To expand on the issue, and better explain what happened, before I tear into yet more NMS Passat Engine Fails, this is the original story:
My friend and mentor at the time was still working at the dealer (we'll call this local franchise 'Dealer A'). He called and said they had a customer who had a Jetta TDI that "wanted more power", and asked if I could help, and if it was OK for him to forward my information. This was around 2006, and the car in question was a 2001. I agreed, thinking the guy was after a tune or something beyond the car's standard 90hp. No big deal.
Six months or so go by, I never hear anything from this referral. Then, one day I get a call, and the guy is asking if I can look at his Jetta, it doesn't run right, and it had been to TWO dealers, and they both said "it is performing to spec". I said sure, bring it in and leave it with me and I will have a look.
He drops the car off, a very clean, nice, 2001 Jetta sedan, ALH+manual, with just over 100k miles. I get in, start it up (starts a little shaky, with maybe a slightly longer than usual crank time, and maybe a bit more-than-acceptable start up puff), and take it for a spin. It has very little power... so little, I am surprised the guy actually drove it here. No MIL on... my first gut instinct, and we had been seeing a lot of it then, was the MAF was bad. Which was common especially on pre-2002 ALHs, as the early Bosch hot-film MAFs were pretty fragile. And unlike on the gassers, the diesels would have no stored DTCs, they'd just be slow. Only it usually was not THIS bad, but I decided to do the quick test and unplug it and see if it ran better. It ran even worse.
So, I limped it back to the shop, and started to get more in-depth with it. No stored DTCs aside from the ones I caused with unplugging the MAF, which I cleared and nothing came back. Timing was off, but not enough to cause this. Cylinder balance was not great, but not like it had a dead cylinder or anything.
Opened the hood, and within .007 seconds realized this poor car had had all kinds of stuff touched under here. Many clips, screws, bolts, etc. were loose, missing, in the wrong place, etc. I felt like Gil Grissom just walking on to a crime scene... and the Crimes Against Mechanicals were everywhere. I also noticed that the engine proper, the block and cylinder head, and most importantly, the head gasket, didn't appear to match up with a car that had covered 100,000 miles over a half decade of time. Even on a car as clean and nice as this one still was. Got a mirror and looked down under the vacuum pump, under the coolant crossover pipe (which was not even bolted on) and found what I suspected: the yellow tag that denoted this was a replacement shortblock, and I could already guess the cylinder head was also a replacement. VAG didn't sell longblocks for the diesels, they only sold a shortblock, and the head separately.
OK, so now I had to contact the owner, and get some more background information on this car's history.
He did provide this... oh boy did he...
Dealer A was where he bought the car new, and where he took it for all its service since. And, like most all ALHs, it had happily made it to 100k miles with zero problems. 10 oil changes, nothing more (to the engine). He had them install a new timing belt (you can probably already guess where this is going). They had it for two whole days. He came to pick it up, and when the porter drove it around, he could already tell it didn't sound right. They told him that was just the new parts "breaking in", and he said "well I bought this car new, and it had no such sounds". But he took it anyway. He noticed right away it didn't run right. Next day, he took it back.
They had it for another whole day. Came to pick it up, it seemed to not be as noisy, but still didn't run quite right, but better. On his way home, it stopped running. Towed back in to dealer A. They said the timing belt "failed", and they were going to fix it for him.
TWO WEEKS later, he gets his car back. Now it has no power. He refuses to take it. They argue. They show him the bill for all they spent on it, thinking I guess that he should be grateful (they installed a new head). He informed them that it was THEIR mistake that caused this expense in the first place! And now the car is worse than it ever was!
They have the car two more days, call him and tell him it is all "running to spec". He takes the car, frustrated, and calls a lawyer. Lawyer tells him to get a second opinion. Enter Dealer B.
Dealer B has car for a few days. They decide, the engine is bad. "Low compression" they say. Owner, at lawyer's guidance, agrees to have Dealer B install an engine (shortblock), as lawyer says if that fixes the problem, they'll just sue A for the cost. Sounds reasonable, I assume?
