Two decades ago, Volkswagen was a very different company than it is today. The company wasn’t that concerned with churning out boring family crossovers. Instead, madman executive Ferdinand Piëch-led Volkswagen worked hard to show the world it was an engineering powerhouse. Here in America, one of the most simultaneously alluring and terrifying examples of the Piëch era was the Volkswagen Touareg V10 TDI, a super SUV with a ridiculous twin-turbo V10 diesel engine. Perhaps even more ridiculous is working on the thing. As the Humble Mechanic is about to show you, this engine is a total nightmare to work on and might be one of the least user-serviceable high-volume engines ever made.
Charles the Humble Mechanic is quite possibly one of the best resources in America for working on broken VWs. His videos and advice can help you do everything from removing sunroof cassettes to showing you the inner workings of the infamous W8 engine. Charles’ work has helped me with restoring a B5.5 Passat and diagnosing a bad dual-mass flywheel in a newer Jetta. Charles joined forces with Paul from Deutsche Auto Parts to fix Jason’s wife’s failed Tiguan.
So you can only imagine the look on my face when our Discord server pinged with a notification about a new Humble Mechanic video. As one of the few crazy people willing to own a Touareg V10 TDI today, this video was a fascinating watch, and further proof that I’m totally screwed if my V10 ever finds a serious way to break.
I’ve written about the Volkswagen Touareg many times before, but here’s a quick refresher. Back in the 1990s, Porsche realized it could not thrive on just the 911 and Boxster alone, so it decided it needed to build a high-volume cash cow. Minivans were the hot thing and SUVs were gaining traction. Porsche considered a number of options, including a hot minivan. Ultimately, the brand landed on making a super SUV, first choosing Mercedes-Benz as its partner. That marriage failed quickly, and the brand then pitched the idea to VW’s Piëch, who was just crazy enough to love the project while also wanting a version of his own.
The result was the 2002 Porsche Cayenne and the Volkswagen Touareg, two hopelessly complicated SUVs meant to conquer terrain, tow huge trailers, and go seriously fast all while looking like a gentle crossover. I’ve owned a Touareg VR6, and, as mentioned earlier, I also own one of these V10 TDIs.
These SUVs are known for threatening their owners with bankruptcy, and even I had my fair share of issues with my VR6. My transmission fluid pan rusted through, the plastic gas tank collar cracked, the transmission valve body wore out, and I damaged some unknown steering component while off-roading, making my steering inexplicably harder and softer at the same time.
All of that ignores the other junk such as sunroof drain leaks, the inability to arm the alarm system, and how all four shocks left the chat at about the same time.
Despite all of that, my VR6 was still one of my favorite daily drivers. But you have no idea just how deep the absurd Volkswagen engineering goes until you tear into a hero model like the V10 TDI. Thankfully, I don’t have to!
Charles starts off the video by explaining why the 200,000-mile V10 Touareg was in his hands. This V10 TDI had a camshaft failure, which remains a somewhat common failure point in older “Pumpe Duse” TDI engines.
It’s not a unique failure to the V10 TDI; even the little cutie powering old Jettas had this problem. In a PD TDI, each injector is fed from the fuel rail which is supplied by the medium-pressure tandem pump. When the injectors are actuated by the camshaft, they make up to 27,846 psi of pressure. The fuel spray is also controlled by an electric solenoid.
This means the cams have the extra job of actuating injectors on top of working the engine’s valves. This is why Volkswagen wanted original PD owners to buy its special oil to reduce wear.
PD cam lobes are known to wear faster, and when that happens, the driver may first notice that their engine is louder with perhaps a little more “bass” than usual. If this issue isn’t diagnosed or is otherwise ignored, cam lobe wear may accelerate to the point where engine performance will be reduced. Finally, if the cams still aren’t replaced, the engine’s valves and lifters may experience a catastrophic failure. So, this is a pretty big deal even in a wee 1.9-liter four-cylinder diesel in a Beetle, let alone the big honkin’ 5.0-liter V10 TDI. Sadly, Charles notes, this V10 suffered from a cam failure hard enough to become dead, and we’ll see the aftermath in a bit.
Charles jumps right in by explaining that firstly, the V10 TDI engine is shoehorned into the engine bay of the Volkswagen Touareg with basically no space to spare. You can work on a few parts, like the tandem pumps or the starter, without removing the engine, but the vast majority of the time you are dropping both the engine and the transmission. This means that many repairs automatically start off at least a few thousand dollars before you even talk about what needs to be fixed.
