Water pump failure at 57,999 miles!

miningman

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Sep 3, 2007
Location
alberta
TDI
2003 Golf
Hang the thing vertically and introduce a propane torch at the bottom...... all the gunk will ignite way faster than you'd think. And yeah , pyromaniac is the right term. This wont remove 100% of the gunk , but oven cleaner will quickly remove the rest$
 

IndigoBlueWagon

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Aug 16, 2004
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South of Boston
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'97 Passat, '99.5 Golf, '02 Jetta Wagon, '15 GSW
Soaking the manifold in biodiesel and scrubbing out in a parts cleaner will get it spotless if you spend a bit of time on it.
 

saltwater46

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Aug 30, 2003
Location
Salt Springs, Florida
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2000 Jetta TDI
Harbor Freight sells a Propane Brush/Rooftar torch that connects to a 20 lb grill lp gas tank. It's the funnest thing you'll ever own, and it will do the manifold job in short order. It has a trigger that allows it to shoot a flame like a hot air baloon. I used that and then I soaked mine. It worked great. Wear Face and Eye protection for all the right reasons. Oh, and I believe the price is 18 dollars.

Yahoo, My status isn't NEWBIE any more, after 12 years.
 
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CFTDIdriver

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Aug 17, 2014
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Central Florida
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2003 Jetta TDI, 2011 Jetta TDI Sportwagen
Harbor Freight sells a Propane Brush/Rooftar torch that connects to a 20 lb grill lp gas tank. It's the funnest thing you'll ever own, and it will do the manifold job in short order. It has a trigger that allows it to shoot a flame like a hot air baloon. I used that and then I soaked mine. It worked great. Wear Face and Eye protection for all the right reasons. Oh, and I believe the price is 18 dollars.
Thanks for the tip:). I actually have one of these that I've had for years so I'll dig it out and give it a shot :cool:. What did you soak yours in?
 
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CFTDIdriver

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Yahoo, My status isn't NEWBIE any more, after 12 years.
Yes, I see that I have also graduated from "Newbie" to "Member" too and this thread posting / activity seems to have given me the posting numbers (apparently not member age based > http://www.vbulletin.com/docs/html/user_titles) needed to move up to the next member rank level. I've only technically been a member since 2014 but have non-interactively used the site for 10+ years now. I'm a member of some other online forum sites that apparently run the same or very similar software (http://www.vbulletin.com/en) and have been ranked as a senior member after reaching 50-100+ postings.

I have an IT infrastructure management background of 20+ yrs experience and more recently focused on software development so I know a little about working with html tags / code and such...
 
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CFTDIdriver

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Aug 17, 2014
Location
Central Florida
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2003 Jetta TDI, 2011 Jetta TDI Sportwagen
Hang the thing vertically and introduce a propane torch at the bottom...... all the gunk will ignite way faster than you'd think. And yeah , pyromaniac is the right term. This wont remove 100% of the gunk , but oven cleaner will quickly remove the rest$
Just some pyromaniac thoughts :D

Now to find that propane torch...:)
 

Golfrunner

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Feb 19, 2011
Location
Saratoga NY
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2005 Golf TDI
I had good results cleaning the intake manifold by using a shop vac blowing air into the manifold while shoving a propane torch into the casting....ignition and plenty of oxygen means burn baby burn. Fun to....Probably an air hose would work as well....
 

Curious Chris

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Pineview GA
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Jetta Wagon 2003 RIP Rockford IL
It is just bad luck I think that the water pump failed. I had one of the idle pulleys fail on my car: I could hear something but then I saw a ball bearing in my timing belt then the flashlight found a pile that had come out and fallen down, and then I saw that the idler was bouncing on the stud that holds it in place; IIRC it failed in under 5,000 miles. I don't know of anyone who has seen this failure besides me.
 

CFTDIdriver

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2003 Jetta TDI, 2011 Jetta TDI Sportwagen
see http://forums.tdiclub.com/showthread.php?t=157948

It has a good pdf included. I don't remember what I used, but there are plenty of threads that will cover that. It's been awhile for me.
Yes, that's a good document on the topic that I didn't notice before.

Using the oven cleaner seams to be doing a good job (seems most effective out of what I've tried) and so far I've been able to get the majority of mine clean down to bare metal. I just spray it on, let it sit for a couple hours, rinse, and repeat. Overall the manifold doesn't seem to be heavily built up with gunk in the main body area and engine side openings, which has helped a lot... It was the worst near the main input opening and I was able to scrape much of it out with a screw driver instead of just slowly dissolving it away.

I also setup my propane torch, but when i went to use it I noticed that my tank (borrowed from the gas grille) was getting low...
 
