I just had one of those exciting experiences where you get to drop over a grand just to get your stupid car running the way its supposed to, less than a week after I pissed away a similar amount to take care of the same problem, which worked for all of 45 minutes before dramatically shitting the bed anew. I know that you didn’t ask, but I’m going to bitch about my wife’s 2010 Volkswagen Tiguan now, so you best make peace with the idea.
I’ll clarify right off the bat that this article may violate a few fundamental rules we try to live up to here at The Autopian. We have something called the Double E Rule, for example, which means that everything we run should include elements that are both educational and entertaining. It’s a good rule, but I’ll be honest, I’m not sure if I’m going to meet it this time, because all I want to do right now is complain about this fucking car.
Some background on the car: I got it in 2020 knowing full well that this car’s 2-liter TSI turbo-four came with some significant known problems, but I bought it anyway because my wife really liked it, and I gave up my right to tell anyone what car they should drive for rational reasons years and years ago.
Seriously, this is an important point: I have five absolutely ridiculous cars I cram onto our property, so there is no way I’m going to tell Sally what she can or can’t drive. She really loves the interior of the Tiguan, which is, admittedly, comfortable and airy and attractive and a very pleasant space to be in. She likes the way the car looks and drives (you know, when it’s driving) and while these aren’t necessarily rational reasons, cars never have been and never will be fully rational, so I just need to do what I need to do to make sure she has something to drive that makes her happy.
Of course, that doesn’t negate my right to bitch about it here, to all of you, which is what I’m doing now.
So, I thought I fixed this engine’s big Achilles’ heel when I had the timing chain and its crappy tensioner replaced, after bending a bunch of valves, which also meant a new cylinder head. I thought from that point on, everything would be nice and smooth.
What I forgot was the detail about how instead of building an engine with an Achilles’ heel, VW seems to have decided it would just make more sense to take a massive amount of Achilles’ heels, liquify them, cast them into a solid block, and just form the engines out of that, so everyfuckingthing on this engine has the opportunity to be a horrible point of failure.
This time, the point of failure was the positive crankcase ventilation valve setup, which is one of the known failure points of the 2-liter TSI engine, and, like the timing chain problem, likes to fail suddenly, without warning, and cause a colossal shitshow cascade of problems.
Here’s a little video about this hunk of crap that’s bolted to the top of the engine from our pal the Humble Mechanic, who fixed my timing chain:
Essentially, one of the several failure prone little diaphragms made out of some Germanic joke-rubber failed in Sally’s car and as a result, caused huge vacuum leaks that made the car run like absolute crap, with all the smoothness, power, and refinement one would expect from an early 1900s agricultural hit-and-miss engine, but without the charm:
Honestly, that’s running smoother. If there was a nearby sawmill I could have stolen one from, I might have replaced her engine with one of these.
After it happened I replaced the PCV assembly and looked at the old one, and the rubber diaphragms in there were crumbly and felt like a slice of parmesan cheese so it was clear what happened. Here, look:
What was also clear was that my attempt to replace the PCV unit was an act of sad, misplaced optimism, because the damage was done, because the PCV is an unforgiving, cruel beast, and when it fails, the crankcase pressure goes all bonkers, and then seals start to get blown out, so you have oil leaks and more vacuum leaks and nobody is happy ever again.
So, I had a shop do a smoke test to see where the seals failed and the vacuum leaks were happening, and they found the bad seal on the brake vacuum pump, so they replaced the pump and gasket and put a better PCV valve on than the crap aftermarket one I got and we thought all was finally well.
About 30 minutes into the drive home, though, Sally called me and told me that all of a sudden everything was terrible again. Actually, even worse, as the car now had trouble even maintaining 45 mph or so.
Fuck.
We get it back to the shop, the car never even having made it home, and found that the rear main seal, which wasn’t showing any leaks prior, had failed, spraying oil and causing huge vacuum leaks and all that.
I wanted to be mad at the shop, but, really, I couldn’t. The seal tested fine, and while clearly it must have sustained some damage and been weakened, it was working and showing no damage, but only because the leak from the brake vacuum pump seal was so bad. So, when that was fixed, and engine crankcase pressures got to levels they’re supposed to be when everything is working, only then did the rear main seal have the dignity to fail, like it was somehow engineered to find the most expensive way to shit the bed.
Again, fuck.
Replacing the rear main seal is an ass-pain. You have to drop the transmission down and take out the flywheel to get to it and it’s a hard, laborious job.
Anyway, it’s fixed now, and Sally has her car back, and enjoyed driving it home and it finally feeling powerful and good, and this cruel VW’s siren-like hold over her has been re-established, clouding the cold, hard truth that the engine under that hood is a callow, devious machine designed to fling itself into disasters without warning and secretly mock you as your bank account gets depleted.
