I'm hoping someone may be able to help me, my partner's 02 Beetle "sunshine" 2.0 Petrol beetle has recently developed a very bad idle, excessive white smoke, but on open road drives ok...? Bought a fancy code reader from ebay which has detected a few odd items such as multiple cyclinder misfires, MAF sensor low signal (just replaced new today - no change ), secondary air system failure, secondary air system relay failure, fuel injection circuit/s open / short to ground??

It has only just suddenly started doing all this just over 2 weeks ago, I replaced the MAF sensor (new) just today, no difference at all.... I'm hoping it won;t be a major fault, as it does drive on the open road without misfiring, but did stall a few times recently when I pulled up to a stop. Unfortunately live 400km away from nearest VW service centre.

Are there any other obvious things I need to look for?

Alan

 

Hi Alan, just so were clear I am no mechanic but I have played with cars since I've been able to walk. I would imagine that your UK version Beetle is pretty much the same as my NorthAmerican Beetle. That being said you will have to have the codes removed as they will still be read by your code reader even after the "trouble area" is repaired. As for the "white smoke", in my experience anytime I have encountered a car passing white smoke out the exhaust is a result of a blown head gasket or something to that effect. Something has failed and is letting coolant pass into the combustion chamber to be burnt off. How does the oil look? Pull the dipstick and check to see if it looks like a vanilla milkshake on the end of the dipstick where oil should be. Hope this points you in the right direction.