Charles shows that this isn’t a walk in the park. The drivetrain is dropped from the vehicle whole onto jacks strong enough to support the 485-pound engine plus transmission, then the body is lifted away. I can’t imagine trying to do this in a garage without a lift. Charles then notes that an immediate curveball is in the V10 TDI’s design; normally, Volkswagen powers the accessories like the water pump and the alternator through a serpentine belt on the front of the engine. That’s not the case here.
The V10 TDI is gear-driven, with the accessory drive at the back of the engine, which is great because it avoids forcing a poor owner to drop the engine just to replace a belt. Yeah, it’s legitimately that tight in the engine bay. You can also hear the gears at work when the engine is running, and I love the mechanical symphony.
In this case, it also makes tearing down the engine a bit more interesting.
Charles discovers failed exhaust flex pipes before tearing into the top of the engine to reach the camshafts. At first, things look like you’d expect a nearly 20-year-old German car to look like. The sheathing around the wires on the engine easily crumbles away, and there’s a mountain of components to get through. As Charles is ripping chunks off of the engine, he confirms what I said earlier about how the V10 TDI has two of everything. That means two ECMs, two sets of pipes, a turbo for each bank, two high-pressure pumps, and a ridiculous harness to make all of the doubled-up bits work. If you plug an advanced scanner into a V10 TDI, you’ll see that the car sees itself as two five-cylinder engines rather than one V10.
As Charles continues churning away, he discovers soot-caked parts and fasteners that have stripped out. All of this is bad, but what’s worse is the labyrinth Volkswagen forced technicians to fight through to repair this engine. Charles had to go through various harnesses, brackets, and different forms of fasteners to get through all of these parts. He notes that these parts also have to go back on in order. If you forget something, you basically have to hit reverse and take off everything until you get back to the part you skipped.
Oh and as for tools, Charles jokes darkly “every tool ever invented,” so that’s fun. Charles then says that while an air-cooled Beetle has perhaps the most serviceable engine ever made, the V10 TDI has to be the least serviceable engine ever made.
Charles eventually gets through everything on top of the engine, including chunks of soot, and gets to the cams. Sure enough, the lobes have been rounded out, which means the valves aren’t opening all the way.
At this point, Charles gives a rough estimate for what it would cost to replace the cams and the lifters. You’d be looking at around $3,500. Mind you, that’s not including the cost to drop the drivetrain or the cost to replace all of the other stuff involved in this procedure. Yikes.
Sadly, Charles confirms that this engine has experienced cam failure, rendering it inoperable. Since the engine is dead, he’s going to tear it down anyway so we can see a rare look inside of the engine. The wild part? Charles has a long way to go before he can even show us the glow plugs.
Next, we go through the EGR cooler in a long battle to reach the alternator underneath it. In a previous piece, I noted how VW used a hopelessly complicated water-cooled alternator in the V10 TDI, and this is why. The poor alternator is in the valley of the engine located around a lot of hot parts. VW is even using an electronic thermostat in this engine, a part Charles says the V10 TDI shares with the also hilariously complicated Passat W8 engine.
Charles finally reaches the glow plugs, and they appear to be in rough shape, too. A VW with bad glow plugs will still run and drive. However, the glow plugs warm the diesel engine’s cylinders to help cold-weather starting. In my experience, if your VW TDI’s glow plugs are crap your engine may crank and crank before either choking into life or killing its battery. Charles bets this TDI was throwing glow plug codes.
Also, check out (above) what the high-pressure pump looks like inside!
The gear drive (below) is pure insanity. One gear alone runs the power steering pump, and then a shaft extends through an engine mount and allows the same gear to turn the A/C compressor nearer the front of the engine.
The A/C compressor is in its roughly normal place near the front of the engine, but it would usually be driven by a belt, not a weird shaft coming from a gear and the power steering pump in the rear.
Finally, after a ton of work, Charles gets to the gear drive system at the back of the engine and it’s simply a thing of beauty. It looks like a massive timepiece, but = on an engine. We’re also not just talking about accessories either, but the engine’s timing is done at the back of the engine through these gears, too. Forget David Tracy’s love of timing chains, this is the holy grail of timing!
Charles continues by ripping off the cylinder heads and the camshafts out. Something fascinating about the V10 TDI is that it has a sort of tensioner on the gear drive that makes sure the load on the gears is the same no matter the temperature. The gears may very well be the most reliable thing on this engine!
We also get a look at the bad cams as well. A worn cam lobe shows metal missing and the lifter associated with that lobe has a substantial hole in it. Who even knows where that metal went? Hopefully mostly in the filter.