Sally’s not going to read this, and I don’t want any of you telling her about it, either. The damage is done. Let her enjoy her car, but between you and I, stay the hell away from these TSI engines. The cars they’re put into are charmers, enjoyable to drive and with great interiors, but all of that is bait.
These cars are angler fish, dangling their glowing lures of driving satisfaction so they can chomp into you with their bad timing chains and unforgiving PCV valves and whatever. Hell, these engines even have a Top 5 Fails video made just for them. No engine should have a Top 5 Fails video.
This engine was the reason I’ve advocated for the adoption of one industry-wide turbo inline-four engine, because for the vast majority of cases, nobody really cares about who makes the inline turbo-four engine as long as it makes around 200-250 horsepower and doesn’t break.
I just can’t understand how VW could make an engine that fails on such basic shit as crankcase ventilation or timing chains – aren’t those solved problems?
I’m going to stop myself. The damage is done, the money is gone, the engine is fixed. Sally has a car she really likes, and I can keep hoarding weird low-horsepower shitboxes, and the world turns as intended.
Thanks for letting me vent. I just wish that stupid TSI had been able to do the same.
Oh, man…I feel your pain. I had to learn my TSI lesson three times before running to the warm, welcoming embrace of Japanese engines.
VW: Great to Drive, Terrible to Own.
My 2013 2.0 TSI GTI has been basically trouble free, the only thing with the engine once out of warranty was a recent replacement of the intake manifold for the flap actuator linkage. This was also covered as a recall.
10,000 miles between oil changes and new coolant every three years. Helps tremendously to have the car since new!
Dropped 2K$ into the rear end of the BMW 850. 2nd test drive before getting it aligned and the fuel pumps die. Fix those and now I have another problem that I have to diagnose and to fix.
In the meantime I had to replace the rear brakes on her Ford Transit. First thing I check was the front brakes they were fine. After getting the rears done, It had a bad vibration. I had snapped one of the front lugs and it fell off on the test drive.
New hub and bearing and press work on the front. Had to hammer out one bolt with a 4 lb sledge and boogered up the steering end and had to cut that to pieces the wheel of death. Now it is going in for an alignment instead of the BMW
+1 because I feel your pain. I’ve had simple things snowball seemingly out of control.
Sticking brake drum = rebuilt system + new drums + new pads, then bad brake line, then bad proportioning valve, bought aftermarket (only available), then had to buy a separate wiring pigtail and sensor for the warning lamp, took 3 weeks+, then another brake line to the master cylinder because old too short now, then new ends for the other lines to fit new valve, then a bad master cylinder, probably from sitting empty for weeks waiting for parts. And now my truck stops, and doesn’t stay stopped when it does. Thus was after rebuilding the front brakes when I bought it the year before, thank God they’re disk.
It started with a guy who ran me off the road in a Tacoma by crossing, fully, into my (oncoming) lane- the rear brake started sticking after that.
I have several ‘hit and miss’ engines. Is it wrong of me to want to build a tricycle powered by one of them? Some sort of cvt transmission probably?
This isn’t a VW thing as much as a German thing. The engine bay of my US-assembled Chevy with a US made engine is littered with German Bosch stuff. And the PCV system is similarly integrated into everything along with being either horribly expensive in time or money to properly fix. Parts were maybe $350 or so, but it was the 10 hours it took me to fix that was the kicker. Being a 10 year old Chevy sedan it’s worth less than a used tissue.
Somehow I’m wanting an electric VW for my next car. Donations for out of warranty repairs gladly accepted.
Look at the silver lining, a fraction of the moving parts means a fraction of things that can fail catastrophically.
And the batteries will be someone else’s to catch on fire ????
I’m so incredibly lucky. My partner drives a Jeep TJ that she absolutely loves, has owned it for 14 years. She has a weird bond with that Jeep, but she absolutely doesn’t care what I do with my cars. She loves driving my Series 100 Land Cruiser, and she loves my 5MT Honda Element and F-150, but she completely understands that I NEED a fun car in addition. I’m shopping right now, with a MGB likely to wind upon in the garage in the next month or so.
Good choice RE: the MGB. Dead easy to work on, tons of parts suppliers (even from the UK to the US), enthusiastic owners groups and local clubs. I’ve had mine for 25 years.
The TJ is the greatest Wrangler of all time. Modern but basic. Durable and easy to work on. Rugged but relatively decent on the road. I have a TJ that’s coming up to 20 years old. I don’t see myself ever getting rid of it. It is like a swiss army knife in that it can do almost all car tasks okay.
