2.0 TDI Question For The Tame Technician

2.0 TDI Question For The Tame Technician

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AntJC

Original Poster:

182 posts

201 months

Saturday 6th March 2010
quotequote all
Hi TT,

I've followed may threads on here, and other forums regarding the rough idle issues with he 2.0tdi.

Having just bought a 81K A3 2.0tdi, complete with rough idle, I thought I would start by checking the fuel quality. Whipped out the old fuel filter, that was a black a coal and drained out the contents of the fuel filter housing into a clean jar. Sure enough the derv was not the colour as expected. Turned out to be a very dark brown and I'm sure that you can see the minute specks of oil trace in there. Also cleaned a nice black film coating off the insides of the filter housing as well.

So armed with this initial prognosis, its looks like new injector seals, lift pump and a good clean out of the fuel tank are in order.

Question is, are both of these replacements within the realms of a good amateur mechanic as I’d like to replace them myself. If so are there any guides on the net or how too that you could point me at. Failing that can I purchase the official VAG tech guide for replacing these for some where??

Regards

Antony

00161wj

566 posts

209 months

Saturday 6th March 2010
quotequote all
I wouldnt worry about that to be honest.
A cambelt change is due every 75,000 miles or 5 years. So the chances are that it will have recently had the cambelt changed and the fuelling is set to low. This is adjusted by simply turning the exhaust cam to the right VERY slightly. Ideally you should be reading the measured value block as to what the fuelling is exactly at and adjusting accordingly.
To be honest your best off taking it to the dealers and getting it done properly for the sake of 50 quid!

AntJC

Original Poster:

182 posts

201 months

Saturday 6th March 2010
quotequote all
Thanks for your suggestion. It had a cam belt last week, and had lumpy hot idle before.

I don't think that cam timing would solve this:




or this though??



Tame Technician

2,467 posts

205 months

Saturday 6th March 2010
quotequote all
The real trouble with the 2.0TDI and rough idle is, you can go to the trouble/cost of replacing the injector seals and still have the same problem. I'd strongly recomend having the injectors ultrasonically cleaned if you are going to take them out. But even then, they do often still have a bit of a rough idle. But the oil in the fuel is almost certainly the fault of the injector seals. A But I must add a faulty tandem pump (internal leak) can do the same thing.

I couldnt find a pic of an audi 2.0tdi one, but this is very similar.


On the audi injector the two seals are lower down, one is plain black and one has white flashes. It is really important that go one the right way round, so change the seals on one injector at a time, so there is always at least one built up correctly to look at if you cant remember.

Strickly speaking it isnt really a DIY job as the are a number of special tools required, but I have done a few sets on my drive with only a tiny torque rench (needs to measure 3Nm) and normal hand tools.

I dont know where you will find the instructions, I can give you a basic idea of whats involve but not the full prcudure, so you can decide if your up to it.


Top cam belt cover off, - two clips

Cam cover off, - 10 or so T30's

Rocker shaft off (one used strech bolts x 5) - Mutilspline tool 10 I think, maybe 12.

Injector harness unbolt retaining braket and disconnect injectors, - 5mm ball-allen

Remove injector bolts (2 for each injector one use strech bolts x8)- Mutilspline very small maybe 6 or 8.

Should use a special tool here but a carefull lever with a pry bar under the unit injector spring top coil and the injectors should pop out.

Replace the seals and unit injector top contact spacer, make sure everything is in the right place.

Again should use a special tool here, but the homey way is drop each injector in its hole, very loosly put the new injector bolts in, then tap the top of the injector with a socket until it pushes into position inside the head.

Then do up the bolts, 3Nm + half a turn + half a turn. If you didnt press the injector fully down the bolts will snap.

Then the rocker shaft back on, 25nm + 1/4 turn. New adjusters/conntact spacer fitted.

Then you need to set up the tappet like adjustemt on the rocker shaft, (6 mm allen and 18mm spanner). Turning the engine over by hand until each injector in turn is fully compressed, you are supposed to use a dial gauge, but the dwell is more than 45 crankshaft degress so you can do it by eye. When the injector is fully compressed you turn the adjuster all the way down until you feel the injector needle bottom out, then back off half a turn and lock up the adjuster. do this for each injector.

Covers back on job done, there will be a long crank before it fires while it builds up fuel pressure again, and you might get a bit of knock as some fuel will have ran into the pistons while the injecors were out.



Edited by Tame Technician on Saturday 6th March 21:36


Edited by Tame Technician on Saturday 6th March 21:37

AntJC

Original Poster:

182 posts

201 months

Saturday 6th March 2010
quotequote all
Thanks for the reply TT.

Do you know what is the official VAG time allowance for this job, if I decide to go to the dealer. I suppose I could ask if they can clean the injectors on site, as the seals would be replaced as a matter of course??

