power loss etc gti 8v, confused!

[johnny80]

Hi all,

I know there are a lot of similar topics on this forum but because of this I am getting pretty confused about what my problem could be so I am hoping someone can help!

For a few months now I have been suffering from power loss and juddering through acceleration from my golf which has been slowly getting worse. I took it to the garage and they could only find one fault code that they fixed, apparently it was not connected to the problem however they are baffled as to the cause! They changed the Air flow meter and rotor arm to no avail. When i took it out tonight and tried to accelerate from stationary, the revs went up as normal but no power, any ideas?

The car doesn't stall and seems to be slightly better than before taking it to the garage but not fixed. From cold start the power loss is terrible for about 4-5 mins.

Again apologies for posting similar but getting confused! Oh it's an ADY engine type if that helps with diagnosis!

Any help appreciated!

[Col]

Did they check the timing ?

This engine has an intermediate shaft which drives the distributor. When a cam belt change is done it is very easy to knock this shaft and hence the timing out.

The engine will still run, like yours but badly. It shouldn't rev over about 5k either.

To check and adjust the timing, it needs to be hooked up to vagcom or similar.

[chronic]

I have the same mate, hitting around 3 thousand the car starts jugging.I changed sparkplugs, ht leads, cap, distributor. I found i stuck some heavy duty stp cleaning in it sorted the problem out but has come back with in two weeks.So i'm stuck aswell any help would be great.Thanks

[johnny80]

They didn't touch the timing at all! Said it was very unusual for it to go wrong. It seems to get better once it's warmed up a bit though, that wouldn't be anything to do with the timing would it?

They did not touch the cam belt either. Very confused!!

If I find a solution I will let you all know!!

[Col]

I'd then turn my attention to the throttle body.

These mainly cause idle problems when dirty and gunged up but it could be causing your problem as well.

Has it been cleaned, and if so has it had the electronic alignment carried out on it ?

I once had a MK3 Golf with this engine in it, bullet proof mechanicals but simply rubbish fuel and ignition systems. I had the timing issue, a coil failure, throttle body alignment issues, engine run relay and lots of other stuff. Once sorted though, nice.

[Crasher]

Sounds like the coolant temp sender is stuck and the ADY ECU often will not recognise this. You need someone who knows the Simos injection system to take a look at it.

[johnny80]

Thanks to you both, I will turn my attention to them at the weekend and hopefully get it sorted out. Will post the results on here for all to see...

Cheers!

[johnny80]

Just thought I would let you all know that the problem was the air mass meter sensor. I asked the garage to check it and thought they had but after checking the trottle body and coolant temp sensor i thought I would have a quick look just in case and half the sensor was covered in dirt. Cleaned it, put it back and runs like a dream now!!

Thanks for your help people!! Hope this helps anyone else as it takes about 2 seconds and could have saved me some money!!

[Crasher]

Are you running an induction kit on this?

[johnny80]

Not as far as i'm aware, never fitted one and not sure what it would sound like! This car is standard as far as I know. What are you thinking?

[Crasher]

An induction kit can also be called a cone filter so you can guess what I mean from that. I wondered if you had a non standard cotton/oil (K&N as an example) air filter as contamination of the AMM hot wire is unusual and I would also suspect that there is a problem with the after run burn off function as the wire should not become contaminated.

[johnny80]

Sorry for the late reply, definately not got K & N filter however could it be a problem if the car is not used that often? Usually just a weekends and occaionally during the week.

Still running perfectly, as a matter of fact because I changed a few things before finding the problem it runs better than ever now!!!

[Crasher]

No, the ECU burns off the hot wire after each run, time left standing won't affect it.