So I was on my way home from work Tuesday night and was nearly home, just had to stop into the petrol station to fill up. Pulled out of a T junction and went to accelerate in first and was greeted by a loud bang from the engine bay, the kind of bang similar to going over a bad pot hole.
Within a few hundred yards the car started to sound like a tractor! I pulled into the petrol station checked the car over and couldn't see anything wrong from the outside or inside the bonnet. As I was just round the corner from home I carried on. The car had little power and there was a lot of vibration from under the pedals.
The following morning I took the car down to local VW dealer and got them to check it over. The technician came back to give me the diagnosis and what he told me left me stunned.
The left hand engine mounting bolt had snapped clean off and the engine was hanging down on the left side (when facing the front bumper), thus causing everything to be out of sink, hence the horrible noise and lack of power. He told me they needed a further hour or so to strip down the engine bay further to reach the area to see if bolt could be backed out of the engine block, lucky it had not snapped clean off damaging the block, otherwise new engine!!
I went down to the workshop and the technician showed me the area where the bolt had clearly snapped and with the engine cover off you could see the engine was lop sided.
At this point I was a bit pissed off, a car that has covered 30K and under 5 years old. Not something you expect, maybe something that has covered 200K but still, poor build quality VW!!! The workshop manager then came over to offer reassurance and told me not to worry. I asked him if they had ever seen this before as I was horrified and apparently on MK5 Golf TDI’s the same has happened.
I managed to get a lift to work from my boss as they were out of courtesy cars. Got a call later in the day and they were able to back the bolt out and there was not damage to the engine, I had been lucky apparently.
To cut a long story short, the cost of the repair should have been £600 apparently (mainly due to the labour in striping down the engine) of which I refused to pay. In the end the garage made a contribution and said they would claim some back from VW, so a bill of £140 in the end. Now I have to say dealer couldn’t have done more (except maybe may for the lot) and the tech guy who has worked on my car before did a great job, car is running better than before lol. Just relieve the engine was not knackered.
However, maybe I am being naive but to me this is totally crap build quality, has anyone had similar experience?