Oh yeah, Charles finally got to the alternator, too. It only took tearing down most of the engine:
The payoff of all of this work is great. Once Charles gets to the end, he finally gets the gear system apart and finds out that the V10 TDI uses 20 gears for timing, accessories, and to make the darn thing just run.
I won’t reveal everything Charles found, but he concludes that the V10 TDI is both wildly complicated, but also really impressive. Volkswagen really did achieve its mission of showing itself to be an engineering powerhouse, and the Piëch Trifecta — that’s the Touareg, Phaeton, and Passat W8 — were halo cars that truly represented it.
Unfortunately, this also means pain for the Piëch era’s biggest fans. Charles suspects that this engine was so far gone that it would have needed at least $10,000 of work to get back into shape, which is shocking since Charles does his own labor. Who knows what the bill would look like at a dealer? As I said in a previous piece, you can get running V10 TDIs for substantially less than that. So, I’m just going to continue to hope nothing terrifying happens with my own V10.
Click here to watch more Humble Mechanic fun. Now I must find some wood to knock on.
(Screenshots: HumbleMechanic on YouTube)
Warm take (I don’t even consider it hot) – Piëch ruined Volkwagen
He took the company from moderately refined, mostly reliable transpartation for the everyperson (its right there in the name) and decided to compete with Bently and Meredes AMG devision for how many Achillies heels could be stuffed into a cripplingly expensive almost unrepairable package.
Engineering powerhouse? I’ll tell you what would have been impressive. Putting out a cheap, reliable, safe modern car that almost anyone could fix with a standard metric rachet set and couple of screwdrivers.
Wild complexity with a penchant for catastrphic failure at a sky high price? That’s easy. Reliable simplicity while still maintining some refinement and perfomance at an accesible price point? That’s hard.
Are you sure about the injector design? I thought that the V10 TDI was a High Pressure Common Rail (HPCR) engine which would mean that the injectors are centrally pressurized and electrically fired. The image and description describe a unit injector approach, where the pressure is generated in the injector by a cam lobe. I don’t think anyone has used that design (in cars) in decades.
This engine is indeed one of VW’s older Pumpe Duse unit injector design. That’s part of why the cams are known for wearing in these engines. The common rail you might be thinking of is the V6 TDI, the engine that replaced the V10 TDI as the Touareg’s diesel option in America.
Wow…thanks for the clarification. I shouldn’t have doubted you – just the VW engineers!
That gear setup looks like the FTL drive on a Mercury-class Battlestar.
My wife introduced me to BSG maybe last month and we just finished the final episode last night, so I’m so in love with that reference right now. RIP Galactica!
(Edit: Galactica, I swear I know how to spell!)
They really only show it in action once, lots of gears and other stuff spinning around ferociously just before a jump.
And they Tyrol run it!
Owning one of these seems like dating an insanely hot nymphomaniac who, on that feared day you really piss her off, will stab you, perhaps repeatedly. There is so much awesome, especially when outside looking in, but you know the bomb is going to explode. Can you get your thrills and get out before it goes off?
Can you get your thrills and get out before it goes off?
Yes. It’s called a “lease” with a “warranty”.
You’d be my hero if you could find a way to lease a V10 TDI Toerag with a warranty.
Sorry friend, that ship sailed long ago.
The closest you can come today is make acquaintance with an owner who will loan you theirs. Just make sure to let them know the car was smoking and rattling when you got it..
It wasn’t a gamble back then. There was no threat of being stabbed. My analogy applies to buying one today. The risk is part of the story, part of the thrill.
“Threat of being stabbed” is a desirable thing?
Well if that’s what you like sure but don’t complain when the inevitable hail of “GODDAMMIT!! I TOLD YOU SO!!” shortly follows.
Danger is the spice that makes the crazy sex even better. Those who know agree. Well, the surviving people who had an escape plan agree.
I think the secret there is to make sure she’s got a few guy friends whom are blinded by her hotness but she only likes as a friends. Don’t worry she’ll always have a few hanging around, she gets off on the attention. Don’t feel jealous, be grateful, they’re your shield to the crazy. As a bonus they’ll probably fix her broken crap for free so you don’t have to. Just enjoy the ride as long as it goes then GTFO when it all blows up. Hopefully you kept your bank accounts separate and your sperm count negligible.
Rinse, repeat for as long as your own looks or finances last.
Or do what I did. Introduced her to my “friend”, who she dumped me for. Then he had to skip the state for a few months. In turn I stole his horse. I got the better end of the trade. I miss that horse.
