Hi All,

I am trying to help a friend out here as I am always working on cars but unfortunately know nothing about the Volkswagen Beetle. It is a year 2000 VW Beetle 2.0. I am told it is the sport version.

A few days ago, he was driving it and the car just died. It started again but will not rev past about 2000RPM and when revving it there is plumes of white smoke coming out the back. If you press the throttle down even further it just dies. A very strong petrol smell.

To me, it seems as if it is over-fuelling by a large amount. The breakdown company came out and told him it was the coil. He replaced the coil but it has made no difference.

I plugged a scanner in and the following codes were present:

16684 (P0300) Random/Multiple Misfire
16688 (P0304) Cyl. 4 Misfire
16824 (P0440) EVAP Emission Control System Malfunction

There were also a couple of other codes that translated to an O2 sensor failure and an over-rich mixture but these were due to a previous fault when the O2 sensor was replaced but the codes not cleared. I erased the fault codes and the above 3 were the ones that came back after 30 minutes of running the car.

The car starts straight away and idles smoothly. As soon as you press the throttle, you can hear the engine struggling. As you press harder on the throttle the engine struggles more and more until eventually it dies. During revving it, there is loads of white smoke coming out the back and a strong petrol smell. Its almost as if the car is being smothered. The car was running perfect until the day it died so it was not a gradual failure.

Does anyone have any ideas of what it can be and what/how to check.

Many thanks in advance.

 

did he fill it up with diesel fuel by mistake