2010 VW Polo - Timing chain gone.

[J4CKO]

Sheepshanks said:

J4CKO said:

I would be scouring the parts sites for the correct engine, this may or may not be the right type but as an example it is £595 (inc delivery) and you can make an offer.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/2013-VOLKSWAGEN-POLO-1-2...

Just be careful that they'll accept your broken engine in exchange.

Seems odd to be selling a non-reconditioned engine on an exchange basis though?

Yeah, was just an example for the OP though, find the code and scour the country for an engine as I dont expect the original unit will be in much of a state for repairing, I could be wrong and engine can suffer cam chain failure and be repaired but it isn't an expensive unit and would probably cost more to get repaired properly, a cam chain tends to do valves in, chain sprockets, tensioners, cam parts and even sometimes break castings, usually goes with even more of a bang than a belt.

[AJB]

lxm said:

I had traveled 70 motorway miles, parked the car on a steep gravel drive facing upward, on switching off the ignition the car jerked forward and there was a 'clunk' from the engine compartment, on re-starting the engine all hell broke loose with metal screaming, sounding like a tractor, I immediately turned the engine off and contacted my mechanic.

I don't get why the car would jerk forward because of an engine failure if it was in neutral and/or the clutch pedal was down. Is it possible that you'd accidentally left it in gear, and took your foot of the clutch suddenly as you switched it off. That would cause a jerk forward. Although it (obviously) shouldn't destroy the engine, suddenly stopping it dead like that could cause an already weak tensioner or loose chain to break/jump.

[Sheepshanks]

AJB said:

I don't get why the car would jerk forward because of an engine failure if it was in neutral and/or the clutch pedal was down. Is it possible that you'd accidentally left it in gear, and took your foot of the clutch suddenly as you switched it off. That would cause a jerk forward. Although it (obviously) shouldn't destroy the engine, suddenly stopping it dead like that could cause an already weak tensioner or loose chain to break/jump.

I was wondering about that too. Easily done though, I suppose.

There do seem to be all sorts of problems with VW timing chains and vehicles parked on slopes. From vehicles moving while the engine is off causing parts to move out of sync with each other and chains stretching to tensioner oil pressure not building properly on restart.

[lxm]

Got the car into a main VW dealer to be looked at under a family members business account. The warranty manager contacted VW UK and they stated that there was no goodwill 'allocated' to my year or model of car. The dealer has provided details of VW UK customer services if I wish to make a case.

The minimum costs was given at aprox £1000 to open the engine up to see what the damage was, and then for the engine to be closed up, this couldn't be discounted by any goodwill or contributions as it comes under investigative labour.

We agreed to go ahead and do this, and it is the best of the bad news. Only the top half of the engine is damaged, due to the timing chain failing whilst stationary. Parts can be replaced with the top half of the engine rebuilt. Parts are £900 plus the £1000 minimum labour cost.

The dealer is willing to apply a 'CGI' fund to the parts due to the family member holding a high value account with them. Basically the dealer pays 20%, indirectly VW UK pay 20% and we pay 60% of the parts. Overall our bill is aprox £1500


- The master mechanic at the dealer stated that I should have had some pre-warning, a consistent rattling from the engine. There has never been any unusual rattling from the engine, and to me this almost says that VW are aware of this issue.

-VW UK are pretty much saying that its acceptable for a 4.5 year old engine with a full service history to have a life-long part fail and cause severe damage, does anyone think it is worth while complaining once the work is done ?

I aim to have the car back tomorrow, Obviously the parts and work will come with a 2 year warranty and the dealer assures me if the same issue occured again it would be covered, labour included. (is this correct?)

I dont know if I feel happy keeping the car, I may look at trading it in for a new fiesta or something else with delivery miles, unfortunately most polos and golfs in my price range have a chain fitted 1.2/1.4 engine.

I still feel we have our breeks down and are being well and truly spanked.

Edited by lxm on Thursday 2nd April 11:43

Edited by lxm on Thursday 2nd April 11:44

Edited by lxm on Thursday 2nd April 11:45

[rallycross]

lxm said:

We agreed to go ahead and do this, and it is the best of the bad news. Only the top half of the engine is damaged, due to the timing chain failing whilst stationary. Parts can be replaced with the top half of the engine rebuilt. Parts are £900 plus the £1000 minimum labour cost.

