Hey all. So to make it short and sweet, my 03 alh jetta wagon 5 speed was running beautifully. Well I hit a large pot hole a little too spiritedly and afterwards, the car now has a vibration. It does it idling regardless of clutch pressed or not. It does it driving, pretty consistently. The only times it doesn't is when actually moving in reverse, or hitting the very small bumps in the road, it stops for a very split second. The noise follows engine rpm. Could this be a clutch issue? I believe the clutch was maybe just starting to slip before this happen, but only under heavy acceleration. All I have are slightly larger injectors and a mild kerma tune. Everything else is stock. Would greatly appreciate the help
My Screw Up
- Thread starter dvancura2
- Start date
AndyBees
Top Post Dawg
- Joined
- May 27, 2003
- Location
- Southeast Kentucky
- TDI
- Silver 2003 Jetta TDI, Silver 2000 Jetta TDI (sold), '84 Vanagon with '02 ALH engine
Motor mounts, Dog-bone, warped sub-frame, warped unibody, etc.
Prolly need to get it up on a lift for an under body inspection!
Prolly need to get it up on a lift for an under body inspection!
jettawreck
Top Post Dawg
Yep, agree you need to do some good inspection and the dog bone engine/tranny mount will cause some of those exact issues.
So a little update. I looked things over, and there wasn't much that was apparently visible. I didn't have it up on a lift but I had crawled under and was looking things over. Nothing was majorly cracked or anything. One of my discoveries though was that without the skid plate on, it was noise free. As I tightened the skid plate and the front mounts got solid with the rear mounts, the noise came up. This has got me thinking that I may have tweaked the sub frame a bit? Thoughts?
STDOUBT
Veteran Member
Maybe more likely tweaked the skid plate?
Tolerances are pretty tight, at least on the Panzer from Dieselgeek.
Were you able to tell what part of the plate is bappin on what?
Should be easy enough to bend so that stops...
Tolerances are pretty tight, at least on the Panzer from Dieselgeek.
Were you able to tell what part of the plate is bappin on what?
Should be easy enough to bend so that stops...
Old thread now, but just if its ever referenced in the future, the source of the noise came from the oil pan vibrating against the skid plate. Luckily they are both aluminum so it was more of a surface scratch rather than a gouge. I at first thought it was the skid plate getting tweaked, but after more investigation, I found out that the engine was sagging. The cause of this was from the engine mount bolt snapping on the passenger side engine mount. 1 bolt snapped off IN the block, one was still holding on, and the last one was...missing. maybe vibrated out? Either way, I got real lucky nothing worse happened. The top bolt is the one that snapped so luckily I was able to get in there with an easy out and got the old bolt out. I got all new bolts and triple checked torque specs on everything, put it all back together, and my TDI is happy again.
Wilkins
Veteran Member
I’ve had my sump vibrate against the skid plate a couple of times. Remove skid plate, use sledgehammer to straighten, reinstall.