1) you definitely hit the Double E criteria as far as I’m concerned. I learned a lot about why to avoid this engine. I laughed because I’ve been there, though not with a VW.
2) Future BIL just bought a Hit-n-Miss John Deere motor at an auction that hadn’t ran for years. I’d love to post a short video (15 seconds maybe?), hint hint, of it after we got it running. It’s awesome.
3) Lesson learned (and learning) about respecting your significant other’s automotive choices and preferences. However, I’ve learned to like a lot of what he likes, he’s learned to like some of what I like. Most of the time, we never took the time to appreciate whatever car it is and had just dismissed it out-of-hand. Sometimes, one genuinely knows better (you in this case), but still must respect the other’s preferences.
4) re: delayed seal failure. I had a somewhat beat up, pretty high mileage 1996 Ford Aerostar once. On a trip through 25 miles of nothingness, a plastic elbow on a heater hose leaked out most of the coolant. I had no cell service and like an idiot, I put more water in it and drove on. By the time I got to my parents house (my destination), it was badly knocking. My dad came out and said “what the hell?!” And I said “I blew the fucker up I guess” (one of like maybe 3 times I said the F word in his presence). I stayed the night and the next day, I put some water in it and checked the oil and cranked it, it ran perfectly. I replaced the elbo and put a normal mix of coolant and couldn’t believe my luck.
Something like 8-10,000 miles later, the temp gauge starts acting weird (going well past half-way before dropping to it’s normal position upon inital warm-up). I replace the thermostat, no help. Oil looks good, coolant looks good. Cut to a week or so later, I’m back under the hood when it starts idling weird, kinda stumbling. I look behind the van and it’s billowing steam. The head gasket had finally blown. How did that engine last that long after the overheating event? No one could have blamed it if it never ran again after being ran dry and knocking, but somehow it ran absolutely normally, even on a cross-country trip, for that long?
I sold it for $400 to a guy who drove it home. Also, no power steering, badly warped rotors, worn tires and probably close to 300k by then (and not a spec of rust, lived 100% outside the salt belt). It’s safe to say I got my money’s worth out of that van, lol, the $400 was just a bonus.
Does this lack of reliability extend to European TSI engines, like the 1.4 in my wife’s 2016 Passat? We’ve had no problems in our 9 months and 20,000km or so of ownership, but I guess it’d be nice to know if we should expect issues, especially since I’ve relinquished my own car.
It very much depends on the exact type of your engine how much trouble you can or will run into. https://vwtuning.co/vw-1-4-tsi-engine-problems/
They seem to operate fine as long as they stay inside of Festung Europa. It’s like how Italian cars run perfectly well until they’re north of the Alps.
Wonder if that has the same POS thrust bearing my R has that fails and trashes the engine? Someone decided to create a new way to do those bearings without positive oil feed because splash oiling was a winner on a model T so why not?
Can totally relate; Jason, here is where you are headed, if my wife’s desires are like yours.
Lets review the steps:
1. Both kids grown enough – now driving themselves everywhere.
2. Wife wants to ditch the kid hauler, get something .. *completely different*.
3. First she wanted a 2-seat car (had to introduce her to the term ‘roadster’). Impractical for the combination of hills and snow we exist in (she did not like the styling of any 2-seat FWD cars).
4. Next she wanted a Jeep; or a vehicle that resembled a CJ (aka pre-80’s Toyota land cruiser ) Massively impractical for gas consumption and difficult to find one with auto transmission.. which caused her to swing toward the next extreme:
5. Electric car. Ok this one is almost practical for 99% of her driving; just not good for long trips. But then out of the blue, she sees the ‘car of her dreams’ for sale:
6. Mini Cooper convertible. End of story, this is her ‘Forever Car’. Bought it, and gotta say, looking back over the procession, it kinda makes sense in a weird way.
Anyway Jason, hope your wife’s next car purchase journey is less convoluted (well I did enjoy shopping for all the different choices).
I think she ended up with the right thing there! Although if you would let her try on a Mercedes-Benz 560SL she might change her mind.
Jason.
Jason.
We all had this conversation with you back in the land of Herb. You need to bring your lovely wife into the room to read this with you.
Your Tiguan wants to die. It is doing everything in its power to get sent to the scrapyard. I dread to think what it will do next if you keep trying to keep it alive. There are failures previously unknown to mankind that will happen with this car. The glovebox will get stuck shut, and this will somehow cause the ECM to lock the transmission in 1st gear until it explodes. This car is like Grandpa Marsh in South Park begging someone to help him stick a fork in the electrical outlet. Do the merciful thing.