Dealer B installs new shortblock, reuses new head that was just installed. And.... car runs no better, maybe even worse yet. They have had the car now for nearly a month. Owner is told "it is running to spec, it is only 90 horsepower". He tells them it is clearly not right, and the porter there even says to the service writer "man, I can tell it is sick just driving it around to the car wash" (it would appear Dealer B's best diagnostician is the $11/hr porter!). Owner, frustrated, agrees to pay for the engine at a discounted price, and takes the car home and parks it.
A couple months later... it is in my hands.
So I now know why it looks like an angry mob of drunken monkeys with tools has been at work under the hood of this poor thing. A&B had their very finest on it. They probably should have let their porters or even their custodial or secretarial staff have a crack it this Jetta, they certainly could have done no worse!
First thing I do, is correct the timing. To say this was a M&P job is an understatement. Under the timing cover, it looked like a Jackson Pollok painting there were so many [different colored!] paint marks everywhere. Of course it was still not timed correctly, AND the tensioner looked like it had been worked over harder than a drunk girl on prom night, not to mention the threads it the mount bracket were tooefed, I am surprised the engine did not Shawshank its way out of the car, but I guess with only ~50hp it just didn't have the strength.
So I spent the better part of a day redoing the timing belt, replacing the tensioner, fixing the bracket, replacing the THRICE used one-time use mount bolts, etc. Now it is properly timed, VCDS graph picture perfect, cylinder balance better but not great, it starts easier now and no shakes and start-up puff is virtually gone.
Still. Has. No. Power.
Something I normally do, but for whatever reason I had not done to this point, was check the oil. Car still had B's sticker in the window, and had only been driven about 800 miles since, and there were no leaks (amazingly), so I didn't think much of it. When I did, I noticed two things: one, it was overfilled... which given the Failtrain derailment scene I was presented with under the hood, this was of no surprise. And two: the oil was CLEAN. And I am not talking "not sooty" clean, I am talking like you just poured it in the engine and never started it clean.
Now anyone that knows these cars, knows that a stock ALH will blacken its oil very quickly... almost immediately. This was a clue, but I wasn't sure just how important of one.
I corrected the oil level, then proceeded to check over everything that could cause a low power concern. Nothing seemed off. It actually built boost, albeit very slowly. MAF value rose with RPMs, albeit slowly as the car just had no power.
I kept going back to the cylinder balance. This was a new engine. It should be very good, but just the engine was new, nothing that made it run. So, I decided to first send the injectors out to DFIS. Didn't tell them anything beyond "check these out for me, let me know what you find". When they called me, they said "well I can tell you this engine must not run very well". That was my 'hallelujah!' moment. They said they not only had a weak spray pattern, but they were all four barely moving any fuel at all, even at full pop pressure. It was all just bleeding back on the return side.
I had him go ahead and rebuild them, with stock new OEM Bosch nozzles, balance them, etc. Got them back, installed them in the car, bled the air out and got it running... and WHAM!!! All 90 thoroughbred German horses were back in business. Car ran like a raped ape, and after just a quick spin around the block, the oil was nice and inky black like normal.
So, once I talked to my friend at Dealer A, I found out THIS was the car he had called me about, and this is what actually happened there:
One of the moron techs was entrusted with the timing belt job. He of course did a quick M&P job. So it was never timed correctly, and never ran right. When he tried to correct this mistake, he must've done something even more wrong, which caused the belt to jump time and mash valves. Then he was entrusted to replace the head. Did that, AGAIN with a M&P, only during the time the old head was off and the car was waiting for the new head to arrive,
the injectors were carelessly left laying out in the open on a workbench! And this is what started the whole phantom low power issue. What's worse is, when A couldn't figure it out, they called for the regional VoA tech "expert" to come in, he couldn't figure it out, and decided to say "it was in spec", and left it at that. Then, that same "expert" was called in at Dealer B after they replaced the engine, and he said the same thing!!!!!!
So, that is the whole story... and the takeaway here is: don't leave injectors that have had fuel in them lay out for days or weeks on end and dry out. And of course, don't let hacks near your timing belt. Because really that was what set this Failboat out to sea. Fortunately, Oilhammer's Oceanic Volkswagen Search and Rescue was able to bring it safely back home. Car is still on the road today, incidentally. And I have gained a customer for life.