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CFTDIdriver

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2003 Jetta TDI, 2011 Jetta TDI Sportwagen
It is just bad luck I think that the water pump failed. I had one of the idle pulleys fail on my car: I could hear something but then I saw a ball bearing in my timing belt then the flashlight found a pile that had come out and fallen down, and then I saw that the idler was bouncing on the stud that holds it in place; IIRC it failed in under 5,000 miles. I don't know of anyone who has seen this failure besides me.
That's especially crazy to have a failure like that in such a short mileage window and definitely sounds like some flat out bad luck. Overall, until this water pump and a few relatively minor issues over the years, the car has been a very good and reliable work horse. I'll keep knocking on that wood though as I don't want to jinx myself :D
 

CFTDIdriver

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I had good results cleaning the intake manifold by using a shop vac blowing air into the manifold while shoving a propane torch into the casting....ignition and plenty of oxygen means burn baby burn. Fun to....Probably an air hose would work as well....
Good idea using the shop vac. I've used a cordless electric leaf blower to help blow yard debris brush fires to get them built up and it sure works well! Almost too well and is practically a little overkill if used for more than just short bursts of time. The blower nozzle could easily melt if not kept far enough back.
 

BleachedBora

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Just saw this thread, hope the head is still good! Very rare that I see water pumps go out early; usually it's just a leaker too, not an all out failure. Hope you're back on the road soon!
 

CFTDIdriver

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Just received my timing belt kit today so I plan to dig further into it and find out if the head is truly still good or not. Fingers crossed... During the parts wait, I've been getting the last few small remnants of crud out of the intake manifold with propane torch burns, solvent soaks, and rinses among other small tasks while at it.

The kit came with a made in Italy GRAF PA731 water pump. Anyone familiar with these and if so are you familiar with its durability? I've noticed that it uses a different style impeller.


The belt is a Contitech which is what was on it and I'm not aware that it is of lesser quality than the Gates or other OEM / equivalent brands.
 
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CFTDIdriver

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The bad pump is a GEBA 9070/80-3 with a 5-09 date stamp and had a bad burnt smell when taking it out. The bearing and shaft seal certainly looks to be bad as well.
 
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CFTDIdriver

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Just had a discovery today while attempting to install the new tensioner. I put the old and new tensioners side by side and noticed that a small piece of metal was missing from the old one and that the internal spring was also sticking out. When taking the lower timing belt cover off, I noticed a small piece of metal sitting down below the crank sprocket which appears to be the missing piece from the broken tensioner.

Although the water pump did fail and may have contributed to the tensioner giving out, this is what actually caused slack in the timing belt and apparently caused the injector pump to get out of timing enough to cause the engine to shutdown. Thankfully the crank and cam didn't get out of timing enough to cause any apparent valve or lifter damage.

I completely removed the cam and further inspected each lifter for physical damage. I also spun each lifter making sure it would freely spin and then pulled each one up and inspected the top of the valve stems. Fortunately, no signs of damage was discovered so I re-installed the cam along with a new seal.

Just need to finish tensioning the belt properly, installing the engine mount, intake, EGR valve, finish the AC parts work, fine tune IP timing, and such to get it back going again...
 
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turbovan+tdi

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Some of the lifters look damaged to me, they have the straight marks on them. Looks like from left to right, 1-2-3-4-6.
 

Dimitri16V

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DE
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01 Golf, 04 Golf
I can't tell from those pics

The water pump design has changed . They use different impeller now

How many teeth missing on the timing belt ? Was the engine cranked after it stopped running ?
 
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CFTDIdriver

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2003 Jetta TDI, 2011 Jetta TDI Sportwagen
Some of what appears to be lines in my posted pics are actual light reflections and are not really there. I did take multiple pics (not all uploaded here) and at different angles the reflections will change so that is one way I can tell even from just the pics themselves that those particular spots are just reflections. I've seen practically every NCIS, CSI, Columbo, Murder She wrote, etc. episode :D and would take some more pics to clarify that even more, but the cam has already been re-installed. There definitely is normal cam contact wear spots, but no cracks, raised spots, etc. (visible to the naked eye w/ NORMAL eyesight) and each lifter smoothly spins so the valve stems are not showing signs of being bent.

I'm sure there is probably some good info about this on this site, but I did my damage inspection based on info found here. http://www.myturbodiesel.com/wiki/c...beetle-golf-jetta-tdi-mk4-a4-body-alh-engine/

Here's one example pic that shows clear damage to the 2nd lifter from the left.
 

