Overheating Tin Top

[Guest Getting There]

Hi

 

I'm Huddersfield if that hekps you are welcome to borrow the tools, but I'm not back until Friday night.

[Guest timswait]

Hi there, thanks for the info guys, I'm now the proud owner of a set of locking tools if anyone needs to borrow them any time! Less than £30 from GSF, so not the end of the world, just a lot more work to re set it again.

[Guest timswait]

Took the day off work to get it sorted today. Used the locking tools to set the timing. The belt was on the right tooth, it was set the same as the old one. I did have the adjust the position of the sprocket on the camshaft slightly. However that clearly wasn't the reason for the lack of power as the timing was the same as it had always been (since I've had it anyway). The reason for the loss of power turned out to be a vac line pulled out from the charge control solenoid. Without the line connected then no turbo, hence no power, pushed the line back in and hey presto turbo back again and driving fine! So on one hand slightly annoyed at having gone to all the phaff of taking most of the car apart to get to the timing belt again, on the other hand pleased it was so easy to fix. And at least now the timing is probably set better than it was on the previous belt. If I try really hard I can imagine it is now running better than it was before I started all this!

[richyb66]

Live and learn. Main thing is you got it sorted.

[Longboarder]

You have done half the injection timing setup only, the coarse mechanical bit. It is usually enough. The final step is done with a code reader such as VCDS. This can graph the precise injection timing from the needle lift valve signal which is fed back to the ecu and read by the VCDS and allows you to fine tune the timing. Considering the cost of putting an old VE pump activated VAG engine car on the fault reader at a VW garage (currently £105 at Murrays in Plymouth) the cost of purchasing VCDS is soon saved. I have one which has saved me hundreds. I don't know how I would have repaired the golf, 2 x polos, 2 x fabias my family runs without it.

 

See this vid for info on timing.

 

Nigel

Edited August 6, 2014 by Longboarder

[Guest timswait]

My engine (on the Audi) doesn't have a separate injection pump. The timing belt only connects the crank to the cam (and water pump and tensioner) there's nothing else tied from it. The injection is fully electronic. Does this still apply to setting the cam timing? The Audi workshop manual doesn't make any mention of it. However the SDi engine in my boat (came from a Polo) does look very similar to the one in the video, and does smoke a bit, and I did change the timing belt on that a while back without fine tuning the timing. I might have a go at doing this adjustment on that one

[richyb66]

pm me the vehicle year, model, transmission type and engine code if you know it and I'll look on elsawin. If I can find the info I'll try and email it to you (so an email address would be helpful too)

[Longboarder]

That info is only for VE pumped engines so may be wrong for your car. For PD and later common-rails it doesn't apply. Most of my info is for ancient wrecks seeing as I can't afford anything less than 10 years old. Aaahhh!

 

Nigel

[Guest timswait]

OK cheers, it is more than 10 years old now (2002), but it's a PD one.

[Guest timswait]

It turns out that making the adjustment on PD engines is even easier than VP ones as shown in the vid, the diagnostics directly outputs the angular error between the camshaft and crankshaft, so you just adjust to get as close to zero as possible. Mine was 2 degrees off, which is actually within the recommended tolerance (plus/minus 3), but after a few tweaks (half a degree isn't very much!) I got it down so the reading was oscillating between 0 and 0.6 with the engine running, so basically spot on Can't say I notice much difference, but it's nice to know it's right (for probably the first time since I've had the car!) Cheers guys, fingers crossed the overheating problem stays fixed this time!. Now to get back to the Hood.....

[Guest timswait]

ARGGHH DAMMIT!! It's still bloody loosing coolant Checked it after a few weeks and the level had dropped. Topped it up praying that it was just air-locks clearing, but no, it definitely is still loosing it, it was below the minimum line again yesterday so i topped it up again. I got it hot and then had it up on ramps and checked everywhere for leaks, the only evidence I could find was pink stains around directly beneath the expansion tank. I took it out for a test drive with some paper towel stuffed into the overflow hole on the tank and some tape to hold it in place, and after a few runs up hill checked it and found the paper had popped out of the hole and was soggy and pink. So it is loosing it from the overflow - but why??? I wasn't pushing it hard and it wasn't running hot, either by the dashboard gauge or the on-board diagnostics, the temperature didn't get above 92C.

In case anyone's just tuning in, this all started back in April with it boiling over once. I also noticed that the on-board diagnostics would read worryingly high when pushing it up hills at low revs and that it was loosing coolant. Since then I've changed the thermostat, the expansion tank and cap, the radiator and the coolant pump. The only one of those items that I found any evidence that it may have been at fault was the the coolant pump, which appeared to have been leaking from the shaft seal, I couldn't see any obvious faults with any of the other items I took off. I'm at the end of my tether now there doesn't seem anything left to try.

[Guest timswait]

Anyone, any ideas?

[Guest mcramsay]

Is there any way you can pressureize the system to force the leak to show its self? You can buy kits off ebay. It could be one of the hoses has perished and has a slow leak. I would have a good look at the hoses near where you found it to be wet.

[Longboarder]

Hi Tim. Not much left apart from the head gasket. I have seen on a pinto a head gasket leak that only showed when 80+mph was maintained for 10 minutes or so on the motorway. Normal driving all was fine. A new head gasket didn't fix it. Only when I took the head in to have it crack tested did the engineer say you do know there is a slight warp. Got it skimmed and all was well.

One point from way back. I have three VAG diesels I maintain and they have temperature sensors with four spade terminals on them. All in the one unit but it feeds both gauge and ecu. I don't know if the unit contains two senders or somehow shares one sender. If it is two senders then either could fail and give different reports to ecu and gauge.

 

Nigel

[Guest timswait]

I don't think there is a leak as such, I'm pretty convinced it's coming out of the overflow in the expansion tank. Head gasket is a possibility, but I've done over 4000 miles since this all started, and in that time it's showed no other symptoms, so I'm not sure. I might see about changing the coolant temperature sensor. I'm still getting wildly different readings from the gauge and the ECU.