Damnit, now I kind of want to find out what incredibly fucked up thing will happen to this car next. Forget everything I just said. Terry Schiavo that thing for as long as you possibly can.
My wife really wanted a Honda Odyssey and without question we bought a Honda Odyssey. After reading this, I will be calling her and telling her I love her.
I am a longtime car hoarder, married to a wife who doesn’t get it and may actively loathe the cars I love the most, but she’s tolerant.
I have hated every single one of her cars over the past 13 years. I have found, purchased, and maintained them all. Every year or so, she tells me what she’d like next–A Jeep Liberty here, a derelict Audi TT vert there–and they invariably make my eyes bleed with various problems.
I do not complain, nor do I begrudge. And tonight I go to pick up a Sebring convertible. Light a candle.
Holy fuck, a Sebring convertible? I’m lighting a chandelier
My wife just sold her 08 2.7 convertible. She put 84k on it without any major engine/transmission service. One day, she went to put the top down…..the trunk opened to let the top come down…..and nothing else happened. Had to forcibly (by jumping on it repeatedly) close the trunk to get it towed home. Sat untouched in the garage until this past weekend. 2 guys offered her $900 to drive it away.
Shame….was a halfway decent car aside from the idiocy involving the top.
A co-worker of mine was bragging about buying a Sebring convertible a few years ago. I joked about how long until it needed an engine and trans rebuild. His response, “Trans was rebuilt just before I bought it and engine is out getting rebuilt now”.
We are a one car household. My wife wants nothing to do with choosing a car. She just says “get what you want” even though she drives it 2/3rds of the time. Fortunately she hates CUVs and prefers a MT, so as long as real cars still exist, I’m good.
Of course her real reason is that she can blame me for everything when something inevitably goes wrong. She seems to get a lot of satisfaction out of us owning a VW.
I enjoyed reading this = entertaining.
I learned why VW engines are crap = educational.
Win.
I learned that I should probably see if my PCV valve needs replacing on my next service. I don’t see where Jason mentions the mileage on this vehicle. It would be good to know what lifetime to expect on this component.
As for entertaining, there is plenty enough swearing to keep me amused.
Its a 12 year old car, US average is typically 10k per year, but this thing has been broken a lot and Covid had us all huddled in our houses for two years.
I’m gonna guess it ran just fine for 60k before it started having issues and give 7.5k per year after and 5k for each year of Covid.
100k, final answer.
came here to say this, the article was entertaining, the comment thread was educational.. David won’t need to discipline Torch 😉
I never owned a Volkswagen Kombi, but attended last rites for two of them, and executed strange field repairs on the other.. as college students/young and dumb graduates, my friends would buy them for road trips around South Africa. An aircooled engine was not optimal in African temperatures with loads of us, camping gear, and the beer needed to keep cool: so that accounted for two. The other one had cold problems, blew out a freeze plug somewhere deep in the mountains of Lesotho one icy night. We found an unreconstructed hippie named Toffee who was able to carve us a replacement plug out of hardwood. Hammered that in, put in the spare quarts of oil, drove six hundred miles home..
When the water-cooled Kombis came out, my computer engineer friend bought one, the T3 Vanagon with ‘wasserboxer’ a water-cooled boxer engine. That was startlingly reliable.
My brother had a series of girlfriends with a series of VW Beetles. Oh how he hated to work on those cars 😉
My wife had a yellow CitiGolf manual, all Citigolfs were manual. It was a lot of fun to drive and dead reliable for four years or so when we sold it to emigrate. VWs in SA, Kombis and Beetles excepted, had a pretty good reputation for reliability. This might be because they were locally made in an assembly plant in Uitenhage, using very old designs which presumably had all the kinks worked out. The Citigolf was a MK1 Golf made in SA for SA because the MK2 Golf was too big and expensive for the market.
Crankshaft position sensor failed on my GTI 3 times during the 10 months I owned it. I failed to take my own advice of “never buy a used VW”. But when that car ran, man, it was beautiful. That’s the long way of saying I feel your pain.
This is why people have boring Hondas and Toyota suvs, I remember going through some of the same things with my Volvo s40, super comfortable fun car, that broke a lot.
Bingo…
I’ve been a car guy as long as I can remember, 1st car was a Trimuph TR7 that I bought at 13 for $1000.00 of my own money made as a paperboy. Then for 20 years I was silly enough to put up with VW shenanigans driving a succession of 3 VWs as my daily driver (84′ GTI (4 years), 90′ GLI (6 years), 98′ TDI (Jetta – 12 years).
