Engine not starting

Hello all,

The car in question is a 2009 with ~156k on it. No engine mods. Now, for the story:

Typically I drive once a week for about 3-5 miles. Last week, I worked a golf tournament which upped my driving to approx. 50 miles per day. Saturday night, it drove perfectly fine on the way home (parked and everything). Sunday morning (less than 5 hours after it had been driven), it failed to start with a loud "clacking" noise coming from the engine bay. I UBERed to work and back, deciding to deal with it on Monday.

I charged my battery, as it had given me some problems over the winter - and a day or two earlier, I noticed a light pulsing of my instrument panel. I also checked my fluids and my oil was low. I added two quarts and it was back to normal levels. I popped the battery back in and still the same loud noise from the engine bay. I picked up a new battery and still nothing. After that attempt, however, the loud noise turned into a whirring. And then it kicked on an oil pressure warning.

Up to this point it drove fine with the only issue being a tire pressure warning due to my aftermarket wheels. My local shop is getting it in on Tuesday, but is there anything I could/should try in the meantime? I've never had an oil pump fail on a car, so I don't have much experience with the sound/issues. Could that have caused the entire engine to seize without any warning?

Thanks in advance for any help.

*edit* last oil change was approx. 6 months ago and only 1k miles or so.

2 quarts low is pretty bad...clacking is bad. Sounds like a timing chain/tensioner issue.
The light pulsing on the dash, do you know which one it was? The ABS controller (and ESP) is a known problem on the 09 cars.

Drain and drop the oil pan and look for metal. Check your timing as well.

FocalPoint said:

Drain and drop the oil pan and look for metal. Check your timing as well.

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Eek, all too familiar. I'm gonna bet timing chain failure due to low oil

zrickety said:

2 quarts low is pretty bad...clacking is bad. Sounds like a timing chain/tensioner issue.
The light pulsing on the dash, do you know which one it was? The ABS controller (and ESP) is a known problem on the 09 cars.

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Yeah, never heard any sound like that but I haven't really worked on VW's before. 6 months (and less than 1500 miles) on the oil change. No visible oil leak on my driveway. Twice I recalled brief burning smells but they were always during city traffic and would pass quickly, so I attributed them to the surrounding traffic.

The lights were a dimming on my cluster rather than a single light flashing.

Drain and drop the oil pan and look for metal. Check your timing as well.

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I'll work on that over this weekend.

Eek, all too familiar. I'm gonna bet timing chain failure due to low oil

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Judging by the "eek", I'm going to assume the worst for this thing.

I say that because I had timing chain failure. Also spun a balance shaft some how the mounting tab ripped off and fragments filled the pan. This is 2 separate occasions, was still able to fix it but the car smoked as I assume rings fried

assuming since you dont even know what the timing tensioner issue is and your car has 156k. its the timing chain..

Tensioner, timing chain, balance shaft failure, oil pump chain failure, cam bridge screen failure so many catastrophic TSI issues can happen lol.

franco516 said:

assuming since you dont even know what the timing tensioner issue is and your car has 156k. its the timing chain..

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Well if he made it to 156k with no major issues until now he is definitely one of the lucky ones!

It's done for. Needs a head job and all timing components replaced. 2-6 thousand depending on the damage.

Definitely less expensive and peice of mind if you buy a rebuilt block and stick it in there. Dont know if this is something you are capable of but its what I did. Maybe you have some friends that could help? I know a guy in Texas that says rebuilds for 2$