Hi all,
Need a bit of advice from anyone in the know please.
Have a strange problem with a VW Passat I just brought. Its got 83k on the clock, 1.9 tdi 130 on a 2002 plate.
I started up one morning and drove off. All seemed fine until I tried to overtake a car and found I had no acceleration left - the car had no pull, it felt like a 1000cc mini or something.
I did all the usual things, turning the engine off, waiting, restarting, etc. Nothing made any difference. It stayed that way until I spoke with a friend who said to take the petrol cap off and start the engine, so I did that and funnily enough it worked and all power came back to the engine.
About 400 miles later the same thing happened - I 'fixed' it in the same way.
I think the idea was that no air was getting into the tank and a vacuum was building. By opening the tank it was released.
I took the car into a VW garage and they ran the tests. Apparently one of the cylinders is misfiring and thats their reasoning for the loss of power. But I don't see why it would be resolved by opening hte fuel cap, and wouldn't it show power loss all the time with a mis fire??
I only question this as they told me the car may need a new turbo system, or injectors. They want to run a compression test at 2 hours labour and then depending on the results rebuild the head gasket (??) or replace the turbo system (ata cost of 1500!)
any thoughts anyone - I've seen a lot of talk about the mass air flow on these cars but have no idea if that might be relevant in this case...
thanks in advance
Richard
Edited by Pugugly on 15/05/2008 at 18:28
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Richard
Your garage is talking utter bullshine. Either they have diagnosed the fault - or they haven't. Wittering on about "this-and-that" being the cause shows they haven't a clue and are relishing the opportunity to rip you off - royally.
I've not come across a case of tank-vacuuming on one of these - yet; but you can never rule anything out. When the fault happened initially, for how long did it persist and did you get any warning lights?
The fault symptom is classic 17965 [use search] but that will clear if you cycle the ignition?
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Hi,
thanks for the reply. The garage stated they had done a diagnositic and it reported back a missfire. Next they need to do a compression test to confirm which one etc.
However I don't see how that would effect the power loss.
Still, in answer to your questions:
I was driving the car for around 30 mins. Stopped went into a shop for 10 mins or so and came back out. When I started it the car sounded different, but it was only when I tried to overtake did I notice the power loss. It struggled to reach 65mph, no grunt at all.
There was no warning lights were present. I pulled over and stopped, re started the car. (Various styles, ie turned off but left key in, turned off key out.turned off and sat there for a few minutes) the power was still gone. This happened unitl I spoke to my friend. maybe 80 miles or so... including a break of driving for a good few hours.
My friend advised to remove the fuel cap and it all worked from there. One point to note which I may have forgotten - I had to start the engine with the fuel cap off. It didn't work when taking the cap off and back on unless I started the engine with it off.
This has happened twice now and both times I've resolved it using this method.
Possibly unrelated - when I start the car for the first time each day I see a large amount of white smoke from the exhust - it has a diesel smell, I guess its just running a little rich, maybe the ECU needs tweaking - unless this means something else to you? It doesn't happen after the inital start each day.
thanks for all your help, I'll look up that fault in the meantime.
Richard
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