Now… 2 toyotas for our daily drivers…
Sienna as our family hauler / soccer mom / DYI/utility truck for 11 years
Plug-in Prius commuter & actually has made a decently fun road trip car w/very low running costs
+ (b/c can’t give up on a fun car…) I have a 74 MG B GT
You can always replace one of the “E”s with “Exasperating” and it can still be either Educational or Entertaining. But for what it’s worth, I found this article to be both educational and entertaining.
I like the way you think…
How about E for Einspritzung? This comes close enough.
Im trying to figure out 5…
1. Beetle
2. Pao
3. Changli
4. Davids ZJ?
5. ???
6. That POS tsi
4. Yugo
5. Dodge Motorhome
Does he still have the Scimitar? I can’t remember.
Beetle, Pao, Changli, Yugo, Dodge Tioga RV. I also still have the xB but we have PLANS for that.
What happened to the Scimitar?
I sold it to a real, actual collector! Who will restore it!
Bah. You should have figured out how to put a Busso and an Alfa transaxle under there. That would clearly have been the same choice
Excellent!
Good thing I came back to check for an answer. But you guys really need a notification system here (the ultra-cynical part of me wonders if you’re intentionally resisting that in order to bump up return visits, but I blame the herbs of J/O Media for ramping up my cynicism; I expect better from you guys).
What, the XB is too reliable?
Jason – We all need to vent and you have a great forum to do it.
It was educational – don’t buy one of these. Entertaining as I can image you wrote this in full rant mode.
Also since I tend to buy the dumbest car possible for the job it needs to do, I am in the same boat of not being able to say “Why did you buy that?”
Granted when people want an over researched buying experience they do come to me as I obsessively search. I am the guy that spent 2.5 to 3 years looking for the family hauler/land yacht before finding the best match.
“Granted when people want an over researched buying experience they do come to me as I obsessively search. I am the guy that spent 2.5 to 3 years looking for the family hauler/land yacht before finding the best match.”
So… what did you end up with for your current family hauler/land yacht?
VW was spending all their R&D TSI gas engines money on R&D for how to defeat emissions for their TDI diesel engines. …seriously tho, this crap reminds of early 80’s Ford 1.6 USA engines.
I had a 1.6 Ford from the early 80’s. Lots of bad relays but I found a shop that would diagnose and replace them cheap.
Timing belt went though at 80K, my first interferance engine. Luckily my dads coworkers daughter had done the same thing in her escort so he put a brand new head on it. Two weeks later she ignored the temp light and kicked the rods out. He bought a new long block and saved the two week old head.
He came over and helped/swapped it for me for a bottle of Wild Turkey. I had to buy the head bolt kit and the new water pump, which was a life long lesson when doing timing belts.
I learned to drive in an ’87 Conquest TSi, so these VW TSIs have always muddled me. I guess it’s fitting though, since it seems both cars are fun to drive when they’re running but their reliability is a bit hit or miss.
I see your problem right there
I bought it anyway because my wife really liked it,
I’ll read anything that includes a linked video of a hit-and-miss engine. Complain away.
Seriously though, this stuff makes me appreciate that if I am going to own a vehicle at the end of its life, at least it’s simple and from the 1960s. When the (one) PCV valve goes bad, the engine -may- run like butt, until you take literally one minute to replace the valve with a new $7.00 one, and then everything is hunky dory again.*
*Until the column shifter gets stuck in 2nd while my wife is driving the car, or a bolt falls out of the transmission tail shaft, or the shoulder belt buckle fails in a locked state while I’m belted in, etc. At least they’re all typically easy-peasy to repair.
Since you run a car website, I have a feature proposal: Sally Reviews, where Sally reviews all sorts of crossovers and other vaguely similar to Tiguan vehicles, in a way to secretly get her to find something she really likes that doesn’t dramatically shit itself for no reason.
That’s a great idea! Also, she’d probably give reviews far, far more relevant to the actual intended buyers of those cars than, say, me, who might just obsess over how they designed the side marker lamps.
If it’s anything like my wife…
Wife: “Why won’t it shift from drive?”
Me: “It’s a ratchet shifter, pull of the t-handle thing…”
Wife: “Well that’s stupid, what’s the point of that, why don’t you get rid of that?”
Me: “It’s so I can slam from 1 to 2 to D and not worry about going all the way to park.”
Wife: “Why would I want to do that!?!”
Me: “Racing!”
Wife: “But you’ve never even raced!”
Me: “Well, yeah, because this thing is so slow I’d never win a race.”
Wife: “Then why does it have this dumb thing!?”
Me: “Racing!”
…
And the review would bemoan the dumb shifter.
Has she asked you about the speed holes yet?