his first oil change... 3 weeks ago... after the turbo failed.

Two nights ago, my neighbor and I pulled the turbo out and I inspected it. I had originally believed that it was just a bad bearing seal due to the dirty oil and impurities. Well, haha, my assumtions changed quite a bit with I looked into the compressor wheel housing. The edges of the vanes on the compressor wheel were completely smashed! The entire assembly rocked from side to side about 1/2 centimeter... the result of a bearing that decided to take a vacation. We still haven't pulled off the wastegate manifold pipe (if you will) to inspect the turbine side... that should be a thrill.

My conclusion? Not having an oil change in 2 years (and 5000+ miles put on it) and driving like a maniac blew the sh1t out of the turbo. Fortunately, the engine still runs, but with the turbo on it, it blows whitish blue smoke. Next we have to pull of the intercooler to find the pieces of the vanes from the compressor wheel.

-Lawson

ps: I'll take some pictures with my camera to show everyone on the forum what a fkd up turbo looks like. REMEMBER, DON'T NEGLECT YOUR OIL CHANGES

pps: For those of you who asked why Mickey's turbo failed so soon... the turbo i'm speaking of was only about a year old when the guy got the car. This means that it was about 2 to 2 1/2 years old when it failed. It anyone has ever seen the oil inlet passage on a turbo (you have to look down inside of the thing), it's about the size of the period at the end of this sentence. Now, think about how easily that could get clogged (even when under tremendous oil pressure). Just to reiterate, "our" Garret VNT15s (GT17s w/ VNT option) spin at approximately 180,000 RPMs.

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2000 Yellow New Beetle 1.9T Manual

[This message has been edited by VeeDubTDI (edited October 18, 2000).]

 

[mickey]

Yes, and they can also come to an amazingly rapid halt.

-mickey

 

[GeWilli]

It isn't how frequent the oil changes are -

It is the QUALITY of the oil.

10k miles is very very conservative to run Mobil Delvac -1 or Amsoil 3000.

ralphwood said it best in the fuel section - <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>A statement was made on another forum.
"With proper filtration and a good conventional oil an engine will last almost forever. With proper filtration and a
good synthetic oil the engine will last even longer." This is true.
If you need to drain the Amsoil at 20,000 miles you have a filtration problem.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

You put crappy oil in "bye bye turbo"


-----


On the other side of things.

Mickey, aren't you glad you have Katie to flog in the mean time

[This message has been edited by GeWilli (edited October 18, 2000).]

 

[murraywest]

Has anybody notice that its gone to NAVCON 4 around here? We are all on alert

If Amsoil cleaned out the deposits.... thats bad news, because on mickeys recommendation I have exclusivley used Delo 400 Syn, and have 48k on my own car... and I doubt that mickey drives any harder than I do, although my altitude is about 100 ft.

The question is........Well, I guess I'll just have to wait and be patient for the conclusive report on actual deposits and actual failure.

 

[POWERSTROKE]

Why is it bad if the deposits get cleaned out?

 

[murraywest]

it bad news because I specifically used Delo 400 syn to keep from having deposits.. at least or so I thought.

 

[Turbo Steve]

Powerstroke:

Mobil's Delvac 1 and AMSOIL's Series have very robust additive packages that are greater than those found in the average synthetic diesel oil on the market.

If an engine runs the same average oil for a period of time, small contaminating deposits will eventually form and cling to the inside of engine parts. Then, when a stronger detergent oil (like Series 3000 or Delvac 1) is introduced, the stronger and more robust additives in the new oil will slowly eat away at the old leftover deposits and fillup the oil filter quicker than normal.

This almost always happens after switching to a top of the line synthetic oil like Series 3000 or Delvac 1.

 

[Jimmy]

The TDi Oil preassure lamp is the "You are effed" type. Two conditions must be met for the lamp (and the buzzer!) to warn you:
a. The oil pressure must open, i.e. there is less than about 7p.s.i., (it has stamped on the switch 0.5-0.8 bar)
b. The engine must be revving above 2000 r.p.m.

In short, if you loose all of your oil while let the engine idle, likely the first warning you get is a tear-jerking loud screech.

 

[valois]

There are actually 2 switches on the A3 and on the A4 also I believe. They are as Jimmy describes one will trigger if the pressure drops too low, the other monitors that pressure is at least 29 psi above 2000 rpm. As an example, I dumped 3 liters of oil at the track, a fitting snapped at the low pressure switch, and I never got the idiot light, the pressure guage that was installed indicated the loss of pressure.

