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Ah, yes. Great question. Sorry… I sort of managed to explain why it even occurs, which is very important.
Fopeano is correct on this, and then there is a little more to add on to what he already said.
It is kind of a perfect storm situation with these engines, and for all the reasons described. But the main one is heat. Heat in these engines is absurd. Like he said, it is a small turbo, so it tends to be a little more active and that generates a ton of heat. This cokes up the lines. And I would love to let the world know just how awful cleaning each and every tiny pipe and tube is to get rid of this nonsense. If you look at something like my car, you’ll see some major efforts to keep the heat away from the block, but nothing really works. In my car, the turbo is almost directly next to the block. All the shielding in the world isn’t enough to keep the heat from radiating its way around. Because that’s what heat does. Radiates. Because heat is radiation. At least in this case.
So tip number 1- just a little bit of warm up and cool down can save you a lot of headaches. When that little K03 turbo has been going nonstop for however long and then it’s just suddenly turned off, all oil flow stops and that oil just bakes. It almost causes me physical pain thinking about how severe a change it is to go from spinning at hundreds of thousands of RPMs to a dead stop in less than a second. That heat… all that heat.
Tip #2- Fopeano got on this one. Synthetic oil ONLY. And VW/Audi have their approved oil specs. 501.00 and 502.00, etc. This information will be in the owner’s manual. If it isn’t, CALL and find out what is recommended by the dealer. Synthetic or die. I haven’t done enough research into why exactly this is, but a lot of people swear by Mobile 1 for this particular engine. Not that I have anything at all against Mobile 1, but the way it’s recommended by owners, it seems like it is a great go-to if all else fails. I use Liqui Moly and Motul. Both have been great for me.
Tip #3- The last point Fopeano brought up- common sense. Please, never let the oil in these engines sit for 7,500 miles or more like some people say is possible. I can not figure out what compels people to disregard something so basic, but it seems like some people don’t get the full grasp of what changing engine oil is all about. But it is widely ignored and everything mentioned above is allowed to create this nasty stuff from pure neglect.
There was a bit of slack in it. I subscribe to the school of doing things right the first time and doing all that should be done if I work on something, so I’ll replace the pump, tensioner, etc.
I was pleasantly surprised at the price of timing belt kits for this car, so I’ll just do it.
Great call, I didn’t see that. I went out and looked at it and it was just some build up of dirt. But I did feel the teeth while I was looking at that and they were kind of wiggly. Knowing this car’s dark past, it wouldn’t surprise me if the timing belt on it right now was taken from another car.
“At some point everyone’s luck runs out though.”
That’s my problem. I have horrible luck most of the time. That Subaru spoiled me a bit. It broke so little that any repair on other cars seems like such a ripoff to me and I feel like other cars are all awful, but they’re really just normal cars with normal car issues. In the 6 years of owning that car, I have put less money into it between registration, purchase price, regular maintenance, etc. COMBINED than I have in just one year of maintenance on my Audi.
Yeah, the thing is that I have no earthly idea the last time it was changed. It really does look like it’s in great shape and the teeth look and feel fine, but I’ve been worrying about a blown engine because of the belt. I have broken one timing belt, and I was lucky. It was non-interference. I was 986 miles from the 200,000 mile point where I was going to replace it, and it snapped on me before I got to the even 200,000. I knew it was non-interference, so I wasn’t all that worried, but I didn’t think it would just go for no good reason and without warning like it did. It looked so/so, but when it snapped, I didn’t feel a thing. I was at a stop sign. I had my music on at a pretty low volume, just enough to not be able to hear all the engine noise. I put it in first gear, let off the clutch a bit and the guy on the sidewalk kind of jerked a bit and looked horrified, then walked away fast. I had no idea why. I then began to wonder why I wasn’t moving. My car had died. That’s how quiet it was… no drama inside the cabin. I was also lucky enough to be close enough to home that I was able to push my car home. A Subaru is a lot heavier than it looks, I’d like to tell you.
Notice how LUCKY I got in all of that? I doubt I’ll have a repeat of that kind of luck. So I am so torn. I have been looking at new heads just for fun and they’re not all that terrible, but it’s a mess I don’t want to get in. It’s an Audi A4, so I’m sure Fopeano knows the interesting method of removing the front end of the car to get to that area. It’s a great concept, it is a lot easier than I would have imagined, but it does take time, and I don’t have as much of that as I would like. And I need to get all this stuff done before it gets too cold.
That is also a very interesting story about the bombing. If no one got hurt, then that is hilarious. If someone got hurt but they ended up ok, it’s a shame, but interesting. If someone died, that’s awful. I’m hoping that nobody got hurt. Have you seen the pictures of the nukes hanging from their parachutes in a tree after a B-52 jettisoned them as it was crashing? It was during operation Chrome Dome, so those nukes were live. Only recently was it declassified that one of the nukes was pretty much a sneeze worth of energy away from detonating. It had somehow gotten through every redundancy backup put in place to keep from accidental detonation and the very last one was so, so, SO so close to firing and lighting the place up.
Ok, well… that being said, let me ask you this-
Since I don’t really want to drain everything and pull the front end off again for quite some time, with your experience and just looking at this… let’s say it is your car… what would you personally do? Replace it just to be extra sure or hold off a bit? These varying answers is exactly what I was wanting. I want to know why yes and why no and everything between.