Also, would you suggest replacing the tandem pump, as I believe from previous searches they can suffer from oil seal failure, and spoil the fuel as well??

Is it's replacement a simple bolt off/on job?? Just seeing of I can save a few pennies if I have to get the dealer to do the injectors.

Regards

Antony

Edited by AntJC on Saturday 6th March 21:48

Tame Technician

2,467 posts

205 months

Saturday 6th March 2010
quotequote all
There is also an electric pump in the tank, thats the one we usually refer to as lift pump.

The one you are talking about on the back of the head is the tandem pump (so called because its a fuel pump and vacuum pump, in tandem). It does just unbolt, 3x 6mm allen, one is hard to get on need a 6mm ball allen, or a normal allen socket and remove the rear coolant housing for access.

Injecor seal book time is about 2.2 - 2.5hrs. Ring your local audi centre service department, and ask if they have the special tool for cleaning injecors, its not on the compulsary tool list so not every one will have it. But our one paid for its self in about a month, so maybe everyone else will have got one by now.

AntJC

Original Poster:

182 posts

201 months

Saturday 6th March 2010
quotequote all
Thanks.

I have 3 Audi dealers, and the same number of VW dealers within a reasonable travel distance from home, so will start calling round on Monday.

Will also call the local TPS for a price for the Tandem pump, as that looks like a straight forward job.

Would you suggest removing the lift pump and cleaning out the fuel tank after I have the injectors cleaned and seals replaced, or should I wait till the tandem pump is replaced as well.

Regards

Antony

Tame Technician

2,467 posts

205 months

Saturday 6th March 2010
quotequote all
AntJC said:
Thanks.

I have 3 Audi dealers, and the same number of VW dealers within a reasonable travel distance from home, so will start calling round on Monday.

Will also call the local TPS for a price for the Tandem pump, as that looks like a straight forward job.

Would you suggest removing the lift pump and cleaning out the fuel tank after I have the injectors cleaned and seals replaced, or should I wait till the tandem pump is replaced as well.

Regards

Antony
I'd have the injectors cleaned first (new seals obviously), then clean out the tank etc. Recheck the fuel condition in the filter housing, if its clean, dont do the tandem pump at all.

Tame Technician

2,467 posts

205 months

Saturday 6th March 2010
quotequote all
00161wj said:
I wouldnt worry about that to be honest.
A cambelt change is due every 75,000 miles or 5 years. So the chances are that it will have recently had the cambelt changed and the fuelling is set to low. This is adjusted by simply turning the exhaust cam to the right VERY slightly. Ideally you should be reading the measured value block as to what the fuelling is exactly at and adjusting accordingly.
To be honest your best off taking it to the dealers and getting it done properly for the sake of 50 quid!
Have you done this alot? No one at our place has ever done anything like this on the 2.0TDI, we use the normal "lolly pop" cam locking tools and the normal crank locking one, set the belt tension, and thats the cam timing done. Only engine where we adjust pump timing in that manner is the old 2.5 TDI.

Would be interested to know what MVB you look at and if you have improved idle quality this way. My understanding was as the PD injectors are fired electrically towards the end of there "pump" slight movement of the cam had no effect on injection. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

AntJC

Original Poster:

182 posts

201 months

Saturday 6th March 2010
quotequote all
Thanks TT thumbup

I'll get back to you with an update once I have had the injectors cleaned and the seals replaced.

Regards

Antony

hollow

11 posts

170 months

Thursday 25th March 2010
quotequote all
hi im new to the forum and this is my first post , hoping to get an inteligent useful reply ,it seems your 1 of the only ppl who knows what there talking about when it comes to the bkd engine .

i have excatly the same problem as posted in this thread except for 2 variants

firstly my car has a serious misfire , not only on tick over but all they way through the revs

secondly when driven its a though the accelerator has a mind of its own , surging and lurching forward ,then struggling to move sometimes with out even touching the throttle .

i have replaced the in tank fuel pump , the fuel filter , the tandem pump ( i believed this was the source of the oil in the diesel ) and today the injector seals , car took ages to fire back up after that . but it ran with a severe constant misfire
car was taken to the audi dealers who stated they had never seen a problem as severe ,and only could suggest changing all the injectors ,cam , lifters and maybe even a replacement complete head !

car was put on computer no engine faults ?

im at a loss ,and so will my wallet be if audi get the chance ,even my wife is getting pi55ed at me as though its my fault

Tame Technician

2,467 posts

205 months

Thursday 25th March 2010
quotequote all
Should have gone to the dealer first. Now you have changed all that stuff will be harder to tell whats up. With the greatest respect in the world, the more the customer has chenged the more potental of somthing being fitted wrong. For example, When you did the injector seals did you "DEFFINATLY" get the top and bottom ones the right way round & Did you use new strech bolts.

