rough idle and driving with oil light on

[john.bosyj@gmail.com]

I own a 2003 jetta tdi with alh engine. I hit a rock and about 15 minutes later oil light came on while driving. Pulled over after driving few miles at low speed to see what was wrong. Noticed cracked oil pan and no oil on dip stick. Towed car home. Replaced oil pan and put in new oil. Engine idles rough. Revs up ok. When I try to drive away, the car stalls. Replaced turbo, decarb intake, drained oil from intercooler. Still idles rough and revs ok. Still stalls when I try to drive away. Any suggestions?

 

[Prairieview]

Come on....this is a troll....right?

 

[Diesel Fumes]

15 mins while losing all your oil. I'd assume the worst

 

[john.bosyj@gmail.com]

The car starts fine and there is no weird sound. When I step on the gas no smoke come out of the exhaust. The only apparent symptom is rough idle. When you say worst, do you mean camshaft and lifter or is there something more?

 

[jakej78b]

Do you have any sort of audible knocking? What is your description of a rough idle? Perhaps one of the lifters is tapping? Can you freely rev up to redline?

 

[john.bosyj@gmail.com]

I cannot hear any knocking or other noise. Engine shakes way more than usual at idle. Revs easily to redline with no shaking. As soon as I bring it back to idle it shakes more than usual. If I try to drive away it stalls.

 

[Nero Morg]

Sounds like you need an engine bro.

 

[Diesel Fumes]

The car starts fine and there is no weird sound. When I step on the gas no smoke come out of the exhaust. The only apparent symptom is rough idle. When you say worst, do you mean camshaft and lifter or is there something more?

Hard to say. Plenty of people have broken their oil pans, but continuing to drive with a significant oil leak is going to have done some damage. I suppose you'd need to take things apart to see. How big was the hole in the oil pan? Unless its like a pin sized hole, I'd think it would come out fast. And if your engine was running well before this, then you can narrow it down to oil loss causing this issue I think. I don't have much experience with catastrophic engine failures. Im interested to hear what others have to say.

I did lose oil through the oil cooler. Not enough to get an oil light and I probably only lost 1.5 liters. It did no noticeable damage to the engine.

 

[Vince Waldon]

Typically engines run without oil suffer varying degrees of damage at the:
- turbo
- rings/cylinder walls
- main and rod bearings
- cam and lifters

The "revs fine in the driveway" is probably a red herring... just about any diesel engine with enough compression to fire will rev ok, unloaded. The fact that it falls on its butt when you ask it to do real work is the significant part, particularly if it's idling poorly.

A compression test will give you a better idea of the health of your rings/cylinder walls, and you can pull the oil pan with the engine in place to remove and inspect rod/main bearings. Remove the valve cover to inspect the cam and lifters.

Gonna have to break out the wrenches at this point.... interweb guessing has its limits.

 

[john.bosyj@gmail.com]

Oil was coming out of the vac pump and getting into all the hoses, so engine was toast. I installed a replacement engine and all works fine. BTY, I also installed a nice thick skid plate to protect the oil pan. Thanks