Last week I was driving home when after shifting from first to second gear the engine gave a quite hilarious, rattling sound and lost power. I somehow though that something had stripped off somewhere, and after a few seconds the oil pressure warning flashed up.

First thought - darn, the timing belt! - although it had been changed, including all the other stuff around it, only roughly 10k miles ago. I drove off to the side, shut down the engine, jumped out and checked the road behind me, but no oil. Opened the engine compartment and removed the engine cover - no oil. Tried again starting - that rattling sound again.

Funny enough I took delivery of a VAD mobile (maybe the first here in Germany? just a week ago. No DTCs.

Called a service guy from the german Auto club. He thought that maybe the oil pump went south. He towed me to my home, and on the next day I asked my Audi garage to flatbed it to them and check what happened.

And, what was it? A broken crankshaft:

<img src="http://pictureposter.audiworld.com/11830/kurbelw-p1.jpg">

<img src="http://pictureposter.audiworld.com/11830/kurbelw-p2.jpg">

Looks like one of the bolts that keeps the crankshaft bearings together was broken. If that loose bearing then caused the crankshaft to swing and break, or if it was the other way around, no idea:

<img src="http://pictureposter.audiworld.com/11830/kurbelw-p4.jpg">

Still, the bearing itself looked good, although around 200,000km (around 150k miles) on it:

<img src="http://pictureposter.audiworld.com/11830/kurbelw-p3.jpg">

Still, I now have a completely new engine: as -

the turbo had to replaced at 43k

the cylinder head had to replaced at 100k

the exhaust manifold had to replaced at 120k

I have new a new piston housing with new pistons, crankshaft, oilpump, everything - you get only the lower part of the engine as a complete replacement, no parts.

And in their glorious generosity Audi decided to not take anything of that on their bill, although I suspect that this again (like it was with the cylinder head) was a manufacturing fault - who would think that a crankshaft could break?

So I sink again $8k into the car. Got it back yesterday, after a not-so-sprited drive it smelled a bit burnt from the engine compartment, but we'll see if there was any problem caused by the repair.

What next? With the luck I have I guess the gearbox will break - nothing else major which hasn't failed so far...

But still - I'm enjoying the TT every day after all these years. I likely will never let it go

Thanks for reading, cheers from Germany

Kai

 

Wow!

 

PS: Luckily, after taking the engine out and the cylinder head off it turned out that the two halfs of the crankshaft still "kept together in sync" and no further damage was done to the cylinder head or so...

 

yowch

 

million revolutions of the crank shaft and metal fatigue alone would account for any number of potential failures.

Glad you got it back on the road for many more miles. 200K is quite an accomplishment.

 

Your update makes me want to look at all mine sometime that I have the pan off.

Thanks for the pics and details. You'll help one of us, I'm sure.

LOVE that pic vom Deutschland!

 

...head cracked due to some open pits on an valve seating, likely from forming sand from the casting.

And still I wonder how to break a crankshaft. How often does that happen. Everything else, ok, but a crankshaft? Even the clutch is fine after 150k miles...

 

be seen can with enough vibration cycles cause a crack to start. If it were truly a manufacturing defect, you'd hear a lot more about this. There are probably close to a million 1.8T motors out there in many Audi/VW applications, so even if yours is one of 100 in a million that still does rise to the level of a significant number of failures.

I've seen failures in machined turbine parts that have even greater scrutiny than a crankshaft gets that boggle the mind. But metals like most anything that is subjected to heat and stress will fail eventually.

 

Very lucky on that part..

 

"Polynomial distribution" effect: some things break as they get older.