2016 GTI Journal

[Aomer]

Once upon a time I owned a 1984 Scirocco and I loved it, but it seemed to spend a lot of time in the shop. It was a blast to drive and my 1st car, new one at that. I got it after I graduated from college. I did own it for close to 12 years and got 197,000 miles or so out of it and then sold it for parts. I am pretty sure it was never on the road again. RIP. Drove it into the ground in northern VT which is a place not easy on cars. No complaints on it. Like I said it did spend some time in the shop.

Fast forward to Sept 2022 ... I haven't owned a VW since and decide to get into AutoX and pick up a fun daily driver as well. Enter the 2016 GTI. I bought it off a young man who is the 2nd owner. It's a white SE 4DR with the performance package. It's got a number of mods: APR Stage 2 Tune, Unitronic Intake, AWE catted downpipe with both Track and Touring exhaust, SouthBend Stage 2 Daily Drive clutch. It has some cosmetic other bits.

I love driver this car daily, it reminds me of the Scirocco, but a way better car.

I take it to the airfield for a AutoCross event and after run 3 of 10 it starts throwing engine codes (Oil pressure and Cam Position). I have OBDEleven so I could get the details. Car seemed to be running okay however and decided to drive it home. Ran okay for several days with no codes and then I went to drive home from work and it had trouble starting and then died and wouldn't idle. Drag it to the dealer and they shotguned a few sensors and finally dropped the oil pan to find one of the thrust washers in the bottom and metal flaked oil.

Proceed to watch a ton of YT videos and became familiar with CW and that is the story to this point. The car is getting a new "used" motor ... it has been a learning experience. I do plan on keeping the car and AutoXing it. I would like to do what I can to prevent the motor from suffering the same fate and so far will pay closer attention to warming up the car better and performing regular oil changes with the recommended oils (LiquiMoly). Future threads will detail out more.

Thanks for reading ...

 

[19birel]

Cool story, glad to hear the car is on the mend as well! Any pictures of it?

 

[Diggs24]

How long from when you bought it (Sep) to when you took it to the event and it threw the codes?

 

[Aomer]

How long from when you bought it (Sep) to when you took it to the event and it threw the codes?

I bought the car on 9/2, changed the oil on 9/12 and the AutoX event was 10/15. Actually the 1st codes started 10/09, small number of them, but right around the event had a bunch. It is as little funky with some of the dates in the log. I am attaching the ODBEleven log file I have from it's history. No actual codes on 10/15 the day of the event.

 

[Diggs24]

Sounds like you were knowingly sold a car with crankwalk.

 

[Acadia18]

Sounds like you were knowingly sold a car with crankwalk.

The unfortunate other side of "Oh shit, a major issue is detected? Get rid of it ASAP!"

 

[lostang]

cold starts are the worst...I bought a remote start and hoping that prolongs life of my golf R...I bought my car with 6k miles, at 9k miles i upgraded to a SB clutch (and went stage 2) and soon after installed remote starter so i no longer have to depress clutch to start car. it has 19k at the moment.

 

[Aomer]

Sounds like you were knowingly sold a car with crankwalk.

I do wonder about this ... I suppose that the previous owner found the CW by some method of moving the "crank" in the motor. My guess is that he didn't and sold me the car because he wanted the next show car up the food chain, BMW in his mind. He claimed he took good car of the car. It looked good . The one thing I worry about is that he said he dragged it a couple of times and maybe with 90K, that pushed it over the CW edge.

The car is getting a used 50K mile motor with no real history and a new SB Stage 2 Daily Driver clutch. They found when removing the motor that the current SB Stage 2 DD clutch plates we pretty worn and recommended replacing so I am.

We shall see ...

FYI I paid $16K for the car with some nice mods ... the diagnosis, engine swap and new clutch is ~$9K. So we are at $25K for a 50K miles modded GTI. This is a little more than I wanted for the car, but not out of control $$. Let's hope it is worth it.

 

[Aomer]

Dropped of the new SB clutch kit (Pressure plate, friction disk and throw out bearing) to the shop. They are moving some parts from the bad motor to the replacement motor. Not sure if it will be done before Thanksgiving.

Anyone have some practical tips for breaking in a new clutch, Southbend Stage 2 Daily Driver ? I am never done it ...

 

[19birel]

The clutch should come with paperwork that tells you how many miles to do the break in for. As far as the actual process, no launches or hard pulls and the more urban driving the better. In other words, if you take a road trip that's mostly highway in effort to accelerate the process, that won't sufficiently break the clutch in.

 

[Aomer]

The clutch should come with paperwork that tells you how many miles to do the break in for. As far as the actual process, no launches or hard pulls and the more urban driving the better. In other words, if you take a road trip that's mostly highway in effort to accelerate the process, that won't sufficiently break the clutch in.

I did see instructions from SB website and you hit the nail on the head. My clutch is about 500 miles. Which on my daily commute is probably 3 or 4 weeks. Maybe I need to spend a Saturday driving in Boston

 

[MonkeyMD]

I take it to the airfield for a AutoCross event and after run 3 of 10 it starts throwing engine codes (Oil pressure and Cam Position). I have OBDEleven so I could get the details. Car seemed to be running okay however and decided to drive it home.

Had something similar happen on track, but turned out to be low on oil. Added some and it's been fine.

But looks like it was something different. Not sure if oil starvation could've caused the rest of the damage.

 

[Aomer]

I got the car back from the dealer yesterday. It appears to be running well. I am braking in the SB clutch now for 500 miles. I plan to put the snow tires on this coming week.

The next step is to get rid of the SoloWerks coilovers that came with the car. They are either wasted (I have no idea how long they have been on the car) or they are not a great product. Since my plan is to use the car primarily as a daily driver and during the summer run 5 - 10 autocross events I want something decent, but not full race. Here are my baisc options:

Fortune Auto 500 series
Bilstien (not sure which model yet)
Ohlins VWS MU21

I am leaning towards the Fortunes, they look to be a great product and lots of folks like them. The Ohlins would be nice, but I am not going road racing. I did race sport bikes (R6) and had a KTech setup, which was very similar to Ohlins. Nice ride for racing, but more than I needed on my regular street bike.

Thoughts?

 

[MonkeyMD]

Check out redshift especially if you're doing AutoX. Might start as a fling, but you're going to end up married. So do it right.

Also read the AutoX threads here to figure out spring rates, bit consensus seems to be 500 Front, 800 Rear. You can go 600 & 900, but comfort might suffer

 

[Aomer]

After some review and discussion with the folks at Fortune Auto I order a set of 510 coilovers with 7K - Front and 9K - Rear springs. I stuck with the FA springs. I am not sure how these springs will feel and perform, but getting some time with them will help give me understanding and perspective.

Delivery looks to be about 8 weeks. I am going to install them myself. Now to find a friend with a warm garage and lift