CFTDIdriver

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I can't tell from those pics
The water pump design has changed . They use different impeller now
How many teeth missing on the timing belt ? Was the engine cranked after it stopped running ?
Although the belt is probably stretched a little from age and heat (live in FL), it is not missing any teeth or showing any visible signs of damage (w/ the exception of maybe some teeth wear from slipping during the failure). The engine was cranked a couple of times (on the side of the road) after the car shutdown and only manually turned over from the crank for alignment purposes to investigate the issue. Although the crank / cam timing was not perfect it was not off more than a slightly stretched belt would allow it to creep out of sync. Even though the tensioner definitely was giving out (not far from not functioning at all) and the belt was a tad loose it was not completely loose. However, repeated cranking or if the engine did start back up and run at all again, it would definitely have had a high chance of allowing things to get more out of whack and damage would have been practically certain to occur.
 
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CFTDIdriver

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Although, actually getting the engine to run again (and then keep running until the next NORMAL timing belt change interval of 90K+ or around at least 5-6 years) will be the real test, thanks for all the feedback as it has definitely been very helpful with getting this issue sorted out.
 

CFTDIdriver

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This pic shows the spring sticking out of the tensioner before removal and this was not visible during the last TB inspection / tension check (pre-failure).

The IP had its seals replaced (removed / re-installed) a few years back at a local shop (not implying that the tensioner was over torqued or that any bad work may have been performed and would never make such an accusation especially without concrete proof) so this was at least one time where the tensioner was readjusted after the belt and tensioner were replaced at the end of 2009.

The IP was worked on one time after that when I made the mistake (yes I goofed up here and have learned to meticulously check the proper procedures and multiple sources to minimize such mistakes) of loosening the center IP bolt while fine tuning and this allowed the shaft to rotate a little... At the time the car was having trouble starting and the battery was good so the IP timing appeared to be the culprit.

Obviously never loosen that bolt unless rebuilding the IP! This may be another potential trouble spot and since the pump was rebuilt the paint marking is worn off the nut so I'm not certain if the shaft misalignment was ever actually corrected or not and just compensated for. The IP has been locked with the pin but if the shaft is not lined up correctly this may require some undocumented finagling when it comes to trying to time it... If anyone has any suggestions, please chime in. My Bentley service manual only says that if this gets out of alignment that it will be necessary to have Bosch service personnel correct it (so they probably don't cover pump rebuilding / shaft calibration) and I haven't researched it beyond that. At the time and although it did run but not correctly, I needed the vehicle on the road in good working order ASAP so that ended up being a mistake that cost me about a couple hundred to get corrected by someone else at the time... As long as I can get it to run and its not past the sprocket adjustment range (3 bolts are currently centered) it shouldn't be an issue. If it comes to it, I can probably compensate by moving the IP pump a tb notch in the direction it may need to go, but would require more finagling with the belt / tensioner (don't want to wear it our or weaken it) so won't do unless necessary and or researching what the options more... fixing / calibrating the IP back to the proper state (if not already so) would be nice if not too difficult ...
 
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CFTDIdriver

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2003 Jetta TDI, 2011 Jetta TDI Sportwagen
It sounds like you are good to go
Yes, other than in general getting it all back together and adjusted it should be hopefully good to go!

After doing some more reading on the topic... to double check the IP pin placement and condition of the pump / shaft alignment, I plan to pull the sprocket and then put it all back again before installing / tensioning the belt and torquing everything to spec. Double / triple checking everything in relation to things that have been touched or have a potential to cause trouble should make getting the engine running and properly tuned that much easier if verified to have been done correctly or in proper condition / calibration states.

Preventing potential future headaches / frustration is a nice thing to do when possible:)
 
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CFTDIdriver

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2003 Jetta TDI, 2011 Jetta TDI Sportwagen
The new TB, tensioner, and related parts have been installed along with the cleaned intake manifold, some new vacuum lines, new EGR valve, new AC compressor, dryer, expansion valve, o-rings, and cleaning / flushing of the AC lines, flushing the cooling system and new anti-freeze, etc... A partial system overhaul and work I wouldn't wan't to pay full labor / retail parts prices for getting done. Too much of that and it wouldn't be worth the cost due to the age / mileage of the car.

The engine has been manually turned over several times by hand (only clockwise with the metalnerd sprocket loosening tool) and there doesn't appear to be any problems which would prevent the engine from turning over as it should. It appears only normal resistance is encountered from valvetrain operation and piston compression. I suppose if there were any problems from possible damage or collisions then it would bind up at a certain point and not want to go any further unless using excessive force.

While trying to put the serpentine belt tensioner back on, I noticed one of the 3 bolts is missing and apparently didn't realize this when removing it. It's possible it came loose and fell out or was simply left out during a previous repair job by someone... I put many of the bolts back in the holes or in labeled containers to keep track of where they go and such to help prevent such issues, so unless it turns up I'll have to get another one from the dealer or order one online, but will create another delay ...
 
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turbovan+tdi

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I'll have to get another one from the dealer or order one online, but will create another delay ...
Its 8x1.25mm, aprox 1.5" long, any parts place or fastener place will have one.
 
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