VW main dealership ruined my engine

[Pickard1 0]

Hi,

I was a long term member of the forum when I had my Corrado's and always found it really useful. I've got a bit of a problem at the moment - not corrado related - and I thought some on here might have some advice. I also seem to recall that there were a few current/ex VW technicians.

 

Heres the history:

 

My sister has a 56 reg TDI VW golf. It is out of warranty, but she received an email relating to a product recall on injectors. She arranged to take the car in for 4 new injectors FOC.

When she arrived to collect the car later in the day the service manager greeted her and told her that they had found a problem with the car while carrying out the injector change. They had found a hole in the cylinder head. He informed her that he couldnt let her drive it away as the hole was rather large and all of the oil would quickly come out. She would have to have it trailered, or he would fit her a new head for £2,500.00. Smelling a bit of a rat my sister decided to have it trailered away to her local garage.

 

My sister knows nothing about cars, so she gave me a call. I used to work for an OEM engine manufacturer - in particular looking at failed engines. I went to inspect the car, with the head still on the block. There was a hole approximately the size of a 50p piece in the rear panel of the cylinder head, behind the No1 lobe of the exhaust cam.

In my experience of working in an engine assembly plant the cause of this type of damage is dropping a tool or a part behind the cam, which is then forced through the casting when the engine is turned over.

 

I phoned the dealership to ask them to explain. They called the history of the car into question. Claiming that because during the previous 8 years it had been serviced/repaired at non VW garages and that therefore they couldnt take any responsibility for the damage. When put on the spot they had to admit that the hole was not there previously as there was no gross oil leak (the engine bay would have been covered if you actually started it). They then claimed that previous stress on the engine had weakened it sufficiently that a piece fell out when they slackened the top cover bolts. (It sounds like he was suggesting fatigue)

 

I wrote them a letter stating that in my professional judgement that the cause of the damage was a tool/part left behind the camshaft and that they must replace the head and all assosiated parts.

 

They responded offering to cover 80% of the costs - i.e. my sister still needed to pay £500.

 

I wrote again saying that I would take them to court unless they did the work free of charge. I could have an independent failure report done to confirm that the damage was a one off overload (as in a tool pushed through the casting) rather than a longstanding issue (fatigue), but they would also be liable for the cost of this.

 

They then agreed to do the head free of charge. Even though they did it free of charge they are still refusing to admit that the damage was caused by them or their technician.

 

When we went to pick the car up it turned out that they had re-used the cam belt. I am not pleased about this. If a part had been lodged behind the cam then the force to push it through the casting will have been transmitted through the cam belt. The belt is not designed to do this. We no longer have any confidence in the cambelt and will probably have to get it changed, even though it was done less than a year ago.

 

I have tried the customer complaints department of VW Uk but cant get anywhere. Does anyone have any advice? I know it might seem like I am being picky, we have got a free cylinder head afterall, but in my opinion we should be returned to the position we were in before the incident at the VW dealership - i.e. a cambelt that hasnt been used to force something through the cylinder head! I am also annoyed at the fact that the dealership tried to rip off my sister for £2,500.00 - I wonder how many other non-knowlegable people they have pulled similar tricks on.

 

I am a bit unsure where to go now. I would like to take them to the small claims court, but it would likely get very technical. I dont know if this dispute is applicable for this. Also I would essentialy be an 'expert witness' but I'm not technically independent of the case, although it would be more than my job is worth to lie in a matter such as this.

 

I've also thought about watchdog, but again I think its too specific an issue to my sister and not generic enough (i.e. renault clio bonet releases, BMW alloy wheels)

 

I have the cylinder head in the boot of my car. I wanted to keep the 'evidence' as they were saying it had to be scrapped back to Germany. To 'buy' the scrap part cost me £264.00, but I didnt want them destroying the evidence of what they have done. I can post some pictures of the damage.

 

Is anyone a VW technician, or could they post the rough procedure for changing the injectors. Its the 2.0 TDI engine. I know on my 1.9 passat there is a setting tool, and I suspect that this is what has gone through the cylinder head.

 

Many thanks.....sorry for the long post.

[Goldie 2]

Sounds like an absolute nightmare..

 

What would you like them to do at this stage apart from admit responsibility? In thier eyes as they have covered the cost of the repair they probably want to leave it. Are you wanting to have another cam belt fitted at their expense?

[seanl82 23]

Cant really offer any advice, but the £264 you spent buying back the scrap head, would surely have paid an independent to fit a brand new genuine belt anyway. Seems extremely finicky to me.

[P3rks 11]

Cant really offer any advice, but the £264 you spent buying back the scrap head, would surely have paid an independent to fit a brand new genuine belt anyway. Seems extremely finicky to me.

 

This is the first thing I thought.