 

[Karl Roenick]

per Bentley, the ALH engine has one oil pressure switch. It closes at 10-16 psi. Logic in the ECM prevents accidental alarms at low rpm's.

 

[Ted]

You can be 1-2 quarts low on oil and still have normal oil pressure ...I much prefer an oil temp gauge to let you know what's going on. In this case the turbo probably failed fairly suddenly, so I doubt this would have made much of a difference.

Generally oil related problems manifest themselves in terms of reduced durability ...rarely would you get a catastrophic oil related failure, unless an oil line got plugged up, or you allowed the engine to run almost completely dry. Even under these conditions there would be some indication that the engine wasn't performing up to snuff.

I will be very surprised if this problem is oil related at all. I have customers all over the US running the Series 3000 with excellent results, including the heavily modified TDI's that Skypup and Valois (propane injection) drive. The only "complaint" I've heard about the Series 3000, 5w-30 is that you see marginally higher oil consumption than with the Amsoil 15w-40. This problem is only with the earlier A3 TDI engines ....

I suspect a combination of the engine mods and the altitude is what did Mickey in ....With a chipped TDI at high altitudes, it may be possible to overspin the turbo and cause the oil seals to fail.

TooSlick

 

[VeeDubTDI]

What keeps throwing me off is that Mickey said that the car had been missing at high speed for the past few days. I don't understand that. It totally ruins everything that i've thought of, unless it was either an unrelated totally coincidental multiple failure, or one terrible thing somehow led to another terrible thing. If it's the latter, then I would assume that something CAUSED the turbo to fail... but what? Oh this is so perplexing!

Come on now, Mickey. It's 11:08 PM! Haven't you taken the thing apart yet?

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2000 Yellow New Beetle 1.9T Manual

 

[VeeDubTDI]

BINGO!! Just figured it out (maybe).

Scenario:

In short, Mickey is driving, car looses power and makes bad noise... shortly after, car smokes and developes constant bad noise... Mickey turns off the car, waits for a while, and discovered that the engine will not start.

It's a combination of what everyone has been saying. Think about this...

Piston smacks a valve for one reason or another (or piece of piston breaks off?). Valve (piece of piston) proceeds to travel through the exhaust manifold and into the turbine intake. The turbine is spinning at maybe 80,000 rpms at the time the valve violently collides with it & the turbo bearing is severely disrupted. Turbo proceeds to leak/pour/dump oil into the intake (and probably the exhaust too). Oil makes its way to the combustion chamber, is burned, travels back through the exhaust as white non-evaporating smoke. After the car sat for a while, the oil settled into one or more cylinders, and caused that wonderful phenomenon called HYDRAULIC LOCK.

Now, either i'm dead-on, or i'm way off. I don't know. I like my scenario though (not like like/enjoy it, but I think it's probable).

ps: I don't know what would have cause the engine to be missing over the past few days, but it could have been from the same thing that caused my scenario to take place. Possibly a fried injection pump or something of the like.

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2000 Yellow New Beetle 1.9T Manual


[This message has been edited by VeeDubTDI (edited October 18, 2000).]

 

[Ted]

Well, Mickey has been playing around with the timing settings on his car, as I recall. Perhaps this is related to his troubles in some way ???

TooSlick

 

[rotorhead]

How about lets give Mickey some time to get it torn down and find out what the problem really is.

Personally, I think I'll check back in about a week.

Good luck Mickey

 

[mickey]

Hell, what HAVEN'T I messed with?

I really don't know what was causing the engine to "miss", but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. Right now I'd take "missing" over "seized."

I pulled the valve cover and yanked out the glow plugs. I turned the engine over by hand and squirted copious quantities of oil out of the cylinders. What a mess! All 4 were full of oil. The Good News: There did not seem to be an sign of pistons smacking valves.

I am knocking LOUDLY on wood at this moment, but I am hopeful that a rebuilt turbo and all that oil purged (somehow) from the cylinders will get me back on the road! In fact, until I can pony up the bucks for a turbo rebuild I may try to get the car running as a "DI". (As opposed to a "TDI".) Not much fun, but certainly good enough for my wife to putter around the neighborhood for a couple of months. A simple compression test will tell me whether there are any "holy" pistons or broken rings.

-mickey