The dealer is willing to apply a 'CGI' fund to the parts due to the family member holding a high value account with them. Basically the dealer pays 20%, indirectly VW UK pay 20% and we pay 60% of the parts. Overall our bill is aprox £1500

I still feel we have our breeks down and are being well and truly spanked.

Edited by lxm on Thursday 2nd April 11:43

It would be daft to sell it having just blown all that money at main dealer, main dealer is never the route to go with engine problems on an old/cheap car like this.

You could have done a cheap repair and then sold it on and saved yourself £500 - £700.

At least you now have a guarantee on the work done, you may as well keep it for a couple of years.

Edited by lxm on Thursday 2nd April 11:44

Edited by lxm on Thursday 2nd April 11:45

[Sheepshanks]

lxm said:

VW UK are pretty much saying that its acceptable for a 4.5 year old engine with a full service history to have a life-long part fail and cause severe damage, does anyone think it is worth while complaining once the work is done ?

It's got to be worth trying, but based on my own experience, I wouldn't be hopeful. I put a comment on VW UK's Facebook page and they asked me to contact them and told me the response I'd had from the dealer was unacceptable. They then ran me around in circles for a month before telling me exactly the same as the dealer had.

You don't see so many complaints on VW's facebook page now - I think people have stopped bothering as VW's social media people became quite practiced at fobbing people off. They also have a specific Twitter account for customer service too; https://twitter.com/vwukhelp

lxm said:

I aim to have the car back tomorrow, Obviously the parts and work will come with a 2 year warranty and the dealer assures me if the same issue occured again it would be covered, labour included. (is this correct?)

Yes. Although the cynical side of me would think they'll say that the new fault is unrelated to the old one.

lxm said:

I dont know if I feel happy keeping the car, I may look at trading it in for a new fiesta or something else with delivery miles, unfortunately most polos and golfs in my price range have a chain fitted 1.2/1.4 engine.

If you get a car with a belt then they're much more likely to break, and you've got a chunky expense in changing them every 4-5 yrs.

Just be a little more cautious with Polo engine and make sure you don't put load on it while it's not running, or, after starting, until it's running properly. Might even be worth avoiding parking on steep slopes.

Edited by Sheepshanks on Thursday 2nd April 12:10

[Sensibleboy]

I've heard VW design their cars for a 300k km lifespan. That clearly isn't the case here.

[Hoofy]

Just park it outside the VW dealer with a big sign reading "Wouldn't buy a nearly new VW - timing chain might go, wrecking the engine, VW won't care."

[J4CKO]

Why on earth would you got to a main dealer with a broken 5 year old car that is out of warranty, even with the various business accounts and other stuff it is £1500, £1000 to open up a broken engine ffs, how, its a couple of hours labour, in fact I am sure any mechanic could probably determine if the engine is toast at the side of the road in five minutes.

The real way to do this is to find and engine and roll your sleeves up and get it done yourself.

[lxm]

J4CKO said:

Why on earth would you got to a main dealer with a broken 5 year old car that is out of warranty, even with the various business accounts and other stuff it is £1500, £1000 to open up a broken engine ffs, how, its a couple of hours labour, in fact I am sure any mechanic could probably determine if the engine is toast at the side of the road in five minutes.

The real way to do this is to find and engine and roll your sleeves up and get it done yourself.

Unfortunately at the time we didn't know if the engine needed replacing or if parts could simply be replaced. It was £1k to find out in full terms what the repair was looking like. They state its a 4-5 hour job to open it up and dismantle the bits and bobs, and then the same to close it up.

If the engine had been gubbed and needed replaced, we could only initiate a claim with VW UK once this had been diagnosed at a main dealer (this seems apparent via forums across the board with SEAT, SKODA & other VW) I agree it is almost a back against the wall scenario.

I intend to speak with VW UK, the worst they can do is tell me to go away. I will submit a case along with the repair bill and itemized parts list.

Will keep updated,

[aka_kerrly]

lxm said:

We agreed to go ahead and do this, and it is the best of the bad news. Only the top half of the engine is damaged, due to the timing chain failing whilst stationary. Parts can be replaced with the top half of the engine rebuilt. Parts are £900 plus the £1000 minimum labour cost.