[dr_mat 0]

Nightmare, and .. well done for getting them to pay for the work you've managed to get them to do.

 

I may have cut my losses and got out of there at that point though. Yes they should have changed the cam belt JUST because it's a "wear" item and it was off anyway, but I don't think there's any big deal on leaving it on the car for now.

 

I don't think I'd have bought the spare part either - I think I'd have let them dispose of the evidence and settled with a warm smug feeling that you were right all along and they tacitly admitted it by agreeing to do the work for free. Take lots of really good photographs, if you feel the need, then walk away and never look back.. !

[lewvw 10]

Surely you could have taken photos of the head without paying all that money to keep it?

[quicky1980 0]

Hate to say it but you wont get anywhere. You could end up spending a fortune in time and money trying to prove they messed up. But here are my comments if you want to try.

 

The hole can be checked for fatigue fractures to indicate if it occurred due to over loading ie something pushed against it or due to long term wear. (do you have the piece that broke off too? Show us the area of failure as its hard to say if its a weak point of the head.

 

I would ask them to indicate why the non OEM servicing would have caused this failure. Maybe even tell them that the cylinder head has been inspected by a materials lab (it may nudge them to change the cambelt)

 

I do feel for you mate, I would be proper miffed at it as I wouldn't have confidence in the engine either.

 

My personal opinion, take the head back, bull**** them about the head having been checked and you have evidence suggesting a foreign object had caused the hole. Get your money back for the cylinder head and see if theyll do the belt change. Bonus if they do, if they dont "accidentally" the head on their nice show room floor tiles and cut your losses.

 

TBH, I don't trust any main dealer. Independent specialists give you a better service in my experience.

[Supercharged 2]

Unbelievable...

 

Interestingly I think a slide hammer is used to remove the injectors!

[Craig 0]

Interesting read. Sorry for the hijack, My mum has a Passat, 56 plate i think that was recalled for the same issue, something about the injectors. She took it the the vw garage in Southampton about 6 months ago.

 

My mum is fastidious when it comes to looking after anything and keeps thing immaculately clean, as soon as she went to pick the car up she noticed the bonnet was not sitting flush on the near side by the headlight. She initially thought it was not shut properly but on inspection it was fully closed.

 

After a long debate where my mum advised it was not like that when she brought it in, they took the car back round, presumably bent it back and then gave it back to her, still slightly out of line.

 

She accused them of leaving a tool under the bonnet when they shut it but they denied this. She also thinks they left the oil cap off and started it as oil was on the bonnet soundproofing.

 

They denied any damage and when asked about cctv footage, conveniently for them it had been faulty and was in available. They then brought into question the cars history saying it had had new paint on the bonnet in the past due to a tiny paint blister and therefore likely had been in an accident. The car was first registered new at the dealers in rotherham where my grandad bought it from them and then handed the car down to my mum a few years ago for a present so we know the car had not been in any incident unless it was done when owned by vw themselves.

 

Anyway long story short they denied any wrong doing, blamed everything they could other than admit someone might have made a mistake and treated my mum as if she was a lier trying to get something for nothing.

 

It's lucky I wasn't there with her that's all ill say but it disgusted me they could treat a customer this way. I work in a customer environment and if my company treated customers like this I would be appalled.

 

Seems vw are far from the reputable brand they once were and have problems in their garages with customer relations.

 

I'm glad at least tho you were able to have the issue pretty much fully resolved.

[seanl82 23]

Its because most dealerships are not fully run by the manufacturers any more. Most are now franchises, and operate solely to earn as much cash as possible, whilst living off the brand name.

[Pickard1 0]

Craig - a lot of the stuff they said to you rings true with my experience.

 

They kept trying to muddy the waters with regards to the cars history. For instance when my sister dropped the car off she asked if the injector recall could be connectted to an occasional problem she had with the car not starting. i.e. the car is completely dead hen you turn the ignition, no cranking or anything. The service manager was saying that this was an admission of a pre existing fault and probably a symptom of the hole in the head! Clearly the type of electronic fault she mentioned is nothing to do with a crack in a casting, as well the service manager should know, but he still tried to muddy the water.

 

He also suggested that it was too much of a coincidence that my sister should have a brother that happened to be knowlegable on engine failures and that we had brought the car as a known wrong 'un. With the intention of palming the damage off on an innocent, unsuspecting VW dealership. This argument seems crazy when you consider that they contacted us out of the blue about the recall.

 

I was also told that it would be 'illigal' for them to give me the failed head back. I offered to give them a cheque for the value if I could take it away for a few days and return it. But apparently VW Kassel would notice that it had gone. They couldnt provide me information on how often they actually send shipments of exchange parts back to Germany - I struggle to believe that the giant machine of VW would have noticed if it took them a week longer to send a part back.

