New motor 101?

[Onza24]

I have tried for far to long (almost a week) to gather information and have always been a forum lurker. I was going to write out this huge post about my sob-story and decided to go bullet points and get to the actual question.
-Wife in hospital with brain surgery back in aug of 2018
- I after 2 months of hospital stays and my wife Being moved to rehab, screw it im going stage one as a stress relief. Let hope my clutch last for some time
- the day my wife is about to start to relearn how to walk my bother finds my mom has past away and is freaking out.
- I leave to go help knowing that there is no time to flash back to a 91 tune
- 2000 miles later it’s running very rough and my clutch is slipping.
- new spark plugs, stage 3 bfi clutch, and wavtrac lsd to save on labor because I knew I would do it eventually.
-get home and it’s leaking, shop takes it back and finds they didn’t align it right and clutch is really bad but “that’s normal” ok I will adjust
- get it back and it’s leaking
-shop replaces every transmission seal
- leaks again
- shop fixes, puts new brake pads and calipers, puts a apr down pipe and flashes to stage 2 for free because of the inconvenience and drives 100 hard miles to make sure there are no problems
- on the drive home I loose the clutch as the bleeder valve explodes on the freeway.
- changed the bleeder valve to a aluminum one but they were suspicious of the clutch being wierd and ecs sent a southbend to replace it with.
- then after only a week of having it the car just dies or shakes at idle.
- i am doing everything right this time. I will not even look at the gas pedal till 500 city miles and not look at redline till 1000. 500 came and I had not even been able to feel the new mpss4s tires I put on because my other ones were not safe anymore.
- so I gave it a little gusto to 4500 rpm in a corner and my clutch pedal started vibrating like crazy the second I touched it.
- I parked and was told that it probably was friction matirial the was on the flywheel unevenly. “I hate to tell you this but drive it a little harder and see if it corretcs itself”. If it’s a bad clutch it will have to be replaced anyway.
- I am on the freeway and dropping it into 4th and give it some gas and......wow where is all the power? Is the clutch slipping or bogging the engine down? Lights stared going off and it went into limp mode. Pulled of the highway where it died
- metal was found all in the oil pan and bearings in the oil filter.
-you need a new engine.
- wtf I just want my fricken car to work!
- this saga has stretched from sep 2018- mar 2019. And have driven my car a total of a couple weeks in that time
This is my question/ask
Where can I get a good motor with less then 20k miles. Should it be stock, should it be built. Did you just total your car and you are waiting to sell me a perfect engine? I don’t want to believe this car or the shop sucks, they have been really great through all of it but I’m starting to loose hope. I get it, pay to play but I f I was aware of what a $700 tune was going to snowball into, I would have stoped while I was ahead and choose to deal with stress by getting a massage or somthing. Any information I can gleen from you all would be much appreciated and sorry...you got the long version anyway.

 

[KevinC]

If you want a high hp monster, then I think you own the wrong car. Massive HP through the front wheels becomes pointless at anything much above stock. If big HP and straight-line acceleration are your goal, I'd look at something like a Challenger or Mustang GT. Or perhaps a Golf R as a better platform for pushing more power.

 

[N2fastcars]

Wow, that’s quite the saga and I’m sorry you’ve had that much stuff to deal with.

I am honestly not sure what I would do in your situation, best luck...I know this isn’t much help...

 

[dunkelweizen]

Wow, so sorry to hear of all your troubles, but great to hear your wife is recovering. Hopefully that means you've used up all your bad luck/karma forever.

Did your shop tell you what bearing(s) they found? If it's the crankshaft thrust bearing, that could make sense and explain all your clutch issues - meaning it is likely your engine would have gone sooner or later regardless of tune or no tune and that the shop was not necessarily to blame for bad clutch install. Bad thrust bearing has happened to a number to 2015-2017 Mk7 just on this forum.

I don't really have any advice to give either, but wishing you best of luck going forward. Only you will know what makes sense for your situation.

 

[JC_451]

On the highway pull where it died; When you dropped into 4th and planted the pedal you were already going 80mph or so?

Clutch slip: RPM fly up, car does not accelerate.

Bogging: Press the gas pedal hard at low RPM in too high a gear, car does not accelerate.

Not really sure why after all those problems you accepted them further tuning it to stage II. It's unfortunately not the $700 tune snowballing into this disaster but a series of bad luck/bad decisions that kept the ball rolling and growing into this total clusterfuck.

Sorry for being judgmental, that's obviously not helpful.

