Beater diesel Golf part 2
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In my first post on the Hyphen, I went over the initial work on a beater 2001 Golf TDI diesel I bought for cheap. Today, I went through and did stage 2 of the work it needed.
After driving it for a couple days, I noticed how when it's cold, I can hear a 'swish swish sound coming from the timing belt. Usually a sign that the belt has stretched unevenly for whatever reason. The car also was not getting upto temperature due to a stuck open thermostat.
So, seeing that there's shared labor and coolant with doing the timing belt, water pump (which is driven by the timing belt), thermostat AND, swapping the injection pump out for a bigger one that puts out more fuel at higher pressure for a nice performance bump.
So, I searched my stash, found a good condition, used remanufactured injection pump from an auto trans ALH code TDI. Could tell it was an OE VW reman by the part number, they add an 'X' to the end of the part number to signify a factory rebuilt part. Probably something I found on a car at a local Pick n Pull a couple years ago. I might have paid anywhere from $13 to $45 for it depending on what the cashier classified it as that day ("mechanical fuel pump" or "fuel distributor"). Retail on these new is over $1000. Good used ones, where people know what it is, tend to go for about $300 give or take these days. I think I came out OK on the Pick n Pull pricing on these!
Got the timing belt kit from my friends at Cascadegerman.com based out of Gresham, OR. I've been buying parts from Aaron over there since before he started that company. Briefly was a part of "KermaTdi" in 2007 when I first bought a couple things from him. Always treated me right and has sent business my way as well. Now that I have WorldPac and IMC accounts, I've become even more impressed with what he sells parts for on his site. Much of what he has is priced at or sometimes below wholesale from those big time wholesale vendors.
I obtained a thermostat from the local NAPA for the job. I specifically went for a thermostat made by Behr, which is the OE maker of thermostats for most VWs of that era ("BTT/BTO" vendor code on the OEM part. Literally an OE part without the OE logo on it). I actually specifically asked for one by specific part number, TX1392D. This is a hotter thermostat than stock. The stock thermostat is rated to open at 87 C, this one is rated at 92 C. Though in reality with my observations, the 87 C thermostat, I can watch the coolant temp sensor data in the scan tool and the lower hose stays cold as the reading gets to 90 C, then it kind of pauses there for a couple minutes as the thermostat cracks open and allows the colder coolant from the radiator in the engine, eventually the temperature equalizes between engine and radiator and it all gets hotter, upto 99 C before the fans kick on, typically. The "92 C" thermostat typically pauses as it cracks open with engine outlet reaching about 97-100 C on average. Seems to vary a little.
I know what you're thinking. "Why would you run a hotter thermostat??" Well, these direct injected diesels are insanely thermally efficient. They take substantially longer to warm up than a comparable gas engine and take forever to get to the point where the actually need to kick the fans on. Just sitting at idle they usually won't get fully upto temp to even trigger the fans ever. I have to rev them up in the shop and keep the revs up to get the fans to kick on for nearly 20 minutes to get one to kick the fans on.
The hotter thermostat actually helps with efficiency. This is a nice little hack if you're trying to squeak out a couple more MPGs.
The old thermostat on the right, new on the left. You can see how the center section/valve are sitting at different heights between the two. Old one was stuck open, the car would NOT get to operating temp ever. Lack of heat and MPGs suffer some.
Not lacking heat now!
The timing belt job on these isn't too bad, but as is typical of most German cars, special tools are required and it's not a normal procedure.
The above is the official VW tool to lock the camshaft in place. You have to remove the vacuum pump, which is driven by the very same slot in the cam that this tool is using to lock the camshaft at TDC. Why would you need a tool? Why not just line up marks on the cam pulley? Because the cam pulley is supposed to be removed to do the timing belt, and the pulley is NOT keyed to the camshaft.
There's also a special lock pin for the injection pump, since that needs to be timed as well, as it is in control of when the pressure pulses of fuel reach the injectors, and the injectors are mechanical, internal pressure reaches a certain point and the injector receiving the pressure "pops" open and sprays fuel. The injection pump's job is to supply that fuel pressure, time when it gets to the injectors as well as control the quantity of fuel to the injectors.
Above is the new vs old water pump. The black impeller pump is an OE VW remanufactured water pump, so whoever did this job last used OE VW parts, might have been a dealer. The OE water pumps use a plastic impeller, the aftermarket replacement uses steel, made in Germany by a company I've used pumps from 100s of times now with good luck.. The previous owner didn't have a record of when the job was done and the belt was making noise, so everything in its path is getting replaced. All 3 rollers, belt tensioner and water pump.
The above is a look inside the engine block where the water pump goes. Clean, corrosion-free cast iron is pretty typical on one of these that has only been run on the OE VW G12/13 coolant. It's excellent stuff and that's exactly what I put back in the engine. This engine has 290,000 miles on it, if you remember from the original post.