 

A lot of the accusations they made were by phone. A running theme of the disagrement was that I would send them a letter / email and they would only respond verbally. The service manager was like a slippery eel. This supprised me from a company with a reputation like VW. I would expect this type of behaviour from some dodgy back-street independent. But I thought the whole justification for £90 an hour labour charges was the customer service and the piece of mind that the job is done properly.

 

What do I want to acheive?

 

To me the main thing is that the cam belt needs to be replaced. It is not designed to carry the load that it would have sustained when the object was forced through the head.

 

Someone above mentioned a slide hammer to remove the injectors. I dont think a stray slide hamer blow could have caused the damage as the hole is right behind the cam lobe. there is just enough room to slide your little finger down the space behind the cam lobe. I'd guess a bolt, small spanner or setting fixture slipped down the back of the lobe and was crushed up against the head when the engine was turned over.

 

I realsise that I could have paid an independent to do the belt for £264.00, but that isnt the point. Why should I be £264.00 out of pocket for a mistake from the main dealer. As Ive stated above, I thought that the reason to go to the dealership was quality service. The second thing I would like to do is to bring this to the attention of VW UK. I cannot believe that the corperate line is to treat customers in this way. Unfortunately there doesnt seem to be an easy way to contact anyone at a decent enough level that might be able to help.

 

Thanks for the responses so far. I will try and take some detailed photos of the weekend to illustrate my point.

[davidwort 0]

Its because most dealerships are not fully run by the manufacturers any more. Most are now franchises, and operate solely to earn as much cash as possible, whilst living off the brand name.

 

that was going to be exactly my response, and the no.1 problem with this setup is VW UK will allow them to keep their franchises as long as they keep up their new sales figures, pretty much regardless of reputation, so aftersales care is poor.

Personally, I know this doesn't help one jot, but if I was to buy a new or nearly new car I'd either avoid franchises (becoming impossible with today's cars) or swap to someone like toyota/honda with a much better reputation in aftersales.

[Stonejag 10]

The service manager was like a slippery eel. This supprised me from a company with a reputation like VW. I would expect this type of behaviour from some dodgy back-street independent.

He's not actually employed by VW though, is he? He's probably up the top end of their franchise but ultimately they're no different from the 'dodgy backstreet independent' other than the big VW signs outside and the hordes of desk-bound receptionists they always seem to find money to employ.

 

I gave up on the dealerships entirely (after a Lupo episode where a blown gearbox seal caused them to declare I needed a new box at a cost of £3500 ex VAT - fixed for £750inc at the local indy place, with a free strip and rebuild!) when I realised they were only in it to wring as much money as they can out of you. It's never been about the cars, they are only interested in fitting new parts and putting the old ones on a ship back to Germany so they can be refurbed and flogged on to someone else.

 

Just got the C back from my local indy place - no receptionists, a tiny waiting room which is clearly their lounge (including DVD player!) and you have to wait for them to smear grease on their trousers before they can get in the till. But £50ph labour rates, incredibly detailed product knowledge - the main tech used to race a Mk3 VR6! - and they picked up all sorts of problems big and small which had never been raised before even though the car's been past plenty of local garages. They even convinced the AA to give me £500 towards their bill on my parts cover! They're entirely staffed by ex-dealership guys who got fed up with the way they run things and do a storming trade. Good for them, I say.

 

Stone

[Pickard1 0]

Ive finally found some time to take a closer look at my 260 pound purchase. The damage wasn't quite as I expected.

 

Here is the hole, I dont think I need an arrow to point it out. This is the exhaust side, so in the car is pretty tight against the bulkhead.

 

 

After a bit of carb cleaner to clean the oil away you can see that the fracture faces taper outwards (technically called a shear lip) indicating that the fracture progressed from inside to outside of the head.

 

 

 

This is where it then got interesting. I noticed that some of the bolts holding on the cam cover seemed to be missing

 

 

There was also a prize mark where someone had split the cam cover from the rest of the cylinder head.

 

 

I removed the cam cover. The garage must of had it off as two of the bearing shells were missing. Then i lifted out the cam, to be greeted by this:

 

 

The observant amongst you might spot that one of the roller followers had disappeared. There was various damage, that seemed to have been caused by the broken segment of roller, but then I noticed this little baby:

 

 

When the follower was flipped back on itself the mark in the casting was an exact imprint of the follower.

 

 

It seems that someone had tried to tighten down the top cam cover with the follower flipped back out of position. The cam would have been sitting on the follower incorrectly and had forced the back of the follower through the casting. The force had probably shattered the roller follower as these are normaly made from very hard (60HRc) bearing steel.

The fact that the follower had been flipped back the right way shows that they had definitely been in there to try and 'clean up' the evidence, yet had still tried to get my sister to pay.

