MK6 GTI Water Pump @65k like clockwork

[XFJET]

So when I did my 60k service (i try to do it every 5k) i noticed the water level was quite low so I was expecting the pump to let go, within 4k it did so ordered a new one from US, decided to order from ECS. Before I ordered I did a few ours of research and decided to the get the latest version of the pump for the California spec GTI, because from the photos it looked like the top bit doesn't have the little hump (this is were it least as it flakes off after a while, and metal base for the actual pump.

Doing this job is not too easy, I called a few places to see how much they charge and cheapest was $700 for the labor alone and they wanted the car for two days and lots of other caveats mainly because I bought my own pump and didn't pay their exorbitant $899. So anyhow everything from ECS arrived, pump, seals (did not need them), VW Coolant, 5 litres of engine oil, 6 litres of DSG oil, DSG filter, engine oil filter, air filter, pollen filter, GFB diverter valve and all the other crap you need to do a full major service. Went out to Autobarn and got the HEX, Torx and Spline socket sets and got stuck into it. Thought to myself I'll smash this out in 4 hours......


So took the belly pan out undid the intake pipe and took one bolt from the bracket of the auxiliary water pump out so the auxiliary water pump is free to move. Removed the the intake and air filter box, disconnected all the plugs and crap and finally pulled the intake manifold off. If you think you can do it without pulling the intake manifold off please don't. Here is why.

Manifold off and no surprises here
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From the other side
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Differences between new and old pump
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New Pump
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So that was the easy bit ..... changing a water pump is easy, this is the crap part.....
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And ....
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Car did run ok thou but was only getting 520km per tank with caj driving

The injector in the pic was the average one, some had massive amount of carbon on them, the valves were absolutely ****ing caked with it, I let 3 of the cylinders soak (the per was on the intake broke so no can do ) with some Moly upper cylinder cleaner then took at them with a pic, see pic above. The crap thing is that the carbon is so hard you almost bend the pic in it. After about 2 hours soak it was a little easier but man.....

Now I got to finish the job tomorrow or some other day this week ... these cars suffer badly from this. I think the fix would be to block the hose that goes into the intake manifold and get a PCV blocking plate (africa plate) as once the stock PCV fails it will literally put all the boost into the engine and bye bye rear main seal.

The story will continue when I get a chance ....but for the love of god don't just change the pump without taking the manifold off and clean the valves as you never know how bad it is and you'll just have to do it again.

they wanted $1200 for valve clean and $700 to replace the pump well not bad for a days work but I guess it takes 2 days to get it done by myself or maybe 1 day if the valve are not so bad....

Catch can and Africa PCV delete plate coming soon

[Umai Naa!!]

That's been leaking for a while, given how diluted the coolant is, to the point of starting to turn brown.

I'd suggest running an intake cleaner through it every 15K from here on in.

[XFJET]

I think it's brown because I used water for about a week, the low coolant light comes on after 20km if you fill the tank.

No need for intake cleaner with the Africa plate, it basically bypasses the intake manifold by capping the manifold hose which goes to the PCV valve and i'm putting a catch can in. There will be no more oil in the engine.

Before I pulled the manifold out, as in a few days ago, I run a $25 intake cleaner as per instructions then the Subaru one as per instructions and what you see here is the result, they simply don't work, maybe a little but not enough to clean.

This is the "Africa" plate
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Getting it from here: Spulen 2.0TSI Catch Can Adapter - SE-092 (http://www.uspmotorsports.com/Volkswagen--Golf-GTI-Rabbit--MK6--10-2014--2.0T/Engine/PCV-and-Catchcans/Spulen-2.0TSI-Catch-Can-Adapter.html)

you just attach a catch can in between those AN fittings and not only you don't have to worry about carbon but no more 1L oil every month as well as no more rear mail seal issues (haven't got that one yet but 100% will happen if the original PCV fails which it will)

So I got some cleaning for next time then replace all fluids inc the DSG oil, got the DSG tool to fill the oil from above from ECS so should be a breeze.

