Hard Start / No Start - Is your intercooler frozen? Check Here!

[KraftwerkB6]

Correct me if im wrong here, but its not EGR in the intercooler pipes its the PCV system with the pipes. Why a lot of 1.8T and 2.0 people are putting catch cans on to "grab" some of the water-oil mixture so it could be collected there and then removed in the can.
I find it normal to have some oil substance or "goop" in the tubes. Almost all 1.8T/2.0T PCV system hoses and lines will have this same substance in them.

No time for passenger side intercooler pipe tonight, tried MDI update and failed. Will report tomorrow though, should be slower since day before Xmas weekend.

 

[devilyellow]

I just picked my car up.

Removed, cleaned, reinstalled: Intercooler, Intake, throttle body, air sensor. Changed oil, oil filter, and filled with coolant.

Found code P0299 (Turbo underboost).

Dealers recommendation was to call VW customer car line with VIN # and complain until I get a long term solution. They said they felt bad that they had no long term solution to give me.

Car drove well on the way home.

 

[53 willys]

If it were me I would poke a hole in the lower intercooler connection that is small enough to not be a huge boost leak, but big enough to pass some fluid under boost. but thats just me.

I doubt a small hole will allow that oil mix to purge out...and too big of a hole is gonna cause a boost leak...I like my pressure side of the turbo to be air tight...
now if you bypassed the pcv system to not purge oil vapor into the IC then it might work...but I would still worry about a whistle or sqeel or maybe even boost codes from the boost leak/hole..

 

[frugality]

It's an intriguing idea, though. Maybe put a petcock/valve there, and once in a while open it and, while stationary, rev the engine up and maintain boost for a minute or so to blow the gook out.

 

[53 willys]

It's an intriguing idea, though. Maybe put a petcock/valve there, and once in a while open it and, while stationary, rev the engine up and maintain boost for a minute or so to blow the gook out.

I dont think think the oil/water mix would drain out of a petcock either?? I dont have a boost gauge so I'm not sure you can free rev our cars and buid any boost?? most likly would have to take it for a drive and get some load on the engine to build enough boost for it to drain/push the mix out..?

 

[El Dobro]

If you're going to be under the car anyway, it's just as easy to open the hose and wipe the goop out of there.

 

[dieselpower2010]

I'm with El Dobro on that one!

 

[bustNfuel]

I've been following this discussion for a few days. Today I have a chance to check mine for water and sludge. I drove up onto a couple of 2" high by 10" wide stacked boards to get the front up higher for easy access to the bellypan bolts. The three large ones at the rear were very loose, and one was about to fall out! After removing the pan, I noticed some oil residue around the driver's side intercooler clamp. Has anyone noticed how loose that particular hose connection, the one with the quick-release snap ring is? Or is it just mine? I wonder how much if any boost leaks from that connection. Regardless, I removed it and cleaned the residual oil, most of which was on the outside.
On to the passenger side. Loosened the worm clamp, and a drop of water dripped out as I loosened the rubber hose. Found a flat pan and some paper towels to catch anything that came out, and removed it completely. Maybe a half ounce of water, and some residual greasy sludge but not much to worry about. I cleaned as much from the inside as I could reach and put it all back together. I feel better seeing this for myself.

Mileage as I did this was just over 18,000, and not much recent driving in humid or rainy conditions. Temps here have been around freezing the past couple of weeks. My commute is about 40 miles each way a couple days a week, mostly interstate, and a few local trips but always up to normal running temperature..no short trips.

 

[itchytweed]

I am going to add a slight twist to this.

A poster a whle back had a pix of the green "snot" that he removed from his IC. Now, I am going to combine it with something a bit different. Some time ago, VW sent me a mailing about oil refill levels. I did my 10 k mile oil change, using an extractor and sucking the heck out of engine trying to get every nook and cranny and oil cooler and ...

I ended up adding 4.3 liters of oil to reach the "A" area. Yet, my engine seems to have developed something interesting. The oil level drops to the top of the crosshatch area and stays there for the longest time. This is checked with the engine hot and sitting for about five minutes. I wonder if the "snot", since it looks to be oil based, is from the engine "self-adjusting" the oil level itself. Just a hypothesis but has anyone else seen this with their oil levels as well?

Since this topic of IC condensation/sludge/hydrolocking has popped up in more than one thread, methinks that I will have to check mine out. Now, where is my Locktite for the PP...

On a hunch, I went back and checked my notes I keep on the car. The volume of oil that I had to add to go from the top of the crosshatch to the A/B junction point was 200 ml and I found that when I did my 10k oilchange and surmised that the oil volume was not 4 liters but 4.3 liters +/-. Then I got the note from VW about the "change" to the manual to "approximately 4.3 liters". So, I wonder if the engines are being overfilled and the "natural" level is somewhat lower than designed for and the excess contributing to the goop.