The above is the old belt and related parts that got replaced. 3 rollers, tensioner and water pump.
New water pump, rollers and tensioner installed, ready for the new belt and to reinstall the engine mount bracket.
Belt now put in place, but timing not set. Engine mount bracket and mount reinstalled, engine properly suspended again with new mount bolts. Original 10 mm injection pump out, ready for my junkyard find 11 mm to get swapped in and then set the belt.
My junkyard upgrade pump now in, belt is set. Note on setting the belt, with the cam lock in place, pump lock pin in place, you set the belt on everything, leaving the cam pulley for last. Roll the cam pulley into the belt and push it onto the taper on the end of the camshaft, once again reminding you it is not keyed to the cam. Run the bolt in by hand, leave it loose, you tension the belt with the pulleys for both the pump and cam left loose. Double check the crankshaft top dead center mark on the flywheel, tweak as necessary to be perfect (remember, cam and pump pulleys are still loose/not keyed, but both cam and pump and locked in place with special tools), then torque down the cam and pump pulleys. Rotate engine over until you can lock everything down again with the special tools just as a double check. Once satisfied that everything is in time, go ahead and remove the lockdown tools, reinstall vacuum pump, lower timing belt covers, accessory belt tensioner, harmonic balancer and then install a new accessory belt.
Put in a new fuel filter, use the hand vacuum pump as you see in the photo above the previous paragraph to prime the filter and replacement pump with fuel, as there is no in-tank pump. The injection pump driven off the timing belt provides the suction to pull fuel from the sending unit in the tank, but if you don't prime the system, it will take forever to crank the car to get it restarted. Do not run out of fuel with one of these. Not only is it not easy to get restarted without some tools, but the pump is also lubricated by the fuel. You run it out of fuel, now the sensitive pump internals are spinning without adequate lubrication as well...
Pressure test the cooling system while putting some of the last things together, didn't drop a pound. Looks good. I have a vacuum prime tool for the cooling system. I use that, get the system primed with fresh G13 coolant and onto the next step.
The ALH code TDI that was put into Mk4 Golfs and Jettas from 1999-2003 and 'New Beetles' from 1998 through 2003 came with two different pumps. A 10 mm pump for the manual transmission cars and an 11 mm pump for the automatic transmission equipped cars. The manuals with the smaller pump got slightly larger injectors. I suppose this was VW manipulating torque curves and emissions for the two different transmissions. I've done numerous automatic to manual transmission swaps on cars equipped with this engine and I have to mechanically adjust the "quantity adjuster" of the pump to make the engine idle smoothly after doing the swap. The manual requires so much less fuel at idle that where the 11 mm pump is calibrated once the drivetrain is swapped to a manual, the pump backs up against the minimum amount of fuel it can accurately inject to maintain exactly the 900 RPM idle the ECU wants to see. This results in the engine bucking wildly once it's warmed up because it cannot control the fuel quantity accurately at its minimum end to maintain that 900 RPM idle.
So, once I get the engine started, I check the pump's "base timing" using a scan tool capable of VW specific protocols. "Basic setting 000" shows 10 or so raw digital sensor readouts in individual byte form, displayed in decimal format (0 to 255). This basic setting also shuts off the timing advance solenoid that's part of the injection pump so you can see what the base "starting" point of the mechanical timing of the pump. The car creates this value by taking a reading from the "needle lift sensor" and compare it to the crankshaft position sensor reading to generate an injection timing reading. Only injector #3 has that sensor. You're supposed to consult the repair manual and plot this raw timing reading vs a raw fuel temperature reading on the graph in the manual.
The VCDS software has those graphs built in and can plot the timing and temperature reading for you in real-time. Today, I was using an Autel scan tool, since I know what values I'm looking for without the graph anyway. Shut the engine down, loosen the 3 bolts on the injection pump pulley, use a 22 mm wrench to adjust the center nut backwards or forwards depending on if it needs to be advanced or retarded according to the acceptable range in the repair manual. I like to aim for the advanced side of timing in the acceptable range, so decimal values of 55-70 in basic setting field 2 is what I'm looking for. The 11 mm pump ramps up pressure a bit faster and I initially got a reading about 99 when I was done. Made an adjustment to retard the pump timing, started it up and rechecked my reading in basic setting 000, I get 70 this time. Perfect. Right on the exact high end of the acceptable range for the pump's base timing, and as the new timing belt stretches some as it breaks in, the timing will retard some, so putting it on the extreme advanced end of the acceptable range means that within 20,000 miles it will retard some.
Shut it back off, put the timing belt cover on, let it warm up some more and start to focus on the injected quantity.