That works too.
An exit strategy is essential. The ride was often epic fun, and always interesting. Thankfully, I times the coda well
It seems to me 100% of the V10 TDI problem was managers setting the design / parameters of the engine bay before either figuring out marketing wanted a V10 TDI in there, or engineering could give them specs for a new V10 TDI. Because the overall impression I get is the engine is a square peg engineered a la Apollo 13 to fit in the round hole that’s already there, instead of designing the SUV around the V10.
Managers: “Great news, everyone! C-suite wants us to stuff a V10 diesel in the same engine bay they designed for a 6 cylinder. You have a green light to do whatever you want to the packaging of the V10 in order to make it work. You got 3 months to do it. Chop chop!”
That engine bay was engineered to fit an inline 5, VR6, 90 degree V6, V8, V10 and W12. I don’t know of too many vehicles that have that sort of spread of cylinder count.
Pretty much any American car from 1930-1980.
Well okay, but that’s versions of the same inline-6 block and versions of the same V8 small block. A few also offered a big-block V8. All very sorted, you could swap them out like changing underwear.
But this… this is something else. Not sure anybody actually asked for so many different engines, but here we are.
I’m sure had the oil crisis never happened you’d have found V10-V16s in some of those engine bays too.
I know the Cadillac V8 that got to 500 cubic inches was designed to go all the way to 600. 10 freaking liters!
First V 10s I saw were in Mercedes artic trucks (lorries) in the late 70s, early 1980s.
From memory they were tilt cabs for big work, although I seem to remember you could get to them from the cab for oil and water. The V was wide and drivers, from an oil storage depot, loved them, saying the torque was there early and just kept pulling.
The entire premise of the gear-drive was supposedly VW recognized that stuffing a v10 into a midsize SUV would make an unserviceable nightmare. So they tried to basically eliminate need for service, past dumping a hell of a lot of oil in it every one in awhile. And dieselWagon had some reason to believe they could succeed. VE are considered fairly indestructible, as long as the timing belt didn’t fail. And even the 2.5 this was based on, isn’t terrible. Obviously, they then pulled a Volkswagen and made a few common failure points. Which, in the grand scheme of things, this motor isn’t terrible unreliable given what it is. They can hit 200k fairly often. It’s just if one single thing goes wrong you’re probably pretty boned. Good car for the first owner!
I wonder why they used 2 PCM’s. Being the 2000’s, and roughly the same time as the Gallardo was being introduced in, why couldn’t they just use one PCM?
Probably, but that is not Ze Deutschland Way. BMW tended to do the same thing too, because why design a new part for your fancy V engine when you can just use two of everything from the inline version?
Would you rather have twice the (hopefully remote) chance of failure with a much higher likelihood of finding a replacement cheap in a junkyard or the possibility of a replacement specialized ECU being unobtanium?
I’d take my chances either way. I’ve seen other useful things for tens of thousands of vehicles still on the road be discontinued with no other source of parts available to fix or replace them (see: 2011-2014 Dodge Avenger and Chrysler 200 wiper arms).
If I bought this as a daily (woof), then I’d likely want an easier and cheaper way to get replacement PCM’s, but I’m not trusting the junkyard. In my neck of expertise, PCM’s aren’t generally swappable due to VIN’s and whatnot. But I live under a rock with Mopar, so what do I actually know.
I loved that the graphics didn’t even load as I was bringing up the front page, and when I saw this headline I *instantly* knew this was about a VW.
It has a Dynamo and a Hardy-Clutch.
I always kind of wanted one of these. Until now.
It appeared they attempted to make this engine last, the cam being the weak point. Wonder if someone who was retentive about maintenance would get significantly more mileage out of one?
Notice the need to use VW-specced oil, the one thing any self-respected murican would promptly ignore when taking his car to JiffyLube for its (usually delayed) oil change, because the ‘savings’ with cheap oil are definitely worth it in the long run 🙂
Bonus: you get to yell afterwards “garbage yuropeen reliability!!1!” when everything inevitably and predictably fails
When I had a VW, I just let the dealership do the oil changes as I wanted to be sure the warranty covered everything. It wasn’t quite Doug DeMuro with a Range Rover level of warranty absurdity, but it was close.
That’s why oil standards exist. If the cheap oil meets the same standards as that expensive VW oil then it is capable of doing the same job as the expensive VW oil.
If Jiffy Lube puts in oil that doesn’t meet those standards then the fail is on Jiffy Lube, not the customer.