Forgive the rambling...got a rude wakeup by pager and still have not recovered, nor has the liquid bean extract taken effect.

Merry Christmas, one and all. It will be a white one here in Milwaukee.

 

[ihatespeed]

here's a little food for thought..
it seems that with the exception of actually sucking up rain, there should never be more water in air than can actually evaporate..

then you raise the temp of the air significantly by compressing it with a hot turbo. the intercooler brings the temp back down. if it is above the ambient air temp it should not condense.

So the important thing to know is intake air temp post intercooler.. can this be checked with vcds?

It would seem that the only way to condense water is if the intercooler is working really well, bringing temp below ambient air. Perhaps hobbling performance with a piece of cardboard pasted against the intercooler would prevent it from getting and staying cold enough to condense and keep temp up far enough to evaporate what water is in there allready..

 

[flylow2]

I am not trying to be rude or disrespectful but there are a lot of people poo pooing the ability of water to condense after the intercooler. While vapor liquid equilibrium behaviour is not that difficult to understand, I would say that those who say nay to water condensing do not understand it at all. One can not deny the capacity for this to happen without knowledge of the science involved.

It can happen and from the testimony found here, there are folks experiencing the right set of conditions to make it happen and cause problems. However rare it may be, it does seem that there is insufficient engineering margin in the design that allows this to happen.

To read up on vapor liquid equilibrium, you may want to read the following:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vapor-liquid_equilibrium

When we talk about water, it is well characterized and tons of data can be found in steam tables which is specific to water to water vapor equilibrium. Saturated steam tables are what you want to look at relative to the conditions relative to the intercooler.

When you take induction air at some saturated or partially saturated condition and compress that air, you are stuffing more water (increasing the partial pressure of water vapor) in that compressed air than existed in the induction air. Now if you cool that air to the same induction air temperature, you are now more saturated than the induction air as the water vapor partial pressure has increased but the maximum water the air can hold is nearly the same.

It is exceedingly easy to condense moisture from compressed air because of this effect. SCUBA divers know this as the air they breath has been compressed to 3,000 psi condensing out a ton of water. Compressed air is very dry as a result. Breath that air for an hour and after that dive, you are very thirsty.

 

[Jack Frost]

but the maximum water the air can hold is nearly the same.
I

Not quite. The maximum amount of water that air can contain is less. Not only is it compressed (raising its dew point), but the heat of compression has been removed cooling it. The air is not able to hold as much moisture now as it did before it was compressed. Some water vapour may precipitate depending on what the dew point and the temperature of the air was before it was compressed. That is how a lot of water is removed from compressed air.

 

[flylow2]

Not quite. The maximum amount of water that air can contain is less. Not only is it compressed (raising its dew point), but the heat of compression has been removed cooling it. The air is not able to hold as much moisture now as it did before it was compressed. Some water vapour may precipitate depending on what the dew point and the temperature of the air was before it was compressed. That is how a lot of water is removed from compressed air.

We are in agreement. I didn't say it as well as I could. The maximum partial pressure of water is the same at atmospheric pressure and higher pressure for the same temperature. The difference being that, upon compression, you are increasing the partial pressure of water and, dependent on the conditions, you may increase it beyond saturation which results in water condensation.

 

[ihatespeed]

fair enough, I failed to consider the effect of raising the air pressure, however at up to +22? psi (I believe I read somewhere as max boost), and the average ie cruising is probably <5psi over ambient we are not talking huge #'s here.

here is a fun conversion calculator:
www.howelllabs.com/dew_point_conversion.xls

As you can see at max boost and 30f we are talking a 20 something degree gain in dew point, as for +5psi we are talking +7 degrees. Let the car idle for 10 minutes at temp, and the heat soak + low boost should help evaporate the build up. Think I might try it with the vcds connected to get a feel on the effect.. I still would bet raising the intercooler temp by restricting cooling air flow would solve the problem.

Apparently this is only an issue where the temp is below freezing so icing is an issue here, in more temperate climates it seems that whatever moisture is condensed is also ingested without fanfare.

 

[Ski in NC]

5 psi boost is a 33% increase in pressure over ambient. Bigger number than it looks. So if ambient air is near saturation, add some humid egr, increase pressure by 33% and drop temp back to ambient, you get saturation. That means condensation. And if intercooler is well below freezing, the frost builds up inside.