Dealer should have checked the measured value blocks for injector trimming at idle if the fault memory had nothing. Would posibly isolate which cylinder is missing (asuming only one).

Would have been nice to check this before and after doing the seals, and moving the injecors from cylinder to cylinder at this time to aid Diagnostics. Generally speaking If its missing on only one, its that injector unit. If its a number of cylinders is more likely to be a fuel pressure issue, but can be the cylinder head.


But dont panic We can still work through this logically.


Misfires on a PD engine are usually only becaused by 2 things, not enough fuel pressure, or the injector not fueling correctly (for what ever reason). There is technically a 3rd problem if you count EGR valves sticking, but thats more an A4 than an A3 thing so we'll ignore that for now.

Best thing you can do at this time is artificially raise the fuel pressure and see if it improves, if it does you have a problem with the fuel pressure, if its exactly the same we can rule out all the posible causes of low fuel pressure and continue are logical diagnosis. I'll go into what to do next once we know.

SO To raise the fuel pressure artificially you need to clamp the return pipe, preferable with a proper pipe clamp but molegrips will do. The return pipe if the rubber hose under the bonnet comming from the tandem pump. Its the one with the fuel temperature sensor in it. Clamp that off, if the idle improves go for a (VERY SHORT) drive to make sure its better under load too. report back here and I'll tell you what to try next either way.

Again I cant see why the dealer didnt try this, would be the first thing I tried, is a 2 minite test that rules out half the posible causes of the fault. I've even road tested with customers, stoped put the the clamp on. Troube with that is, when the car is magically fixed, they always wont you to leave the clamp on rather than pay the £000's to fix it properly. (a viable option only if you fit the clamp as you drop it off at the car auctions)

hollow

11 posts

170 months

Thursday 25th March 2010
quotequote all
sorry for the slightly misleading information , i forgot to say that is one of the first procedures that was done with the correct tool , i have a very good mechanic freind who until a year ago was the master tech at doncater vw dealers . before going to the audi dealers also in doncaster he tried all the usual diagnosis , he even checked the fuel pressure of the tandem pump whiich reads 3 at idle and if revved breifly goes off scale .

he also has the 5051 computer plus the all useful vagcom lead and has read mutiple things in the measuring blocks i know group 013 reads 0.00 on all cylinders unless took above tick over which then the deviation only slightly changes .

trying to be more precise if the car is started from cold 99% of the time the car will run normal for maybe 10 seconds without missing a beat then the misfire happens and the car starts with black smoke .

it was taken on a brief drive today up the road . the car has alot more power than it should have ,it accelrates way to quickly ,that isnt the drivers fault ,a slight touch on the pedal is like having the throttle fully open

Tame Technician

2,467 posts

205 months

Thursday 25th March 2010
quotequote all
OK then thats the easy stuff done.

MVB 13 shouldnt really be 0 on all 4, is very odd, they should all move around a bit at idle too. Only car I ever had that said 0 some one had put a stupid tuning box on it and said box then failed. The round black connector at the rear of the head (where all the injectors and glow plugs wires are) is where it was attached, make sure there isnt a link leed between the cars and the engines black connector. Pretty unlikely this one but worth a quick look.


This is interesting
hollow said:
.

trying to be more precise if the car is started from cold 99% of the time the car will run normal for maybe 10 seconds without missing a beat then the misfire happens and the car starts with black smoke .
This is text book for the EGR valve stuck open or broken. Have it alot of the A4 2.0tdi with the electronic EGR valves, not had it before on the A3 with the vac controlled one, but symtoms are bang on so worth a look. DO THIS FIRST, THIS COULD BE IT.

Block the EGR valve off (where the EGR gasses come from the cooler into the valve, two 5 ro 6mm allen key bolts) You can use a piece of card or somthing if its only at idle, if you going up the road with it needs to be a bit of drinks can or somthing that wont burn. See if it improves with the EGR blanked off, it that fixes it, the EGR valve is stuck open or broken.


The power and delivery being all over the place and the MVB 13 being 0 could mean the ECU is faulty, but with no real way of testing it properly leave that till last.