Injected quantity readout on my scan tool. Field 2 is the quantity. As it warms up, it requires less fuel to maintain idle. When the engine is closer to 90 C temp, I tend to aim for about 3 mg/st to prevent "slow down shudder" harsh idle. In order to adjust it, I have to loosen the special triangle bolt on top the injection pump, and then the 3 T30 bolts on the lower part of the upper half of the pump, then literally take a soft blow hammer to the pump and move the upper half of the pump towards the passenger side to "reduce" fueling, which gives the pump more overhead to work with to maintain that 900 RPM idle speed so it won't shake violently trying to maintain that idle.
I got it closer to 4 since the engine wasn't yet fully warm, expecting that it will drop closer to 3 when warm. It was getting late and I wanted to close up and go home. I started the job just before 6 and was closing up and leaving just before 9 tonight.
It's taken me more than half of that time again just to write this! What's wrong with me??
Anyway, the car has very noticeable amount more power with the bigger pump, zero smoke even though it's getting more fuel because of the extra pressure the bigger pump provides helps keep it in check despite providing more quantity. And know peace of mind that the belt system is new and no longer making worrying noises. Another stage of work I'm already mulling over... Clutch, flywheel and maybe even a taller 5th gear. See what kind of crazy MPGs I can get!
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That is one hell of a list to go through
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A fair amount of that is regular maintenance items, too (although the thermostat isn't, and the injection pump not being replaced means you wouldn't have to adjust the quantity adjuster) - every 40-100k miles depending on original transmission and which timing belt kit is installed, if I recall correctly.
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Very nice. Are you going to do the Evry mod?
Also I am in need of some direction on my Jetta. It's a 1995 ABA/020 car, and I've been chasing a code 00515 open or short to plus. I've verified timing is correct and back probed the harness for the distributor. There is no short between the reference and signal wires in the harness. I swapped in two spare distributors, one known to be good (it's from my Golf, which throws no code). The code remains. Putting the Jetta's distributor into the Golf also throws no codes, so I'm sure that distributor is good. Ross-Tech and Bentley both say the issue is either bad wiring, bad distributor/hall sensor, bad timing, or bad ECU. The ECU I have in the car was bought from a guy who bought it from a guy who was a VW specialist and sold off all his parts when he retired- this ECU was his "known good" OBDI ABA test ECU.
So, the last thing for me to try is swap in a different OBDI ECU. I don't really want to, since they go for a hundred bucks in unknown condition on eBay, so everyone wants a hundred bucks for an ECU.
However, I do have a couple complete OBDII ABA dropouts complete with engine side harnesses and ECUs. This brings me to the actual question, can I just throw an OBDII harness (and throttle body setup) onto this engine or do I have to swap the dash harness? The 95 Jetta is fake OBDI, with a standard 16 pin OBDII port, the type you can only pull codes from with VCDS or similar.
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i owned a 99 AEG 2.0L jetta and daily coveted the euro TDIs on vwvortex. She started me on the path of car obsession, then I lost her in a downhill emergency braking -> tank slapper -> total loss.
So I'm totally addicted to, and living vicariously through your TDI posts. keep these posts coming!!
Dug up pics of my old A4 Jetta:
OEM HIDs
Euro sport grill
Euro TDI texured rub strips
chrome mirror caps
337 valances & skirts
337 steering wheel and ebrake lever
wood grain GLX dash/door cards/arm rest
GTI leather seats that flip forward (in a sedan! Best mod ever!)
E46 M3 spoiler
17" Monte Carlos from the 24V GLI swoonand the ghetto DIY black headliner mod. although I bought all the matching visors, dome lights and grab handle including the famous Euro sunglass holder grab handle accessory.
[extras: heated seat switches, rheostat for HID leveling, euro headlight switch for rear fog activation.]
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@qaaaaa Swapping harnesses is easy enough with the CE2 electrical system. It's all plug n play. You may want to get the OBD2 DLC harness as well. The great thing about CE2 is how modular it all is. Every individual system gets its own harness that separates out from the rest of the harnesses in a plug n play fashion.
I've done Mk3 VR6 to TDI swaps before. Swapping harnesses is actually pretty easy, even when changoing engine types.
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@kleebrz looks sharp! I like the euro-style black bump strips.
Nice seats, too. Those are pretty much exactly what I hope to luck into for this Golf.
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@dieseldub Ah, so the data port harness is different. To the junkyard, I suppose. I wish I could find a OBDI car at a yard, swapping an ECU is easier... oh well.
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@qaaaaa Also, no on the evry mod. The bigger pump does a better job. More fuel but also with higher pressure to keep the smoke in check.
Plus, it's very easy to put a tune on this and make an evry mod look silly, especially when combine with a fueling upgrade like a bigger pump and/or injectors.