 

 

The good news about this is that it seems that the overload was caused by the tightening of a bolt, rather than drive from the crank/cambelt, so I am now a bit more happy with the condition of the cambelt.

 

What confuses me is why did they take the cam cover/cam out for an injector change, surely this isn't part of the procedure? Or is it? Had they maybe dropped a washer or something down there and had to remove the cam to get the dropped part out?

[Supercharged 2]

I think you've got enough evidence there to take them to the cleaners! shocking.

 

I just don't get VW - so much poor press - why don't they just take the hit and fix problems like this and not suffer all the internet horror stories like this?

 

Main problem is the franchises - as above they really just don't give a sh1t!

[Pickard1 0]

can anyone confirm if the cam cover (as in the integral cam bearing cap casting) should be taken off for an injector change on a 2.0 tdi from a golf.

[Supercharged 2]

Mate - get onto ErWin and download the workshop manual for that engine code...

[red arrow 0]

I dont think it does , unless they maybe snapped an injector trying to remove them.

[vag 10]

nope had all four injectors out on a 2.0 tdi 3c passat yesterday, its just 2 spline bolts holding each injector down, the ony thing you have to remove is the injector wiring loom.

[Wild-Animal 0]

They tried to say that hole was already there?! wowzer.

 

Having a friend who works for a franchise I know what it s like, stories off burn outs in customers cars and stories of body shops bodging thing. Its all about the techs "efficiencies", how much money they make for the company.

 

I think you should dig deep, contact VW somehow, surely they cant get away with that £2,500. Shameful.

[Wesleyvr6 10]

That's shocking!! My best pal worked for Vw for 5 years and now Audi for the past 3, and some of the stories he's told me aren't far off this!

[Southie 10]

VW UK

Customer Care Call us on: 0800 0833 920

Write to us at:

Volkswagen Passenger Cars

Selectapost 12

Sheffield

S97 3ZU

 

I know what i would be doing....

[Pickard1 0]

I followed supercharged's advice and checked out that ErWin site. As I suspected there is no need to take off the cam cover / bearing cap assembly to change the injectors. In fact there aren't many repairs in the book that ask you to remove/replace it. So I'm not sure why they were in there.

 

We have phoned VW customer care on the number above. All you get is a nice sounding receptionist lady. She in turn checks back with the dealership to get their version of events. As the dealership have now replaced the head, it is in their eyes been put right, so there is no case to answer as far as VW customer care is concerned. I suppose in some respects they are right, but I am still pretty miffed about the dishonesty that has taken place. I would like an apology and someone at VW to acknowledge they were wrong, as well as my 270 quid back. This was part of the reason for making the post in the first place - does anyone know anyone (or even work at) VW customer care who is an actual technical person who would stand a chance of understanding what has gone on here and might be able to grasp that there has been some serious dishonesty/fraudulent behavior by the dealership......? The ladys on the phone have a good telephone manner, but they ain't mechanics!

 

As my next step I have put some of the photos on the previous page into a powerpoint presentation explaining what has happened and emailed it to the directors of the franchise. The directors aren't actually based at my local branch, as the franchise is part of a small chain. I'm guessing they wont have been aware of my trivial little dispute until they got the email this morning. In the accompanying letter I ask them to investigate who in the chain of command made the decision to try and put the follower back the right way to disguise what had happened. In taking these actions, and then trying to charge the customer, this person committed at the least a sackable offense, and possibly an illegal one as well.

 

I was hoping to hear back pretty quickly as I thought they may be shocked at director level to hear what had been going on, but I haven't received anything yet so I guess they are pretty apethetical as well. Next step may be trading standards/ watchdog / don't get done get Dom etc...

 

Episodes such as this always make me think of that undercover boss program on channel 4, where the boss goes back to the shop floor and gets to see the mischief that the staff are really up to. I'd guess there is someone, somewhere within VW that would be pretty annoyed with all of this, its just a matter of getting through the lines of foot soldiers rolling out the standard company line to find that person!

[VWVW 1]

Whats get me is why they didnt own up to it that they have accidentally caused the problem and trying to make out it was like that in the first place and make the customer pay for their mistake. Iam sure they have a small pot of money or insurance cover to cover for "mistakes" or "accident" like this.

[Jochen744 10]

Hi, I work at a Audi dealer, and we carry out the same campaign on A3's and A4's with the same engine.

The injectors are held in by two stretch bolts (5Nm) and then there is a special tool to pull them out, this has no contact with the cylinder head. When fitting the new injectors however, there is a brace bar which needs to be fitted towards the rear of the cylinder head, and is held in place by using a couple of the cam cover securing bolt holes in the cylinder head, this acts as a pivot to push the injectors firmly into the head onto there seat. depending where the hole was? if they had not fitted this bar correctly could have caused stress and broken the head? have you got a picture of the broken area?