Hi everyone,

I have a VW Passat 99 1.8T Wagon that I purchased 2 years ago for my wife. We love the handling and the feeling of the car but the maintenance is a nightmare and really expensive. The car has been running fine since early summer when I had to replace brake rotors (kind of scheduled). A couple of days ago my wife was driving back from a place like 3 miles away and the engine started to shake, the chek engine light went on and flashing. She noticed the gas gauge had just hit the reserve area so to be in the safe side she stopped at the closest station and filled up the tank. The shaking went off for a few minutes but then it came back.
When I got home I checked the oil and found almost nothing on it, this has happended in the past, sudden oil indicator and no oil in the car, it must be the engine sludge problem that I've read in this and other forums. Anyway the car has been parked for a day and I just got oil and filled up the engine, turned it on and is still shaking as well as check engine light is flashing. To me, it looks like the engine is running with 3 cilinders only, perhaps the injector got cloged with dirt from the bootm of the gas tank or....something went really bad while losing oil (there is no leak, no oily areas in the engine either).
All the other indicators are fine, tem is okay too, I checked the water, etc.. I'll take the car to the shop tomorrow....(my wallet is already crying) but wanted to check with the forum for some advise/experiences on this type of problems.

Marco

 

My car a 2003 passat just started doing this today. What was the problem with yours?

 

?

 

HI,

The dealer found a faulty controller that manages the cylinders just like the old distributor. The differnce? only they can program it (it's an electronic chip) and costed me $600. The part to replace is a circuit covered in black plastic and is located on the top of the turbo compressor, it is like a square shaped with to screw holes to install it. Other car shops can get the part (at much less price) but apparently only dealers have the tools (computer) to programm the chip (it seems it comes unporgrammed or something like that).

I hope that helps you, good luck.

Marco

 

Found out the problem. #1 coil pack was bad. A non-VW shop that works on german autos fixed it for $120 labor and $80 parts

 

Thanks for posting back, good for you!! you are very lucky to find a car shop that doesn't take advantage of you regards a VW service, it is really hard to find, I've done quite a serach in my area (and 50 miles around) and all of them were either quite expensive or charged me $150 for diagnostic just to tell me I had to go to a dealer!. Since I don't plan to keep paying $500-$600 for every service like this (every 3 months!) I'm finally about to get rid of that piece of crap that is my VW Passat!

Put the name and location of the shop you fond for other users to contact, that way we can spread the word about fair car shop that won't steal your money just because we made the bad decision to buy a VW........here in Wisconsin...we are preetty much screwed.