[blower]

Nice....

One thing to be aware of is that by deleting the PCV and bypassing the intake manifold - you no longer have vacuum on the crankcase to evacuate gasses and more importantly water vapour. Remember during normal driving, especially on a motorway run the engine is far more in vacuum then it is on boost.....this allows the crankcase to be continuously evacuated.

With no vacuum on the crankcase, as is the case on a bypass like this, then you have to watch for oil contamination - especially in humid weather/winter months when there is a lot more moisture being drawn through the intake. This water vapour combined with the natural water vapour from the combustion process leads to a lot of water vapour in the blowby gasses - which will contaminate the oil over time if not evacuated continuously.

It maybe necessary to double your oil change frequency.

[nat225]

good work there!

probably drive the car hard every now and then? driving it hard for 20-30 minutes supposedly helps burning off the carbon build up according to some VW Audi literature.

I did that often at Lakeside Happy Laps time :D

[Bug_racer]

The leaking water pump on TSI engines is fairly common , as is the Carbon build up in almost all Direct injection engines . Everyone seems to have the same way of thinking that this is a problem , and if you have a problem then you search for a solution . Question then is what are you trying to achieve . No more Carbon build up on the intake ? But what about the injectors ?? A catch can isnt going to stop this from happening no matter what you do , Carbon is a by-product of combustion so unless you run the injectors in the manifold and run a catch can its not going to solve the "issue" . Alternatively you can treat it like a maintenance item and once in a while remove the manifold , clean the intake and clean flow the injectors . Changing the PCV will also help as the PCV gets blocked up with Carbon as well over time . I dont recommend catch cans as Ive seen quite a few rocker covers fail due to a one way valve not being able to operate correctly which then causes poor idling and dumps oil in the re/circ type catch cans .
Now to clean the intake takes more than just a few days , on average it takes me a week to remove all of the carbon on the intake / dividers , clean the manifold and clean and flow the injectors ( I had a special DI machine built for this purpose) . The hardest part is polishing the valves once all the carbon is removed to get the original shiny finish which slows the carbon build up down . I do this on my own car just before I race . Also the prices the OP mentioned is how much I charge for parts/labour for the work .

[Feeine]

Didn't realise the tsi had really bad carbon problems. Should just expect it from direct injected engines by now... Pulled the intake off my 1.8t with 160k and the valves were still shiny. Good effort cleaning it up!

[XFJET]

good work there!

probably drive the car hard every now and then? driving it hard for 20-30 minutes supposedly helps burning off the carbon build up according to some VW Audi literature.

I did that often at Lakeside Happy Laps time :D

Oh I do the usual Mnt Nebo runs where it pretty much stays in 2nd and 3rd above 5000RPM most of the time but that is not the problem....it's the inherent problem with DI without another set of injectors or a 5th injector (like toyota)


The leaking water pump on TSI engines is fairly common , as is the Carbon build up in almost all Direct injection engines . Everyone seems to have the same way of thinking that this is a problem , and if you have a problem then you search for a solution . Question then is what are you trying to achieve . No more Carbon build up on the intake ? But what about the injectors ?? A catch can isnt going to stop this from happening no matter what you do , Carbon is a by-product of combustion so unless you run the injectors in the manifold and run a catch can its not going to solve the "issue" . Alternatively you can treat it like a maintenance item and once in a while remove the manifold , clean the intake and clean flow the injectors . Changing the PCV will also help as the PCV gets blocked up with Carbon as well over time . I dont recommend catch cans as Ive seen quite a few rocker covers fail due to a one way valve not being able to operate correctly which then causes poor idling and dumps oil in the re/circ type catch cans .
Now to clean the intake takes more than just a few days , on average it takes me a week to remove all of the carbon on the intake / dividers , clean the manifold and clean and flow the injectors ( I had a special DI machine built for this purpose) . The hardest part is polishing the valves once all the carbon is removed to get the original shiny finish which slows the carbon build up down . I do this on my own car just before I race . Also the prices the OP mentioned is how much I charge for parts/labour for the work .

