Hi all

 

I'll give a bit of background then go into the problem.

 

I've got a FL VRS petrol 2009 Octaiva, 77,000 ish miles on the clock. I haven't had any work done on the car in the past 4 months and have had no indications anything is wrong for the same amount of time. I drove into work today fine, took a trip out at lunch fine, and have had this problem on the way home. I have had zero clutch slip up to this point. This maybe a little long winded.

 

So right from the off leaving work my my car was juddering while accelerating, the ESP light kept flashing up and it felt like the typical powder being cut to regain grip. I wasn't accelerating hard, in fact quite slowly really as I was low on fuel. I thought maybe the ground was a little slippery and so I would turn the ESP off just to see if that made any difference. Well it did, instead of the ESP light flashing on and off the EPC light flashed on and off! I'm in the middle of no where at this point so drove home slowly. On the way back I fingered out the following.

 

If I rev the engine in neutral or in gear with the clutch held in it revs fine with no noise and no warning lights. 

Under gentle acceleration the car will judder in any gear and the EPC light will flash up and cut the power.

While under acceleration there is a mechanical grinding noise which increases with revs, not the speed of the car.

On neutral throttle or no throttle there is no mechanical grinding, however sometime the judder happened still and the light flashed up.

 

So am I looking at a clutch fault here? Release bearing maybe? Or is this a ESP/ some other sensor fault? Unfortunately I only have a basic OBD reader and that is showing no stored faults.

 

Any help or ideas would be greatly received!? I'm meant to be going away this weekend for a trip but somehow I think this maybe canceled

 

EDIT: So a friend has a slightly more advanced OBD reader and it has come back with two codes...... P0341 and P000A which I think are both camshaft related.... great

 

 

Cheers

 

Rusty

Edited 16 November, 20169 yr by RustyHill

http://wiki.ross-tech.com/wiki/index.php/16725/P0341/000833

http://wiki.ross-tech.com/wiki/index.php/P000A/000010

Could this be the dreaded timing chain/tensioner issue that seems to be a issue on the early TSI engines? 

http://wiki.ross-tech.com/wiki/index.php/16725/P0341/000833

http://wiki.ross-tech.com/wiki/index.php/P000A/000010

 

I'm hoping looking at those codes it is just a sensor failure, however the mechanical sounds suggests otherwise. 

 

Could this be the dreaded timing chain/tensioner issue that seems to be a issue on the early TSI engines? 

 

If it is ( and it does sound that way) I'm hoping its not jumped too many teeth and may still be fixable. I've been reading the thread on here in great depth today, and been getting more depressed by the minute.

 

 

I got it towed to a local garage today who will be having a look at it tomorrow. I'll post up anything they come back with.

I said I would give an update but never did.

They started by scanning the car and came back with the same errors my friend got, once that was looked into they checked the tensioner from the little inspection window but couldn't see a lot. So they took the whole side panel off so they could check the tensioners/ chain guides and everything else more closely.

 

Once apart it was confirmed that no tensioner had fully failed although one was (apparently) very close to it's full adjustment, however one guide was split down the middle and they thought that was very recent. No other damage was found.

I got them to replace all the tensioners and guides plus all supporting parts to future proof (hopefully) the engine.

 

The question on what flagged up the errors and the symptom was never fully worked out, I can only imagine it was a combination of failed guide and tensioner at max that triggered the EPC light and the rattle was from the guide.

 

All back together now and been running for a week and a half with no problems.

 

Rusty