IIRC, the particular camshaft problem in question is a fundamental design flaw, that was exacerbated by VW selecting an incorrect camshaft profile for all of the 2 valve per cylinder PDs.
The oil spec was a band-aid, but there’s oils that meet the stated spec (VW 505.01) but don’t protect the camshafts sufficiently (anything lighter than 5W-40). (Worse, the 2006-2007 V10s in the US have particulate filters, meaning they need a newer spec (I think 506.01 or 507.00) which is only available in 5W-30 or 0W-30.)
Or, you use a quality non-compliant 5W-40 like Shell Rotella T6 or Mobil Delvac 1 (which nowadays has DPF-safe ratings as well), and delay (not prevent) the failure.
Thanks for the info.
This thing had 20 valves? WTF?
Thats crazy they would go to all that trouble while choking the engine through 2 valves. Even old cummins diesels in the 90s were using 4 valves.
I think a fair amount of it is… VW knew very well how their combustion worked with a 2 valve engine, and could get decent power and torque, with emissions compliance (they weren’t cheating yet!) without going to the additional expense, size, and weight of 4 valves. (Or, in even simpler terms, they didn’t need 4 valves yet.)
Additionally, with more and smaller cylinders, you make up for the loss in potential valve area. Looks like a Cummins 5.9 has 33 mm valves with 7 mm stems for both intake and exhaust, for a total of 9.802 cm^2 of intake valve area (twelve valves) and the same exhaust valve area. The Touareg V10 TDI, on the other hand, appears to have had 35.9 mm intake valves with 7 mm stems, for a total of 9.737 cm^2 of intake valve area (ten valves), and 31.5 mm exhaust valves with 7 mm stems, for a total of 7.408 cm^2 of exhaust valve area. So, it could get basically the same amount of air in as the Cummins, at the expense of exhaust (but it’s easier for exhaust to exit the cylinder than for air to enter the cylinder), despite being 962 cc smaller.
And, this shows in power figures.
The original (MY2003) V10 TDI made 310 hp @ 3750 RPM, 553 ft-lbs @ 2000 RPM. (And, when it came out in the US for MY2004, it met US <i>light duty</i> truck emissions, which the Cummins didn’t.) At the same time (MYs 2002-2004), the <i>high output</i> version of the Cummins was 305 hp @ 2900 RPM and 555 ft-lbs @ 1400 RPM. (I don’t have boost pressure specs for the V10, though, but I’d guess just based on the power figures, the fact that the V10’s power and torque peaks are both at higher RPM, and the similar intake valve area (which limits peak power, but not torque) that they’re similar.)
Or, with a bit of development, the 2007-2010 Touareg R50 made 345 hp @ 3500 RPM, 627 ft-lbs @ 2000 RPM. The 2004.5-“2007” (really late-production 2006 in early-production 2007 chassis) 5.9s were 325 hp @ 2900 RPM, 610 ft-lbs @ 1600 RPM – less than the Touareg R50. The 2007.5-2010 6.7s apparently had the same valve diameter, and made 350 hp @ 3000 RPM, 650 ft-lbs @ 1500 RPM in automatic trim (detuned torque for the manuals).
Now, could they have made more power with more valves? Yeah, and they did eventually go that way on the 4-cylinders. For the same cylinder dimensions, and literally the same intake valves, the most factory power an 2.0 8 valve PD-TDI got was 138 hp @ 4000 RPM, 236 ft-lbs @ 1750-2000 RPM. (And, with a <i>smaller</i> bore but AFAIK the same valves, there was a 1.9 that got 158 hp @ 3750 RPM, 243 ft-lbs @ 1900 RPM. I’d guess that one did it with a lot more boost.) They did make a DOHC 16 valve version of the 2.0, and that got 168 hp @ 4200 RPM (note that this is higher, too), 258 ft-lbs @ 1800-2500 RPM. But, I’m guessing they simply didn’t have enough room for a DOHC head for the V10 in the Touareg. (And, when VW raced the Touareg in the Dakar Rally, they eventually made a DOHC head for it… but that was the 5-cylinder, not the V10, so it wasn’t width-constrained.)
Thanks for the info. It’s pretty clear that VW was comfortably achieving their performance goals with 2 valves.
I agree that they could have made more power with 4 valves, which was pretty much industry standard. The Detroit S60 did it with a single cam and unitized injection, so I feel like VW could have done the same.
This is not an example of impressive engineering, this is a cautionary tale of everything wrong with VW’s corporate culture in the 2000s.
I’m no systems engineer, but I did study product design, and similar principles apply. This is about the absolute worst set of solutions conceived to the problem of making a vehicle move reliably under it’s own power.
