Update on the car situation 2

This will be a rather boring post about our car travails. As many of you know, my Intrepid died at 329k miles. It had only one new transmission put into it, which was amazing for the Dodge product. Now, the rest of the story.

We were down to two cars with spring break a coming. Then the transmission went thump in the van and we were down to one. $1500 and a week later, we were back with two.

For many years, I have wanted to rebuild/replace an engine in a car. I thought it would be fun and stress relieving. Well, I was cruising eBay in mid-April and saw this car. It needed an engine and could be had for a decent price, so I purchased it.

The car, a 1999 VW Passat with a V6 engine, had the timing belt break, doing valve damage. I thought it would be a great learning experience to rebuild this engine. So I bought the how to repair book, and set about tearing into the engine. When viewing the engine heads, all of the exhaust valves were bent from contact with the pistons. One intake valve was visibly bent, but the others seemed fine.

I attempted to purchase used heads from an automotive recycler unsuccessfully, so the heads were taken to the local machine shop. $600 later, the heads were as good as new. The reassembly could begin.

Keep in mind that during this time, work had me travel to NY for a trade show for a full week and then give a tour of industrial and biopharm facilities for my Brazilian counterparts, again for another full week.

The reassembly went rather well once the heads were in my possession. Everything went back together extremely well. Along with the rebuilt heads, I put a new timing belt, water pump, thermostat, tensioner pulley, idler pulley, and upper control arm on the car. When the time came to fire up the car, it idled well. No check engine lights.

As K and I went for a test drive down our street, as the RPM got to 1400, the engine would buck, hesitate and in general raise havoc, the check engine light came on as well. The engine reached operating temperature fine and immediate turn back for home occurred.

I purchased a $22 cable and $100 software for my computer for doing diagnosis taking a couple of days while the materials arrived. Doing some analysis of the the trouble code using the Internet VW forums, it was determined that the throttle body electronic positioner was not communicating with the main engine computer.

I took out the offending part, cleaned it and re-installed it. Same problem. Did it again, slightly better, but same problem. After several posts on the VW forum (both VWVortex and PassatWorld) someone suggested a different cleaning method, but that I was definitely on the correct part.

So I tried their method and... no improvement. I ordered a new Throttle Body with sensor (that is the only way they come) and began the wait for it to arrive. While waiting, the old throttle body and sensor were disassembled by me as I had nothing left to loose. If I broke it or was unable to fix it, the new one would be there in a day or two. If I fixed it, then I could return the new part for a small restocking fee. I completely disassembled the position sensor, cleaned it with electrical contact cleaner, throttle body cleaner and used a can of computer compressed air to blow out any residue. The part was left to dry completely overnight.

The next day, as the old part was being installed, the new part arrived. I finished installing the completely cleaned old part and checked through my computer that the part was "visible" to the engine computer. It was, so the existing "Check Engine Light" codes were cleared and the engine was tested. It met with initial success in the carport, but would it stand up to being driven.

So K and I went on a short, 3-mile, test drive and the car drove wonderfully. No problems. Later today we will get license plates and insurance for the car so it can be street legal. The next step will be to do a 15-20 mile test drive just to make sure before I go gallivanting around the countryside using this as my daily driver.