[Vwdiesel] Signs of PD worn cam syndrome?

[travis gottschalk]

I own an 04 Golf. Same engine so you will have a BEW engine. I personally love that engine but each to their own. There is really really small bevel on the sides of the cam lobe that are gone if the cam is lightly wearing down. There will be a washing marks or streaks as well. Only gets worse from there. The things can run on a really bad cam before total damage but you want to catch early. If you can do your own work the cam parts is around $800-$1000. Honestly the BEW engine doesn't have the same issue as even the BRM which is the newer PD engine. It has greater lobe angles (steepness) to overcome so it wears them out much faster. There has been many reports of the cams on BEW's lasting a long long time. Yes the proper oil does need to be used but it isn't an automatic cam failure if it wasn't used either. Most dealers didn't even put the correct oil in the PD cars at first (and even still). Other PD specific issues are the fuel lift pumps sometimes fail without warning. My car had two before I bought it but none since. Also the intake piping has clips and dog ears. The rubber pipe going into the anti-shutter valve attached to the intake manifold likely is part off. There is a dog collar fix for that that will improve your boosting and MPG some as it won't be leaking air out.

 Make sure the last timing belt had all the components changed (torque to yeild bolts, water pump, idler and tensioner pulleys and belt). Any missing component can cause failure before the next change and isn't worth the risk. If is is a manual tranny you need to make sure the tranny had a oil change at 100K miles. If the auto it is every 40K miles. Careful of faulty seat heaters, sometimes they can get a little hot. Also there has been a glow plug recall on these cars once. Likely will be a second one in a month or so to fix that. They went from a 7 volt ceramic glow plug that they stopped making due to breakage into the engine (when changing them) and went to a 5 volt all steel with a complete reflash of the computer. That made starting below zero REALLY hard. Now I have heard they are reflashing back to a 7 volt steel coated ceramic glow plug that the newer PD engines (late BEW and BRM) had but in order to be EPA compliant they also need to change all the injectors. That is about $3500 in parts and labor for free but I have heard the starting and start up smoke is MUCH better. One last thing. I am a firm believer in metal belly pans. If yours doesn't have one get one. Worth there weight in the aluminum they are made from (some are steel though). 
Travis G 

> There is a list of potential symptoms on the TDI club but some of them  
> are rather iffy if you ask me but worth taking a look at.  I tried  
> several times before I finally got someone to list the symptoms for me  
> so you might look for my posts and their follow ups or just do a  
> google search of the TDI  club with PD cam failure symptoms as the  
> main search title.  Hayden
> 
> On Sep 20, 2010, at 6:10 PM, Shawn Wright wrote:
> 
> > I'm going to look at a 2004 TDI Jetta with the PD engine and 190k  
> > kms. I've
> > read some info about cam failures on these engines if incorrect oil  
> > is used.
> > Short of pulling the valve cover to inspect the cam, is there any  
> > other way
> > to check for cam condition?
> >
> > Thanks
> >
> > -- 
> > Shawn Wright