Expensive month for the VR....prevention !

[Moreland 10]

Hi,

 

Thought I'd post the nightmare I had last month with the VR and a possible prevention,

 

It all started with what seems to be a common fault with the light switch failing which I didn't find out till it was too late and burnt a load of the wiring loom. After noticing my ABS light was stuck on and the heater and window wipers weren't working I did a bit of wire diagram searching to find the ignition switch must have been damaged during the process. Luckily this was a relatively cheap fix with a second hand light switch and loom and fitted an in-line fuse to stop it happening again.

 

A few days later I started to have further electrical problems with my dash gauges playing up, my speedo and temp gauges were going up and down like a yo-yo so I had the fuse box out to check to see if any further damage had been done to the wire form the previous shorting out. I couldn't see anything looking out of place or burnt so left it for a day. After not driving the car for around 24hrs I went outside and found the fans on full blast, I was thinking some thing's definitely not right with the electrics and was wondering if the two incident's were related ?

 

Anyway to cut a long story short, from driving it to work the following morning things went from bad to bloody terrible after smoke started appearing out the back and the engine was running like a bag of ****. I stopped almost immediately as It happened and noticed a huge water leak under the car and was pretty sure some form of head gasket failure had occurred.

 

After starting to take the engine out wondering how this could of happened, I removed the main engine loom harness connection to find a world of corrosion and water damage which would have been bridging all the temp senders and dash gauges. This was then deemed the reason of failure and something that could of most likely have been prevented.

 

After stripping the head down there were signs of wear on the valve guides, piston rings and severe pitting on the head itself. This would explain a lot as the engine needed topping up with oil quite regularly. After pricing a rebuild for around £1600 I thought I'd better get a second hand engine as I couldn't afford that at all. This time I didn't take any chances and did a compression test on the new engine and all signs were good, I'd intended to change the clutch, chains and tensioners, loom and do a full service on it which came to just over £800 including the engine which wasn't too bad.

 

Now she's pulling like a train again with only a few minor issues, I changed the T'stat after bottom rad hose was cold which sorted that but there's still problem with the fan kicking in around 10deg too late. I've read the cooling guide on here which is leading me to think rad fan sensor of the yellow dash sensor. Also my oil is getting pretty hot on a motorway at around 130deg when not pushing too hard. I've done 1k on the new engine and changed the oil twice, but not too sure sure how to solve this. I've got my old oil cooler but can't see that changing much. Hopefully going to get VAG-COM to check what's going on temp wise.

 

I thought I'd post this up and a few pics if it could help prevent it happening to anyone else, in-line fuse on the light switch earth and check the engine loom connection for corrosion. Also if anyone's interested in my old engine they can have it cheap

 

Paul