2000 jetta tdi

[tltaylor22]

2000 jetta tdi w/ 185k miles

I have had an intermitten Maf problem for several months- Turbo kicks off... Everything works fine after turning the ignition off and then back on. Tonight as I left the parking lot at work all of the sudden it sounded like I had an exhaust leak in the engine bay. At the same time I lost power. Everything ran just fine, but no oomph and the loud noise up front. I turned the car off and on several times, but it didn't change anything. The check engine light was on, but I can't remember if it was on before the power loss and noise came. Autozone read the code as p2148 fuel and air metering.

After doing a little searching at TDICLUB.com I thought I would pull the valve cover and look for a sticking lifter. Everything seemed to look fine. The lifters all moved up and down with contact on the cam as a tapped the engine over. The timing belt was done 25k miles ago. I din't do a technical check of the timing belt, but it tracked smooth while running. The oil has been changed every 8k miles with the proper M1.

I can't tell where the new noise is coming from. I don't think it is exhuast as I can't smell it in the engine bay. I do get puff of air out of the valve cover with the cap off. Any ideas as to what might be causing the loss of power and the noise at the same time? What do I do to see if its the turbo?

 

[tltaylor22]

just an update to the bad luck. I took the TDI into work and had a buddy hook it up to his laptop. He said everything looked fine except that the turbo was kicking in @3200rpm instead of 1700 rpm. He said it shouldn't be a problem to drive it, but that I should get it into a shop and have it checked out. On the way home the timing belt slipped and the pistons got personal with the valves in the head. Valve shrapnel everywhere. It's out at Kermatdi because I don't have any time to mess with it right now. If all goes well it will only be about $2k, if it goes bad it could be like $4k. Ouch

 

[70sguy]

Sorry to hear about your TDI problems.
It's probably not that the turbo kicks off.. more like the ECU kicks engine into "Limp" mode cuz something isn't working right. Restarting resets the ECU and you get power again for a while.. until you put too much foot on the pedal again.
The vains in the VNT turbo could be caked up stuck and not rotating to get the boost up at low RPMs.
Stuck vains won't allow the turbo boost to be controlled correctly and will cause limp mode when the boost spikes.
The sound in the engine bay... you check for blown off hoses at the back side of the engine or intercooler piping?

Pretty much how my 99.5 does this often now... 370k km.. can't say I blame it.
Sucks about the timing belt.