I tened to agree and disagree here, the catch will make a huge difference, friends don't have to top up 1L every month anymore. The problem is with the PCV valve, I guess a simple fix would be to put a mesh right under it so the cams don't flick oil right into the valve, try starting the motor with it removed and see t 3.000 RPM how much oil gets flicked and sprayed around, a mesh will no doubt fix this. Then once the thing fills up with oil and carbon (not so much carbon) the membrane, the umbrella one fails and you get boost in the crankcase which pushes the rear main seal out and leaks.

The best thing you can do is put a catch can on these things and remove the factory PCV valve and bock off the intake manifold, you don't need that much vacuum, you get enough vacuum from the intake to get rid of most condensation.

yes I know it will not fix the carbon buildup in a DI, you have to either have individual throttle body (no more reversion) or 5th injector or another set of injectors to clean the throats and valved

And yes its a cnt of a job and personally I would charge more because I know how anal I am with this but supply and fit a water pump is normally $1600 which does not include cleaning the intake, injectors etc. So I'd rather do it myself.

The injectors I left with the tips dunked in CLR and they came out like new, intake manifold is not bad at all, the plates are caked with carbon and here is why the manifolds fail, the carbon builds up on them and the flapper hits this carbon and eventually the flap gets jammed and the shaft (plastic) breaks and there goes your intake manifold, everyone I now who never installed the plates could not tell a difference and never had the manifold fail.

Well hopefully I get the damn thing back on the road this week and do some laps around Mnt Nebo

[blower]

The best thing you can do is put a catch can on these things and remove the factory PCV valve and bock off the intake manifold, you don't need that much vacuum, you get enough vacuum from the intake to get rid of most condensation. o

There is next to no vacuum from the intake side when the engine is at low load or idling, only past the throttle body is there a vacuum - the air flow through the very large intake pipes is very low when the engine is idling/low load so it creates no vacuum of use at the much smaller PCV tube connecting to the intake side.

The other problem is that the cylinder head breather that draws in fresh air is connected to the same section of intake piping as the PCV will now be connected directly to....there will be no pressure difference between the two, further reducing any chance of the blowby gases being drawn out of the crankcase.

The issue with this setup is if you do a lot of motorway driving - the engine will be mainly in low load and rpm, only pressure from blowby at higher rpm's/loads will force fresh air to circulate from the cylinder head breather, through the crankcase and out through the PCV....at low loads the water vapour and hydrocarbon combustion gases will sit and mix withe the oil, causing it to sludge up and need changing far more frequently.

The oil sludging was a problem before PCV systems became closed circuit, back in the days of draft tubes - in that case a vacuum was only generated on the tube when the vehicle was moving at speed - vechicles that spent most their time at low speeds used to have oil sludging problems......having no vacuum on the PCV is going to result in the same problems.

[guile]

interesting reading chaps, sounds like you know your stuff...

i have no idea what half of it means otherwise i'd join in, interesting nonetheless...

[GeorgeMK1]

My GTI is sitting on 105k and I'm almost certain the manifold has never been off for a clean ... Please keep going with this haha, very interesting info!

[XFJET]

So it's all done now but there were a few issues and i'll leave some notes.

Cleaned it all up and slapped it back together and it leaked from the trunion (bit between water pump and oil cooler). Pulled it back out and pulled the trunion out and greased it and assembled it back together and it's all good, no leaks.

So now here are some notes.

You do not need to take the belly pan off, nor the front pipe etc. When I took it apart for the 2nd time I left everything in place.

You need to pull the airbox out, then the bracket next to it that holds all the cable plugs etc.
You need to get to the bloody bracket that ties the intake manifold to the block, you need a #10 (from memory) triple square tool there or spline or whatever they are called.
Once you remove the bracket you take the rubber joint between the throttle body and front pipe off, it just slides once you use a pick to break it free.

Thats it, now take all the bolts off and unplug all the sensors, undo the oil filter, undo the 17mm nut that holds the high pressure fuel line to the pump and some other manifold hoses like the charcoal canister and PCV and you're good to go.