Charitably, this is what complete failure looks like at the management, design and engineering levels. Sadly, I’m not naive enough to believe something so deliberately convoluted could happen by accident.
Realistically, this was marketing and management weaponizing the engineering process to build an image of ‘mechanical superiority’ for the brand, in addition to ensuring the vehicles would quickly become uneconomical to repair past the warranty period. I believe there is a strong possibly VW cultivated this complexity as part of their efforts to cover up their emissions cheating systems.
Ultimately, this is the executive malfeasance that would culminate in Diesel Gate, and jail time. There is very little to celebrate regarding VW or their products in the 2000s. This vehicle is the pinnacle of hubris for a company that had no qualms acting in bad faith against their customers and the environment.
I disagree, the timing system while complex did not need any maintenance in 200K. No belts, no chains etc… I’m betting an owner who did regular maint would see significantly longer life of this engine. The rest of your opinion piece is some wild conspiracy theories.
Yeah, and I’m sure there were no other expensive repairs needed during that 200k…
VW’s executives were criminals. No more, no less. Oliver Schmidt among others, served his time in federal prison. Martin Winterkorn is currently on trail in Germany, facing a decade in jail.
To hide criminal activity effecting *millions of products*- especially something with as long a production cycle as an automobile- requires coordinated effort on the part of many people. This type of scheme can’t be initiated overnight, it requires many years of planning and the vetting of a dedicated in-group to carry out the scheme. You’d better believe VW pursued every avenue within their power to obfuscate their intentions, including engineering decisions.
Wild or not, this is the definition of a conspiracy, and while we may never know how exactly it played out, criminal behaviour definitely happened.
Answer this: If you were intending to instal a physical or digital cheat devise, would you prefer to hide it within a simple or complex system?
I wonder how you feel about Navistar’s or Cummins’ diesel emissions cheating, for which nobody went to jail (and never will), just a slap-on-the-wrist fine and a stern talking-to from the EPA.
..or every single other carmaker in the world who cheated diesel emissions regs because mitigating NOx and CO2 at the same time are somewhat conflicting goals that require complicated, expensive engineering that will also negatively affect reliability, so they all tried a run-around.
It’s always funny how easily media can skew public perception, just by having VW’s dieselgate all over the news and none of the others.
I was aware of that, and I don’t feel great about it either. Frankly, its all part of the reason I’m inherently suspicious whenever someone tries to elevate diesel as some sort of magic solution to our clean energy needs.
Inevitably, most corporations (if they stick around long enough) partake in some questionable behaviour. That’s the nature of organizations set up to value shareholder value above all else.
Just because VW execs were actually held accountable for their crimes (and others weren’t) doesn’t mean VW’s tarnished reputation wasn’t deserved. What happened to VW should be the rule not the exception, and it could be argued the punishment didn’t go far enough.
And really, what of it? A few old guys went to jail, most regular people still see the brand favourably.
If the punishment of physical incarceration didn’t go far enough then what would you suggest should have been a more appropriate punishment for these executives?
Oh, I think the incarceration was fair, Ive simply read that some feel certain public facing executes were made to be scapegoats and took the brunt of the punishments, while others who may have been responsible behind the scenes avoided scrutiny or prosecution.
A well designed timing chain can last 200K+ too.
I loathe VW, but I imagine this engine accomplished exactly the design goals set out for it.
There are more parameters than just reliability or serviceability to judge a product on.
After all, if we were just optimizing for those things, the whole world would be Toyota and we would never have anything exciting. The Porsche 911 is very famously 60 years of engineering increasingly better patches over what is objectively a terrible idea to begin with.
This was marketed and sold as a luxury vehicle at the time, which I think is an extremely silly use of the VW brand and of a diesel engine, but nevertheless was reflected in the pricing. Land Rover, Mercedes, BMW, etc have put out clunkers too. I have little doubt you could find a 5 figure repair in any one of their 20 year old SUVs as well.
I think part of the reflexive dislike of the unreliability is the perceived violation of the idea that a mass market brand should offer simplicity, not complexity. But rightly or wrongly, that isn’t how VW saw themselves at the time.
I agree, the engine did meet its design goals, those goals were simple terrible.
Fair points about how VW was attempting to market themselves at the time.
It seems people tend to judge luxury in different ways. Expensive but frail products that signal the disposability of your income- (The deprecation is a feature not a flaw) Vs. expensive durability goods that are fit for purpose, designed as an investment or at least avoid the unnecessary erosion of wealth.