I dont know if I feel happy keeping the car, I may look at trading it in for a new fiesta or something else with delivery miles, unfortunately most polos and golfs in my price range have a chain fitted 1.2/1.4 engine.

I still feel we have our breeks down and are being well and truly spanked.

So as suspected a few new valves, a headgasket kit and timing chain kit, not the £6k you were originally thinking!

I simply cannot understand the logic that having spent a grand fixing it you want to punt it on and buy another car which might suffer a failure of some description to for example there have been a few threads on here about Ford Ecoboost engines failing with far less than 40k, more like 4k miles on them but no doubt many thousands of owners who haven't had issues.

Your Polo is much the same, VW will have fitted millions of chain driven engines in the last few years and perhaps 5-10% have had failures, I know it's harsh when it's your car (my timing chain snapped to) however I bought all the parts and fixed it myself for £600 and have done 4,000 miles since.

[Stoatman]

A grand to open it up and have a look , crikey moses !. 9-10 hours at 100+ an hour just for labour. ?!

[rallycross]

Stoatman said:

A grand to open it up and have a look , crikey moses !. 9-10 hours at 100+ an hour just for labour. ?!

Main dealer rip off shocker but that's how they do it, customer is already committed to spending £1k after only one hours labour ( take head off).

[Sheepshanks]

I think he's been "lucky" with the dealer as they've found the damage is quite limited - he'd have been in trouble if they'd said "nah, needs a new engine".

As it is he's managed to mitigate the cost a little and there's always the outside chance VW will chip in some more. And he's got a 2yr warranty.

I'd also rather be arguing with a VW and a big dealership than with an indie if it turns out that the work being done now doesn't fix the problem.

[itcaptainslow]

rallycross said:

Stoatman said:

A grand to open it up and have a look , crikey moses !. 9-10 hours at 100+ an hour just for labour. ?!

Main dealer rip off shocker but that's how they do it, customer is already committed to spending £1k after only one hours labour ( take head off).

Cylinder head removal will take a fair bit longer than "one hour" on most modern OHC chain/belt driven engines...

My bet is the dealer has quoted the complete remove, overhaul & refit cylinder head time so the customer is semi-prepared, then will add the parts required on top. If they quote the bare removal time, they could potentially have a car stuck on a ramp immobile if the customer then says "No" to any further costs.

[lxm]

The car has been repaired and is running well.

The original labour cost quote was inclusive of fitting all the new parts. Looking at the invoice and part numbers, the chain and tensioner which have been fitted are different parts from the original chain and tensioner which were fitted in 2010 during the vehicles build. Does this show that VW have improved parts due to originals being faulty or unreliable?

I plan to draft an email tonight for VW uk. As previously stated this seems to be an issue common with all 2009-2010 Volkswagen petrol engines fitted with timing chains. After trawling through various forums VW Australia and VW Germany issued workshop bulletins on the issue relating to the timing chain tensioner which advised than an updated tensioner be fitted, but not VW UK.

Does anyone have any pointers for drafting up the email? Its worth a shot.

Edited by lxm on Friday 10th April 18:30

Edited by lxm on Friday 10th April 18:31

[C. Grimsley]

I still think you have been had over, a manufacturer makes an engine with no chain replacement requirement and it breaks, they say no to any help, you take the car to them (they have had you once) and still get overly charged!!


That was a £800 repair at worst, done plenty myself.

Carl

[marmitemania]

As I have said on a few of these VW threads we must head the info and remember VW's are the very pinnacle of reliability and build quality and we must always continue to buy them without question.

[lxm]

FYI I paid just under £1600 for the repair, the letter has been drafted and I shall put it up this evening.

[Gary C]

Crikey, a broke timing chain ? That's poor. Is it a simplex or duplex chain ? You can never rule out manufacturing defects but chains have been around since the year dot so I am amazed if it's a design fault. Plenty of 100k plus metzger engines with the original chains after 30 years.

Does make me wonder if it's been abused previously, but even then it's hard to see how the bearings would be ok but the chain damaged.


I've got a 1.0 polo 6c, so will be listening carefully