Once the manifold is out you take one bolt off and take the pipe that goes in the middle of it out, this pipe goes to the DSG oil cooler, once that's loosen it just pops out, then you take of the water pump cover (two bolts) and use a pick to slide the water pump belt off, it just slides off easy, undo the rest of the bolts and she is out.

When you put it back make sure you grease the trunion and you can put the belt 1mm onto the flange before you put it back in and then just slide it back (the belt). Keep in mind the trunion has to be placed properly and greased or it might leak.

Then you just do the reversal. I left all the injectors in the manifold and used eyeballed them in line before putting the manifold back in then just use fingers to jiggle them if they don't fit, took about 2min to get them all in.

Also a good tool would be a water bottle cap thingo to pressurise the system and check for leaks before you put the manifold back on.

There is a thermostat in the line that from the big hose that goes to the top of the radiator to the DSG oil cooler, when I had a look the thermostat wasn't sitting in properly from new.... the trick here is to remove the hose from the thermostat and fit the plastic housing of the thermostat to the radiator hose first then slide the hose from oil cooler to themorstat on as the thermostat housing has a spring and it's not easy to compress and put the wire in to lock it. If you don't have a DSG then don't worry about it, that oil cooler might not even be for the DSG, **** knows, it seats next to the battery on top of the gearbox.

I guess if I have to do it again I should be able to get the manifold and pump off in under 40min, clean the intake and valves for 4-5 hours at least then re-assemble in 45min. Piss easy job once you done it once (or twice). I read some how to on the "internets" and in hindsight I shouldn't of as you don't have to go under the at all, let alone take the front pipe off and auxiliary water pump off and other crap.

I think you just need a T30 and 17mm for 90% of the job, add the 10 triple square and possibly pliers to get some hoses off.

After working on this thing.... I will never buy another VW or anything from the VW family again. Nobody in their right mind would make a water pump out of plastic. Half the hoses in the front of the engine are plastic as well, those things will eventually crack and fail. The amount of design flaws in the MK6 is quite big and with the MK6 GTI being cheaper then yeah more corners were cut for sure.

Oh when I started the car (front wheels were lifted off) all sorts of crap came up on the dash, like error with traction control, some steering wheel icon turned yellow, and all sorts of other errors. With the car started and wheels off the ground and in Park the press the brake green light was on and sometimes blinking. All these went away after I moved the car about 5meters. Stopped and started the car again and all good.

next week i got the 100km ride to the bay, the week after will do the DSG service, looks pretty simple

PS. I'm eyeballing a 2016 STI now, surely the EJ25 don't have a lot of plastic stuck to the engine

[Umai Naa!!]

They're not that bad to do.

I'd sooner do these, than anything relating to a Holden-badged Korean car from the last 6 or 7 years.

[XFJET]

Yeah but not looking forward to taking the DSG filter out....if I see anything shiny in it I'll walk straight into a Subaru dealer and pick up an STI. Don't get me wrong the GTI is a nice car but there are things that just disappoint me and I think it's because I might be a little different than the rest. For example you pay for the leather interior and the front seats rear pockets are vinyl, also the sides of the front seats that touch the centre console are made of elastane.....really?! you pay for leather I expect full leather not patches of it, the more you look at the car (if you're mechanically inclined) the more you see how VW tried to save $ everywhere they can, if the wife didn't want the heated seats I would of never forked the money for the leather seats, every time I sit in the car the fact that the seats are not 100% cover in leather reminds me not to buy a VW again, so does the fact that the water pump will go again, the Low Oil light will come up every end of the month which I tend to believe it's intentional so after 8 months you already replaced all the oil in the engine so yeah you can do 15.000km without an oil change because unofficially you have already replaced it 1L at a time....

Fro what it is the GTI is brilliant, they just need to spend the extra $1000 on it and make it what it should be.

Oh one more thing....never keep the engine cover on, it just heats up the coils and they go bad quicker which reminds me, at 65.000km it's time to buy some before they start to go.