I don’t think frailty is a luxury good in itself; I think it’s a byproduct of other luxury demands (power, smoothness, feature-laden, etc).
People who only buy and experience vehicles used simply have a much different set of values than people who buy or lease and replace within a couple years over and over. And the luxury automakers obviously cater to the latter as the majority of their actual customers.
You’re not wrong about either point, but I do think there is a range of motivations when it comes to consuming luxury goods, with the need to “signal” that luxury purchase (or not) as a key differentiator.
Compare say, a pair or Frye boots. They are made in the USA, they will last for decades if you take care of them, and can be re-soled. They don’t have an outward brand name- Nobody but the most footwear-conscious has any idea what they are.
You can also buy a pair of fast-fashion boots from the mall, with a fancy brand name, yet they are made in a sweat shop with a glued sole that can’t be rebuilt.
Both cost $500, both are ‘luxury’ goods by most people’s standards, yet the outcomes are very different.
Even for people who buy or lease new, some people chose to buy a Lexus or a full-size GM SUV instead of the German equivalent. Both can be quite expensive, but again with very different motivations.
I almost said something about Lexus in my last post, but I agree with this entirely.
Past iterations of the Land Cruiser were the ultimate automotive equivalent of Frye boots.
I dunno. Lexus seems to juggle luxury and reliability well enough.
I saw this plenty of times as a mechanical design engineer. The problem came about when product managers and program managers that had very little knowledge about mechanical systems developed crazy product specifications with little input from engineering. Every time this happened reliability was terrible and costs increased as band aids were added in production to get the product out the door. For consumer products, simple is elegant and reliable. Leave the super complicated for robotic probes that land on Mars or weapon systems. Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. Keep it simple!
Makes sense. I ended up pivoting away from product design so I never got to see that process evolve first hand, but the evidence seems to be all around for those with a mechanical interest.
I would argue that overly complex weapons systems are not a great thing, either. We’ve seen the disparity in multi-million dollar per shot defense systems being used to combat cheap drones and rockets. When your stuff is too expensive, even if that translates into qualitative goodness, you run out of money or inventory quicker than you’d like. It’s also too easy to have minor failures cascade into catastrophic situations.
But it doesn’t have a timing belt, so in David Tracy logic, this is a reliable engine.
Not saying this engine is reliable, but it did make it to 200k miles…
And now it’s dead. 200k miles is not one bit impressive for a modern engine.
Old pre-chamber VM Motori diesels with gear timing were bulletproof, I’ve owned 3 of them in Alfas.
At the same time I completely disagree with David’s idiotic take on timing belts that proves once again he’s more of a writer than an engineer.
Timing gears are generally more reliable than timing belts… There is a reason that most heavy duty diesel engines use them. There is more NVH, but they don’t break (timing) as often.
I know. The timing belt crack was facetious.
You can hear a timing gear system in action by waiting at your mailbox. Unless your carrier has one of those fancy EVs.
Dereliction of duty to be a CEO and green light this idiocy. VW deserves every failure it has encountered over the last two decades
Peak Piëch
I think it should be referred to as Piech’s Peak.
Not to be confused with the hairdo of similar name.
You know it’s bad when a VW master technician who spent years at dealers, and buys, fixes and modifies VWs for fun is concerned. He’s done a full RS3 drivetrain swap on a Mk7.5 Golf R but won’t even consider reassembling a V10 TDI. Also makes you wonder how much worse the Audi Q7 V12 TDI must be.
All I have to say to Mercedes is good luck with yours!
I did a quick google search for a picture of that v12. It looks like it has all the accessories on the front driven by serpentine belts, so that’s an improvement and probably indicates there’s a little more room in the engine bay to work. But it also shows the intercooler and a maze of piping in the V of the engine, so I wouldn’t bank on it being much of an improvement….
Makes sense, the Q7 came out later, and while the V10 TDI came out for launch in 2002, the V12 didn’t hit the road until 2005, at least according to wikipedia. I guess they learned their lesson on serviceability, and managed to squeeze some space out of the Q7 version of the platform to fit everything better, or just realized pulling the engine to service accessories is a bad design in general.
I’m also learning that other markets got a W12 Touareg, which is probably equally as crammed in there, albeit maybe slightly less cramped than the Phaeton with the same engine.
This is one of those situations where I am reminded of Dungeons and Dragons character development.
Engineering is a tradeoff between various factors: reliability, performance, serviceability, sheer complexity to accomplish a task, etc., etc.
They rolled a natural 20 for complexity and 1 for serviceability. I guess it did go 200,000 miles, so they rolled decently for reliability.