However If you mate has one available, the black box on the bulkhead with all the vacuum pipes coming out of it, sub this for a known good one, just to test. (must have a cusomer or two with BKD engines), quick and easy to swap/test/swap back.

hollow

11 posts

170 months

Thursday 25th March 2010
quotequote all
thanks for the suggestion with the egr valve ,this has been tested with a vac test , (sorry tried so many things forgot to mention some of them )

when vacumn was applied to the egr it did change the note of the engine as though it eased the misfire a little but it wasnt physically examined for internal damage . i will test this tomorrow

the pipes on the black box where disconected with the car running by removing the clip that disconnects the base part with all the vacumn lines connected. no difference there. i have to call at the mates tomorrow so will arrange to borrow one for an hour

Edited by hollow on Thursday 25th March 20:36

hollow

11 posts

170 months

Friday 26th March 2010
quotequote all
im hoping the problem is solved , we changed the egr valve today plus the black vacumn box no difference ,what got me today was the fact that 1 min it was running like a pig then it would just spring back into life and run normal ,unusual if it was a bad injector . any whipped ecu off car and then spent a good hour or so opening it up .nothing physical a miss tried on car whilst open and car wouldnt run at all mil light was on . resoldered all pins out of the ecu with no effect .

decided to reflow the ecu so set up a little stand and got to work with the hot air , 20 mins later ecu was again tried on car mil light went out as ignition was turned on ,car fired up perfectly and ran without missing a heart beat for over 2 hours .

hopefully that will see and end to the problem , if not ive sourced the correct ecu for the car and would have it matched the the clocks .

but at least now i know where to look if the problem surfaces again.

thanks for your help TT if it wasent for your post suggesting an ecu fault i would have probably never tried looking in that direction .

AntJC

Original Poster:

182 posts

201 months

Friday 2nd April 2010
quotequote all
Hi TT,

As promised here is an update.

After replacing the Tandem Pump, cleaning out the fuel filter, fuel tank and tank pump, and running the car for 600 or so miles the idle is still very rough. Also had to replace the IMF, as it was jammed open, but was not tripping an emissions light like some I have read about on here. None of the local VAG dealers have the cleaning equipment, and two diesel injection companies claim that 2.0tdi injectors cannot be cleaned!!!

So invested in VAG Com this week to have a more detailed look. No significant logged faults (just glow plug 2 & 4 suspect low voltage error). After reading Hollows posts here I'd thought I'd log Group 13 on the engine as the figures look all over the place at idle for each injector.



mg/str mg/str mg/str mg/str
0.02 -0.54 0.19 0.28
0.02 -0.54 0.21 0.28
0 -0.54 0.21 0.31
0.02 -0.54 0.19 0.31
0.02 -0.54 0.19 0.28
0.02 -0.52 0.19 0.28
0.05 -0.49 0.19 0.26
0.05 -0.49 0.19 0.24
0.05 -0.52 0.21 0.24

What do you think, as the rought idle is otherwise spoiling a very good car.

Regards

Tame Technician

2,467 posts

205 months

Friday 2nd April 2010
quotequote all
Whats IMF?????

How bad is the idle, most 2.0TDI's hav a bit of roughness to them, miss a beat or stumble every 10 seconds or so.


Those figures, for MVB 13, are supposed to be all over the place. And those values look pretty good to me. Cylinder two need a litle bit less fuel than the rest, but its no way near out of spec.

When you have a failed injector its sits statick at 2.99 on one cylinder, and as you may have read above, it the ECU is playing up and not trimming the injecotrs properly they all say 0.00 and dont move.

I'm goin going to work for a few hours tomorrow, I'll have a look if there are any TPL's for software updates etc. I'll try and get the tool number for the injector cleaner too, cant believe no one else has got it.

As you havnt done it yet might be worth checking the operation of the EGR valve, just to rule it out before you pay out on having the injectors cleaned. As you have a VAGCOM now you can simply disconnect the vacuum pipe that goes to the EGR valve and plug it as a temp test. IF the engine suddenly idles nicely, we know its EGR relaited. Stoping the EGR working like this will log a code, but now you have vagcom you can just clear it after the test.

Also see if you can adjust the idle speed to 800rpm.

hollow

11 posts

170 months

Monday 5th April 2010
quotequote all
i know alot of people who have adjusted the cams slightly to adjust the torsion value as close to 0 as they can get , i found that using the correct timing tools showed my timing was slightly out by setting it bang on it removed 99% of the roughness . but as tame technician stated the 2.0 tdi does miss a beat every so often . that is normal . mine was shaking all over the place and sounded as though it was on 3 cylinders .

update is my car is still running fine ,and the diesel is clean once again .

AntJC

Original Poster:

182 posts

201 months

Monday 5th April 2010
quotequote all
Hi Tame,

IMF = Inlet Manifold Flap

Timing value is -0.5 so not going to try and adjust it to 0.0.

Engine miss a beat every couple of seconds. I've owned 1.9PD's and they are like silk in comparison to the 2.0TDI.

Idle is 810, actual value varies between 798/810. Tried lowering it to 800, but it was not happy and was more lumpy than at 810.

Will get another fuel filter and empty out the fuel filter housing and check that he derv is clear now.

Looks like I might just have to live with this then...

Regards