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Please help a German car newbie

1.4K views 6 replies 3 participants last post by  fohveh  
#1 ·
Hey guys this is my first post and might be kinda long so please bear with me. My gf has a 2003 Beetle Auto 1.8t with around 96k thats having some issues, and although I'm pretty mechanically inclined, I'm a Honda man and not very familiar with working on German cars, and their quarks.

That being said heres the issue. She was driving the car yesterday and said just before she got home (maybe 1-2miles) the car started to stutter, especially closer to lower rpms, the cel started to flash, and she saw some white smoke. So obviously when I got this call I was thinking the worse.

I headed over there last night to take a look and checked everything I could think off. All vacuum lines looked good, all sensors (maf, coil packs, etc) were plugged in and looked good. I had just changed the oil the night before and it was still clean and fully filled, the coolant was clean and a little low, but still above the minimum line, and I could see any fluid leaks. I fired the car up and the engine sounded normal to me ( compared to the other times I've heard the engine ) and the rpms were good and steady, I think just below 1k, but the exhaust had a noticeable puttering, and a odd smell. Now I've never smelled her exhaust before lol but it seemed odd. I couldn't tell if it was just really rich, b/c different cars smell differently when rich, or if it was maybe a sweetish coolant smell.

If you rev the car it has a noticeable miss or hesitation but once you get about 2500ish it clears up. Now if you put the car in drive and let it idle forward even an inch, just that much load caused the missing / stuttering to get about twice as bad. So I tried to take it just a few feet down the road, and once you get the rpms up just a bit it smooths out, but still not normal, but then the cel goes from solid to flashing again, which in my experience isnt good. But I did notice that it wasn't smoking at all.

So heres where I ask if anyone has any ideas? I was leaning towards something like head gasket at first b/c of the smell and initial white smoke, but does a bad head gasket on these cars cause such driving issues? The only two scenarios I could come up with for that was either loss of compression or leaking so much coolant into a cylinder that it was messing up the combustion process.... but I'd suspect either one to cause a good bit of smoke.

So my other idea, and the one I'm really hoping for, is maybe a bad coil pack. From what I've seen I would think a bad coil pack could cause the symptoms and a misfire (flashing cel?), but then the white smoke doesn't make sense. So you can see my confusion.

I know theres some special scan tool for these cars that read specifics and other "normal" scan tools will only give generic codes. Would a regular scan tool, say at Auto Zone, read a misfire and the cylinder number, if thats what it is?

I apologize for the long post, but I've been searching all day and can't find anything quite like this, and I was hoping to figure this out before having to pay a shop for diagnosis. I can do the work myself, its just tracking down the issue, b/c right now I don't have a starting point. On that note if anyone knows of a good VW/Audi shop near Columbus Ohio please let me know.

If your still with me, thank you for taking the time to read the post, especially since I'm a German car newb, and any ideas are greatly appreciated.
 
#2 ·
Take it to Autozone or wherever and get the codes read. Repost with the codes and I can look them up in my bentley and let you know what it says. Even if the CEL isn't on right now, the codes should still be stored.

My guess is coil packs or spark plugs. But that's just a guess.
 
#3 ·
Yeah the cel is on. Im gonna grab my trailer tomorrow and tow it back to my house where I can actually work on it, and on the way I'm gonna swing into autozone. Figures I lost my scan tool lol, just to add insult to injury.

Anyways thanks for the help. As soon as I get the codes I'll post them up.
 
#4 ·
Sounds like coil pack failure.If it has the stock coilpacks from that time period they were on recall because of this sort of thing. Basically one or more cylinders are not firing properly any longer because of the failed coilpack(s). That would cause the stuttering and smoke and the smooth out over higher rpms as you are putting more current into the coilpack it may fire better although it is in a failed state. The codes will show you which cylinders are missing, those will be the failed coilpacks. There are no spark plug wires in your 1.8t just coilpacks.Check with VW and tell them the VIN, they may replace them free of charge still, they will not replace the ones that have not failed yet though eventhough they are probably from the same dud lot. I went through all this with my 2002 1.8t as well.
 
#5 ·
Yeah I saw that there was a big recall and her car falls under it. I think we have until September of this year to get them replaced. I'm hoping the code is a cylinder misfire, that way I can move the coil pack and see if I get a misfire in the cylinder I move it to.... and as far as I'm aware they are the stock ones. She got the car used so I'm not 100%.

I had a coil pack go out on a car I used to have, and acted the same way, just not the smoke, and given it was white, is what's throwing me off, since 9 times out of 10 thats water/coolant... but we'll see.

Funny you mentioned not having wires... I have a Honda S2000 which also use coil packs, and just had a guy trying to sell me some "high performance" spark plug wires for it lol. Despite the fact I've built the car myself he wanted to argue with me, so I just said no thanks lol.

Off topic but funny, sorry. Thanks for the info. Coil pack(s) is what I'm really hoping for.
 
#6 ·
well i finally got the car to my house so i could work on it. pulled the cel code and sure enough it was a misfire on cylinder #3. thanks MichelleRoze for offering to look them up for me though. so anyways i pulled the coil to check the condition and swap it to another cylinder to see if i got a misfire on that one... turns out that wouldn't be necessary. the coil was it two pieces lol. anyways just wanted to thank you guys for the help. im gonna change the coil and the valve cover gasket while im at it b/c its seeping a bit, so that should hopefully take care of everything.