 

[nicklockard]

I am reading this thread with interest, though I do not drive one of these CR's. I think the hypothesis about aggressive low pressure EGR adding extra moisture into an already saturated air stream is correct. Then, that supersaturated air stream dumps out water as condensate ice inside the IC. Next, when the car sits still, the ice inside the IC melts because of heat soak effect and the IC is no longer being cooled. This condensate mixes with the natural oil that is always present in the intake tract of a turbodiesel making a water-in-oil emulsion, i.e. "snot".

If this is correct, I suspect Volkswagen could easily fix it by a reprogram of the ECU firmware to have less aggressive low-pressure EGR at cooler temperatures, along with some tweaks to boost pressure profiles.

I'm sorry for all of you encountering this issue. Often members who don't live in another's climate can't understand those unique aspects brought up by regional climate. I thought we got bad fog in the the PNW, but once I took a trip through West Virginia in later summer and it was insanely foggy. My Tdi was acting all kinds of freaky with electrical gremlins.

Good luck to all, and I fourth the notion of an IC cover as a near-term bandaid fix.

 

[Jack Frost]

here is a fun conversion calculator:
www.howelllabs.com/dew_point_conversion.xls

Here is another good humidity calculator. You can also download a standalone Adobe Flash Player version. I haven't tried it out on the intercooler problem but it has produced good results for other purposes. You can even substitute different gases. I find it fascinating.

 

[KB3MMX]

Ford pickup trucks have had this "issue" for years.
There is a simple solution though, flog the crap out of the engine more frequently to keep moisture from building up in the intercooler.

 

[740GLE]

Sorry for not getting back sooner. I took mine in last wednesday to look for possible issues as last tuesday I had a no start issue like many here.

I told the service writer to look for stored codes, I didn't have a mil, and to contact the VW techline for their 2 cents (i had roosters paperwork), I was also 1000 miles away from my 30,000 service and I told them go for that if they vw warranty didn't let them bill cracking the IC. So they cracked the IC and told me "some" water came out, they cleaned the IC piping and performed the 30,000 service.

The kicker is the service writer mentions that there should be a revised IC coming out and we'll get a letter askig to come in and change it out. I imagine this letter/recall won't come out till spring, well after the time of year this is an issue.

I guess people who've had this issue, and it is and issue call up the VW customer line and put more pressure on them.

I did put on 650 miles on my car since the service, two trips of 250 miles at sub zero temps including the weather we saw on sunday night. I drove around in the snow a bit yesterday so if there's ice forming in the IC again it'll be a while maybe this Friday when the temps are up in the 40's

 

[vw_leadfoot]

Car will be going on Jan 3rd for the second service at 30,000km. Will have the indy shop do a complete IC check up....thanks for the posts and bringing this issue to the forefront....

 

[Jack Frost]

If this is correct, I suspect Volkswagen could easily fix it by a reprogram of the ECU firmware to have less aggressive low-pressure EGR at cooler temperatures, along with some tweaks to boost pressure profiles.

The problem here is that the low pressure EGR is an important feature in achieving the low Nitrogen oxides the BIN5 standards required. That is why this is on the CR cars and not the PD's.

 

[itchytweed]

The kicker is the service writer mentions that there should be a revised IC coming out and we'll get a letter askig to come in and change it out. I imagine this letter/recall won't come out till spring, well after the time of year this is an issue.

Gretchen is at 17+ k miles. When I take her in for 20k, I will bring this up with the Service Person. Plus, I may send off an email as well mentioning this "issue" as well.

Now, inquiring minds would ask, if this is going to cover all cars or only ones where it gets cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey? I would expect this to cover all cars because you can't guarantee where they will be operated...and that is a lot of cars!

Now that the morning caffeine liquid is taking hold (Aldi German Roast), since this could be a latent driveability/safety issue, especially if you are driving and a slug of water goes and locks up engine at speed and you are on a freeway, this should be brought up to the NHTSA as well.

 

[GraniteRooster]

Agreed

Now that the morning caffeine liquid is taking hold (Aldi German Roast), since this could be a latent driveability/safety issue, especially if you are driving and a slug of water goes and locks up engine at speed and you are on a freeway, this should be brought up to the NHTSA as well.

I filed a complaint with NHTSA for exactly the above reason. Going into LIMP while driving is not safe. Safer than the engine quitting entirely, but still not safe. I was all the way left in heavy traffic, and I had to cross 4 lanes of traffic to my right all moving faster than me to get in a safer position on the highway. Since I was moving so slow, everyone was swinging right to go around me, and preventing me from moving over.

Now, I could have gone to the right faster if I was more aggressive about cutting people off, but I prefer not to drive like that. To get over safely, it took me almost 3 miles to get in a position where it would have been reasonable to shut it off, all with traffic speeding past me on my right....