I would start to just total all this up, install new motor, part out all aftermarket parts that can be sold. Sell car after it's back to stock. Tabulate how many thousands are lost if you invest 5 grand (guessing) more(to bring it back to a sellable condition) and then just dump it (or drive it stock until it's paid off, then dump it)

Sounds like you can recoup quite a bit of money by parting out your aftermarket stuff. Could probably come pretty close to equaling the cost of the new motor.

 

[JerseyDrew77]

If you want a high hp monster, then I think you own the wrong car. Massive HP through the front wheels becomes pointless at anything much above stock. If big HP and straight-line acceleration are your goal, I'd look at something like a Challenger or Mustang GT. Or perhaps a Golf R as a better platform for pushing more power.

OP, don't listen to this guy, he doesn't know what he's talking about. It's not pointless, it's a lot of fun especially when you smoke Challengers and Mustangs. With a LSD, proper tires and a good suspension setup, having high hp with fwd is not an issue.

 

[launchd]

If you want a high hp monster, then I think you own the wrong car. Massive HP through the front wheels becomes pointless at anything much above stock. If big HP and straight-line acceleration are your goal, I'd look at something like a Challenger or Mustang GT. Or perhaps a Golf R as a better platform for pushing more power.

Uh what?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNQM_YDwP9Y

 

[TheGreekFreak]

Sorry to hear about your misfortunes. Exactly why I've set aside engine replacement funds just in case, as improbable as this is.

I would probably buy a used low mile engine as cheap as possible (maybe $3K), another like $1K for labor, and then decide to either move on from the car or drive it stock as I would not want to swallow a second engine replacement down the road. A VW mechanic should help you find one if you can't online.

I'm a dummie when it comes to tunes but I wonder if a conservative protune would make a difference in some of these cases. With enough logging for revisions, would the issues you felt before it blew have shown up? I dunno....

Best of luck with everything.

 

[The Fed]

I wouldn't believe what the shop told me, but that's me.

 

[cb1111]

Luckily the OP has the right attitude (and has had a really bad year) but I'm not sure that a new motor is the answer. What's to keep the new motor from grenading as well?

The stock drivetrain isn't made to handle that power so all the internals really need to be upgraded. I'm thinking that the OP will need to find a shop that can build him a motor.

 

[TheGreekFreak]

Luckily the OP has the right attitude (and has had a really bad year) but I'm not sure that a new motor is the answer. What's to keep the new motor from grenading as well?

The stock drivetrain isn't made to handle that power so all the internals really need to be upgraded. I'm thinking that the OP will need to find a shop that can build him a motor.

Ya I would get rid of the tune with the replacement engine as it would be the first and last engine I replace.

Building the motor on a fwd gti would be out of the question for me. It's too expensive (2X the price of a used replacement) for a car that can't even put down the power that upgraded engine makes.

 

[Onza24]

Thanks for all the replies. The car was bought in cash about 10 months ago for 16.5k so I don’t have payments, so I could get ride of it, at a major disadvantage. With the lsd buried in the transmission and the old diff being destroyed in the install and not having the original clutch, the only things to part out would be the downpipe. So if I spend 3k for a motor + 700 (is what they are charging me to put in) i am out the money I already spent and maybe could get 16k for it. I don’t like the thought of losing 6-8k for the fun of it only to turn around and buy whatever 16k can get me. I would like to fix it and drive it to the ground. I disagree about not being able to but down power because it was plenty fast for me when it was working. When a grocery getter can hang on the tail of a bewildered Anton Martin db9 gt owner I am please with the platform as long as it doesn’t leave me stranded every five seconds. It was the crank shaft bearing that failed. The only reason for a built motor would be able to daily the power it has. It looks like Lkq offers a 2year parts and labor warrantee for 700-1000 bucks. Has anyone had any experience with them?

 

[imthanick_a]

Not really sure why you had issues. Plenty of people have stage 2 tunes without grenading the engine with stock internals. Sorry for the problems, but I think your shop sucks. What kind of tune was it, APR?


As for parts, check car-part.com to see if theres any cars at junkyards near you. Look under engine. I found a bunch near me for anywhere in the range of 1k-4kish

 

[anotero]

OP, don't listen to this guy, he doesn't know what he's talking about. It's not pointless, it's a lot of fun especially when you smoke Challengers and Mustangs. With a LSD, proper tires and a good suspension setup, having high hp with fwd is not an issue.

I was waiting for this. Thank you.

 

[anotero]

OP, good luck with the car. I hope your wife recovers soon, that's the most important part. Best wishes.