So since the last post, I made it down to TX just fine
The car was still having some LTFT issues, but it drove just fine and was a great daily for a while.
Until last week when at the last light before turning into my office, I gave it some beans (not all the beans) and it cut a lot of power and sounded hurt quite bad. It stalled at the light (despite being in neutral), but I managed to limp it into the office parking. Later that day, it idled and drove around ok, so I figured I'd try and limp it home and see what's wrong. Made it about 1 mile out of the office before I had to pull over into a big church parking lot because it was not going to make the trip.
At this point, I decided I would just call a tow as I didn't want whatever damage happened to keep going on. My roommate brought me some tools, including my jack, and upon lifting the car, I couldn't see any charge pipes or clear leaks. The car didn't throw a single code this whole day. The fuel level seemed to drop significantly, and in the two logs I took trying to make it home, I noticed STFT jumping all over the place, but mostly at 0.75 which is the lowest reading that means the engine was pulling back on fuel due to a rich condition. This led me to believe it was a leaky injector or even possibly the aux fuel kit being faulty.
AAA hadn't kicked in, so I figured I'd ask a passerby if they had any coverage and would be willing to call me a tow. He said his coverage expired, but was willing to help me find someone, so we walked around the church but couldn't find anyone. I was ready to bite the bullet on a $100+ tow and he ran to me from his car holding up a AAA card in the air. Turns out, he still had 2 months left until expiry, so he called me a tow and waited with me for 1hr45 til the truck came and brought me home. Super chill dude, thanks Ken.
Unfortunately, when I got home, my roommate had parked his car outside our garage, which meant I couldn't drive the car up into there, so I left the car on the street (he was busy on some facetime call BS and I couldn't get his attention to move his car). The next day, I got to work with checking the oil, which seemed higher than usual, leading me to believe that fuel had been leaking past the piston rings, down the crankcase, and into the sump. In hindsight, this
could have been a false reading due to the ever so slight incline of the road. Still not sure.
I then ran a smoke test and found that there was a leak coming from the turbo outlet pipe at the connection to the turbo. This meant I would have to get under the car to fix it, which I wasn't planning on doing on the street. From Wednesday when it broke down, til Saturday evening, the car was on the street. Me and my roommate hosted a bunch of homies for poker night and they helped me push the car up the street, up the other street (big incline), and up the driveway (also big incline) to get me into the garage.
From there, I got to work the next day, first checking the oil and the plugs. Oil level seemed normal and wasn't specifically glossy or any telltale signs of fuel. I didn't take a picture sadly. There are no oil leaks on the car at the moment. Just some shiny spots around the valve cover seal and the backside of the motor, but no significant losses of oil. The coil packs were fine it seemed, just a little dirty. Cleaned them up and inspected the plugs. Each identical to the last. Perfectly normal plugs, showing no evidence of being wet from fuel or excess carbon buildup or being too clean.
Then I got underneath the car and fixed the turbo outlet pipe. It had slipped off and was only half on.
Video
At this point, I was feeling quite happy because this was likely the culprit of my issue. I secured all of the clamps nice and strong and smoke tested again. No significant leaks, but there is still a small leak coming from the turbo outlet to IC hose which is secured by a stupid metal clip. Tuner said that is an issue on all mk6's... shitty design.
Video 2
At this point, I also installed an o2 spacer I bought from Uro. My tuner had recommended I do this for the longest time, and so I figured that while the car was in the air, I would just get this out of the way. The o2 sensor bungs on the downpipe are shitty and rusty. I got the spacer as far as I could (probably 4/5 threads) and then called it a day. So the spacer is at a relatively far position from the DP.
I then changed the oil and collected a sample to send to blackstone labs for analysis. The oil wasn't super shiny or anything. Normal oil change. Filled it back up, threw in a new oil filter and changed the cabin filter. I cleared the codes from the catless DP as well.
Fired up the car, and it held idle, but sounded off from normal. I can't tell if the sound was like that of a misfire or running on 3 cylinders, but it just wasn't right. I took a
video and 2 logs of idle + partial throttle/giving it some revs and shut the car off after that. Didn't even take it for a spin.
That was yesterday, and I now I'm getting a bit tired. I'm going to send the logs to my tuner and see what's what. Been driving my other roommate's tesla for the last two days and getting rides from people. I just want my car healthy again so that I can possibly drive it up to Nashville in October (closing in fast lol).
A compression test might be up soon.
