Wall of Fame entries

It's been a good and interesting week here at the diesel shop.  We took our latest TDI Vanagon conversion for its first drive yesterday, and today we dove in on two different customer repair jobs that turned out very interesting.

First there was the '02 New Beetle (ALH TDI engine/auto trans) that was still on the original timing belt at 128k miles:

Study this pic and see if you can see where all the chiclets go.  This rig still turned over normally and came in for a supposed inj. pump re-seal or R&R.  Divine intervention is the only thing I can see that kept the pistons from hitting the valves.

  No piston/valve impact, timing just off enough to make it not run any more.  Talk about dodging a bullet.










Next there was the curious case of the AAZ engine with 17,000 miles on it.  This was installed in a Vanagon by some green-type used car company up in Washington.  The pre-combustion chamber (swirl chamber) dropped down into the combustion chamber and here's what happens when that unfortunate event transpires:
The piston was cracked throughout and down to the wrist pin and the rod bent slightly, rendering both unusable.

And this is what a head that suffers this sort of insult looks like.  Also, totally unusable and only good for scrap metal at this point.

Ouch.

Needless to say, this one didn't come in running.










Tomorrow after we finish up these two jobs, it's off to Salem to get do a few runs on a Dyno with my TDI Eurovan and John's TDI Vanagon, so I should have some interesting data to post.