Well, hell idk where to start. Bear with me as I’m on my phone today. it’s a short story of why a well sorted TDI costs so much money…
This car is a nightmare. I almost hate this car lol At 187k it tried to kill itself and maybe me too. Let this be a lesson to those with less skill and time than me….never trust a seller when it comes to a TDI or any maintenance unless they can show you proof. Which is in part why I’ve documented my build
Sooooo, The first issue I discovered when I got this car 18 months ago besides bad g28 sensor is the Clutch. It was intermittently slipping. Then after changing the clutch, the new clutch was intermittently slipping too, snd I found the tandem pump was leaking down into the trans inspection port. Ordered the tandem pump and g28 up and then the car went down.
The diff Grenaded the trans. At least I had been using the car for door dash, at the time it was paint 30-40 an hour. So, luckily I made enough money to cover the cost of the car plus the trans.
Finally, I Got a trans with a bad reverse from a member on here (he did not lie but played stupid) so I had it rebuild with a wave track . I was bitten by the upgrade bug, that thing made it a new car to drive.
My old TDI had nozzles and a tune needed a turbo and retune I decided I needed a 200whp TDI. But had to settle for 180 where I’m still likely to blow the trans up again.
Anyway, when I got the car it had g28 sensor code but ran fine so I kinda ignored it for a little bit. it had symptoms of excess smoke on cold startup and it would fluctuate RPM for a minute or two only cold starts. Frost heater helped a little: so, I thought it was the g28 no big deal.
Yup then I changed it and the problem persisted. I was mystified and whatever it runs good gets decent MPG, but one day after sitting for a week the car had a out of smoke then it stumbled and died almost like it wanted to have a runaway. Turns out the cam was bad. Again, I need to run a compression test.
The plot thickens, while discovering the bad cam i realized the person I got the car from had lied to me. He said he worked at the dealer and got the car for a job, he said he changed the t belt ect. Well I discovered the WP leaking, so if he changed the belt al he did was put a new belt in and that’s it.
So after all that I called Armstrong VW as their marking is on the car and the Carfax said they had serviced the car. So According to dealer service history it had a run away and NOTHING had been done since and here I was having out 10k on it runs great. I still need to do a compression test. Anyone got the adapter ? I have a snap on gauge
So, committed to the cam shaft snd t belt job when I removed the rockers arms the nipple plunger on #3 had split in 2 pieces. I’m glad it stayed together while I was driving ! That would have taken me a while to diagnose! Also, based on the amount of blue smoke I had it start up I think the injectors seals were leaking.
Also, I discovered one of the lifters was different while the other 7 were black INA. Someone did something goofy to this car. The timing had been aligned you could tell by the red marks on the crank shaft and camshaft pulley, it also had red writing on injector #3 which was a funny blue color. I really wanted to replace the nozzles cuz Owain told me to get pd150 nozzles for my goal: and at this point I felt like relaxing the pumps was the wise thing to do as I wanna drive to florida from Washington and see my uncle.
Anyway, Aron at cascade sent me a budget stage 2 cam for the price of a normal cam and it was on. It was Christmas I was kinda depressed and needed something exciting to do. I mean, Here I had this POS wagon that I should have sold off snd let someone else discover the problem. Problem is I’m not that kind of guy
So why new fueling ? Well most of it was actually failed already as noted, and I was still just gonna replace the plunger in injector #3 and send it but the PO did so much **** work on the car. I thought and I want to have reliability. I don’t want to be on the side of interstate 84 changing parts like I have been in the past.injectors ordered (re man from Germany bosch dealer) I know you asked before so here ya go I just don’t wanna step on the vendors toes and I would hate to see vendors buy these and mark them up in price by double. When I should be doing that because I’m broke and I need money
https://www.diesel-technik-biberach.de/
So, then after replacing the cam and tandem pump (did not install the injectors yet) I went to prime the pump with group 35. No noise. The lift pump had failed. So nee lift pump too. At that point I was feeling pretty good about replacing the whole fuel system LOL. The car is ready to go to 500k just gotta watch those shorty timing belts and probably cam shaft too. I was thinking maybe I’ll sell it when I’m done….haha for 10k hahah yeah right I’m stuck with this pig I could have some it for 6500 to 2 different people right after I did the timing belt, kinda wish I would have. I know that once I get the car done that I can get out on the road with it I’ll be really glad I have it. I have my dad in Idaho and a sister in Eastern OR. Also have a friend in birth Dakota and lots of family in Phili. I can be trapped in western wa it’s ****ing hell here! So in short the car was such a piece of **** from the previous owner I decided that in order to have maximum reliability the injectors needed to be replaced. Just based on what I had found while I was in there. Yeah, they were probably good to go but I like **** done right.