The ALH starts at 90 hp and 155 ft lbs. Not terribly swift, but just the pump alone feels like it added 15ish hp. Not even kidding. It was VERY noticeable driving home last night the bump in power. Adding a tune on top of that may bring it closer to 120 hp, more if I also do bigger injector nozzles. Probably expect 135-140 hp max with the stock turbo with tune and supporting mods, which feels a lot faster than it sounds, especially compared to the stock 90 hp output.
Plus, we're talking taking it from 155 ft lbs of torque to over 200 ft lbs depending on the level of tune and fueling it ultimately ends up with. Stock turbo can support about 230 ft lbs.
Even though it's still not a race car, just how eager the torque comes on down low makes it pretty fun. Just have to adjust your expectations that you get a rush of power in the low and mid part of the rev band and then it starts to peter out as you approach 4000 RPM. Shift a bit early and you're rewarded with another good torque shove.
As a daily, these are the easiest manual trans cars to drive and the torque delivery right where the engine is used in everyday driving situations makes it a lot more fun than the horsepower number would suggest.
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@dieseldub Right, but the smoke!
I had a chinese stainless exhaust on my Jetta. I found the right mufflers and pipes to put a factory equivalent exhaust on the car for about a hundred bucks on ebay, shipped free. The car is very quiet now, and since it doesn't make cool raspy crackley noises now, I've started shifting at 2500-2800 RPM. The other day I concluded that I would probably like driving a Mk3 TDI. If I can find one, I'll likely snag it and do... something with this car. Unsure what.
I would really like to buy a two door Golf roller and AHU swap it. Make a GTD.
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@qaaaaa heck yeah. First swap I helped with way back in... 2009ish? Was a 97 GTI VR6 we put an AHU into.
The VR6 had a rod knock... 5 lug bits, better suspension geometry and all plus a well modded diesel made for a fun, unique car.
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@dieseldub There's a guy local to me with a GTI VR6 roller in ice violet metallic. He has an AHU to go with it. Pics on the ad are sparse and it doesn't mention if it comes with the hood, front bumper, or core support, but he want a grand for it. Kind of a big project, but I've thought about it a fair bit...
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@dieseldub Worth noting that with an 11 mm pump, Titan 502s, and RC stage 3, I was slipping a Sachs VR6 clutch on my ALH with the stock (although new production at the time) VNT15. I believe that'd put it somewhere north of 300 ft-lbs if the clutch wasn't defective?
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@bhtooefr the stock VR6 did definitely not have as much torque as that.
For example, my A4 B7 3.0 TDI 232hp/450nm has the same clutch (but not the same flywheel) as the RS4 of the same generation that has a 4.2 that has 420hp/420nm.
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@jb-boin He's talking about the supposed torque holding ability of the VR6 clutch he put on his TDI. They usually do hold up to right around 300 ft-lbs of torque, which of course a VR6 makes far less than that. But his modified TDI was apparently producing more than enough torque to cause that clutch to slip.
I suspect his clutch was no longer holding the original rated torque with his list of mods, though. Pretty difficult to get more than 240 ft lbs from an ALH with the stock turbo I think, so maybe the clutch had just been slipped a few too many times or just happened to be unlucky that the parts he got don't hold as much torque as they normally do.
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@dieseldub i actually wanted to say that the stock torque on both the TDI and the VR6 might have been quite close and thus the VR6 clutch might not have been an upgrade but instead i ranted about my own car.
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@jb-boin It was a rather common thing to use the Mk3 VR6 clutch disc and pressure plate with a Mk3 TDI solid flywheel, as a retrofit on Mk4s with the dual-mass flywheel, back when I had that installed.
...of course the Mk3 TDI clutch system turns out to be of very, very similar design (IIRC @dieseldub was actually who first posted that discovery to TDIClub), except for the springs in the clutch disc being set up to absorb a 4-cylinder's vibrations better, reducing the horrific rattle in neutral that VR6 clutched TDIs have.
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@bhtooefr said in Beater diesel Golf part 2:
...of course the Mk3 TDI clutch system turns out to be of very, very similar design (IIRC @dieseldub was actually who first posted that discovery to TDIClub), except for the springs in the clutch disc being set up to absorb a 4-cylinder's vibrations better, reducing the horrific rattle in neutral that VR6 clutched TDIs have.
Yuuup. But I think the 4 cylinder disk has different friction material, so it does hold a little less torque (has been measured on a clutch dyno at 275 ft lbs).
But for most stock turbo setups, that's perfectly fine. The pressure plate is the same between the two kits, so clamping force there is the same, it's just the friction material isn't quite as grabby I supppose. But, it definitely makes for a quieter, smoother driving experience to use the proper 4 cylinder single mass disk as opposed to the VR6 disk.
The original Mk3/B4 TDI clutch and flywheel setup was made by LuK and there are a few different part numbers. In the aftermarket, Sachs just uses the same pressure plate for the 228 mm designs no matter if it's VR6 or 4 cylinder.
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