 

[KraftwerkB6]

After installing my intake lastnight, i went ahead and took off the pass side IC pipe. There was some small amount of oil like the other pipe had, even less actaully. But there was nothing more then that, no goop, no snot, no green no brown.
I was supprized to say the least, although it has not been very cold here for our winter, i mean yesterday was almost 50, today is supposed to be 50. The lowest iv seen was 18F a couple of times and only in the morning.

 

[IndigoBlueWagon]

I would guess that the NHSTA considers limp mode an acceptable mode of operation to safely maneuver to the side of the road.

 

[itchytweed]

I filed a complaint with NHTSA for exactly the above reason. Going into LIMP while driving is not safe. Safer than the engine quitting entirely, but still not safe. I was all the way left in heavy traffic, and I had to cross 4 lanes of traffic to my right all moving faster than me to get in a safer position on the highway. Since I was moving so slow, everyone was swinging right to go around me, and preventing me from moving over.

Now, I could have gone to the right faster if I was more aggressive about cutting people off, but I prefer not to drive like that. To get over safely, it took me almost 3 miles to get in a position where it would have been reasonable to shut it off, all with traffic speeding past me on my right....

Even with your 4-way's flashing, there is no real way of indicating which way you are trying to go. IMNSHO, 4-way's indicate a car in distress. Since we have all these "smart" cars now, this issue would be easy to fix. If you have the 4-ways on, and you turn on the directional switch, the brake light on that side should take over the directional duty. At least it would be somewhat of an indicator as to your intent of travel.

 

[soulflyer]

And another IC cloogged up

I read through everything that there is to read about this issue... i live in Montreal and I am driving to Ottawa and back almost everyday (340km) and this in any weather. I had to do my 45k inspection today and of course I told the mechanic to have a look since i got a 'hic up' moment just 2 days ago after I had my car in a heated garage instead of outside as usual. According to the comments here it looked like the perfect conditions for the 'sludge build up' and it did.
The friendly mechanic took the time and showed me everything including the 1/2 cup full of sludge and he showed me his 'quick and dirty' solution to the problem until VW will has its official fix. He removed the connection hose between the air filter and the cold air intake box so the system get warmer air quicker. He even stated that he would bypass the intercooler completely to avoid the problem (??????????). The mechanic also confirmed that the sludge problem is a known issue amongst the dealer here in Montreal and there is no fix yet from VW...
So what do you guys think about his quick fix??

Thanks for any advice!!

 

[El Dobro]

Maybe blocking the grill intake to the air cleaner would help. This way, air comes from inside the engine compartment.
I thought the air cleaner had a thermostat inside, so it would pull warm air from the engine. I remember that the MkV PD air cleaners suffered from lack of the thermostat working correctly.

 

[oilsandman]

Another ICED UP INTERCOOLER

I went to my dealer this morning and the service manager told me that they gona remove the elbow that join the airbox to the upper air entry just above the rad, in order to prevent the intercooler to freeze. He said that VW had acknowledged that there is a problem with intercooler freezing-up and they decided to take that action until they found a solution. I got a 2010 jetta cr tdi and there was another customer with a 2010 golf cr tdi who was told the same thing.

A couple weeks ago my car didn't start right away one morning. It took three times to start and it run pretty rough for maybe 10 seconds. The first time I've tried to start the car it felt like the battery was down or the starter was draging and made a funny noise when it stopped, like a cluckkk. It wasn't cold that morning, around 2 celcius but the day before it was -18 celcius, and I've drove in a snow storm for about 8 hours. I don't know if it was a symptom of an almost frozen intercooler lines or other part of it. It hadn't done that since but the temperature has been pretty mild and steady, meaning no big differences from day to day. Hope it's not gona be a problem when travelling across Canada next week and going back to very cold weather in northern Alberta.

Never had that kind of problem with my old tdi 2001 so it's new for me since it's my first winter with my 2010.

 

[frugality]

I went to my dealer this morning and the service manager told me that they gona remove the elbow that join the airbox to the upper air entry just above the rad, in order to prevent the intercooler to freeze. He said that VW had acknowledged that there is a problem with intercooler freezing-up and they decided to take that action until they found a solution.

So if I understand you correctly, they are removing the 'snorkel' -- the cold air intake -- in order to make it a warm-air intake as a temporary fix. Sounds like something that all of us could consider doing during the wintertime, if we're worried about the intercooler freezing/condensation issue.

I only had one morning where the car started rough, and continued to run rough for ~30 seconds as I puttered down my side street. I blamed it on the fact that I accidentally hadn't waited for the glow plugs on that particular start-up (I jumped in the car and fired it right up, forgetting to wait for the plugs), but it could have been this condensation issue for all I know.

I have been doing occasional 'spirited' accelerations, so I hope that will keep things free-flowing.