In any other company, some process would have stopped this. Somebody would have looked at it, said ‘Oh, hell no’, and been ordered to redo it.
Piech was a loon. In a certain way, admirable. In a ‘real human beings may have to use or fix it’, the mind reels.
Sadly, I get the sense of a German GM vibe. Why? GM of the 1960s had some absolutely bonkers engineering ideas they put into production. Turbocharging, front-drive, overhead cam inline-6, air cooled engines, several different transmission designs. The excess was so out there that the conservative reaction in the 1970s and 1980s to that excess damaged the company in another way.
I hope VW rolls a more well-rounded character next time.
Still, GMC/Chevrolet also had traditional pushrod V8s during that time…those had their issues, but compared to some of the other stupid ideas they came up with (fuel pincher diesel V8 , Olds V8 Diesel etc etc), they were much better.
Decades back I helped a friend ‘rebuild’ the engine in his type 4. Cost less than 300 IIRC (70’s dollars) including some tool purchases and took 7-8 hrs. Tools included a small metric and standard socket and wrench set, pair of jack stands, ring and valve spring compressor, cardboard and plywood sheets, borrowed hydraulic floor jack and a case of beer. Great fun.
Putting this engine next to a million 350 small blocks is a perfect encapsulation of who won WWII and why.
COTD
Quantity is its own quality – an American capitalist said that I think….
So did an American General.
“Get there first and bring more men.”
-Robert E. Lee
Shut it down folks, we have a COTD winner and it’s not even noon!
Ironic that the winning post would be for that rarest of occasions, me throwing shade at a V10.
I mean, Mr. Hamilton, that there’s not a cannon factory in the whole South.
I was thinking comparing the v10 VW to the 6-71 2 cycle Detriot Diesel would have been the more apt metaphor. Since that engine actually did fight on the front lines and kicked some kraut ass
Ha. Dunno, using quantity as a metric isn’t always a reliable indicator of such things, like, take a look at the 22+ million air-cooled flat-fours from Germany (the VW Beetle, etc, obviously), not to mention the 100+ million air-cooled single-cylinders from Japan (the Honda Super Cub.) Yeah, those two countries didn’t do so well in WWII…
Note to self – Continue to avoid purchasing any VW products made after 1980.
If it’s German and designed after the wall fell, I’m not interested.
This is why they’re cheap. Because its a German car and its gonna’ be a pain in the ass to own and a worse pain in the ass to work on.
There is a reason why well maintained Cadillacs such as the Escalade holds its value versus the German Competition and Ranger Rover….
Honestly, this thing is mostly just built like any commercial diesel.
Other than not having to drop the engine from the chassis to work on it, you have to remove tons of layers to get to the base engine. This doesn’t look any more difficult than pulling apart a Maxxforce 7/6.4 Powerstroke.
All of this just convinces me that these are actually enthusiast vehicles for heavy duty Truck & Coach techs like myself. Cause this is VERY similar in a LOT of ways to what I regularly worked on while I was still spinning wrenches.
Now that’s fascinating! Admittedly, I would love to see a marketing team come up with a strategy for marketing a diesel SUV for commercial diesel enthusiasts. 🙂
I also suppose I’m a bit of a luddite. The only commercial engine I’ve worked on was a DT466E from 1997 and it was a ball learning how it ticked. Now, if only the alternator bolts didn’t seem to be like a foot long…
The DT466, even it’s E variant, are GREAT engines. Old school design. They’re not powerhouses, but they’re dead nuts reliable and cheap/easy to rebuild.
The only thing that stops me from getting a V10 Touareg is the lack of a 2-post lift.
And yet, I still kinda want one. Good thing I have more self control
I almost bought one of these last year, but heard the horror stories and bought a 2010 BMW 335d instead. After watching this video last night, I am now even more certain I made the right call, even thought I sold the 335d less than a year after I bought it, at a significant loss.
In before someone claims this is anti-VW propaganda.
I don’t read this as anti-VW. If anything, she’s celebrating the engineering prowess of the Piëch era.
That said, it also reads like a tabloid piece where you find out that Hollywood star you’re so fond of is a nightmare off screen.
Once again, the old warning about never meeting your heroes…
Ha, if anything this was a lot of positive spin (“The engine is also really impressive!”) on what amounts to an automotive wrenching horror show.
No need. VW created the negative tropes about their vehicles by simply and reliably making unreliable cars.
They have some reliable models such as some years of Passat- their I4 petrols were good, but complexity ruins everything…..