2009 VW polo e60 problems

[tiredTraveller]

Hopefully this is just paranoia on my part after reading the other VW thread...

 

I have a 2009 Polo 1.2l e60 (1 previous owner, about 13k miles on the clock when i got it in feb 2011, now 28.5-ish) which is the second car I've ever owned, so I don't have much to compare it with but generally it feels okay to drive. Some days it just feels sluggish and laggy when accelerating though - especially when trying to get up to motorway speed on a sliproad, but this isn't every day - just most of them these days.

 

I originally put this down to possibly being my imagination or just being overly familiar with the car (and it not being a shiny new toy any more) because I'm no expert, but yesterday I was doing just under 30mph, tried to accelerate and the engine, epc and another light came on. I'm not sure because I was more concerned with the fact that I'd have understood a 'loss of power' to mean it would stop accelerating and coast, but this felt like someone had slammed the brakes on and there was a bus right behind me. The car just juddered along for a couple of seconds and then the lights cleared and it seemed to pick up speed slowly until it hit 30, and started driving just fine.

 

Do any of these symptoms sound like the problems people have been experiencing with their similar spec Polos? Or failing that does anyone have any ideas what kind of diagnosis I should be expecting? I've got it booked in to a VW dealer next week, but I would prefer not to go in completely ignorant.

 

On thing I'm sure of is that with a 70 mile round trip commute to work each day, taking in the delightful sights of the M4 and M25 I could do without this...

[gaznolan]

Sounds like the EGR valve, this is part of the exhaust and fills up with soot depositsand the exhaust gas doesnt get recycled like it should in effect your car 'chokes up' like they did in the olden days of motoring with a manual choke. Take it to a reapair shop they can be cleaned but usually replaced ... unfortunatley you can say goodbye to about £300 in the process

[heliosuk]

This is not the problem the 1.2 Polo has with the cylinder head covered extensively on this forum. The car is too late and the symptoms don't match. Will be some other issue.

 

Not so sure about the EGR valve as this will flag a fault code and should trigger the engine management light.

[Conniff]

Don't pay money like suggested for an egr valve, bypass it.

[heliosuk]

Good point Conniff but by doing so I think will trigger a malfunctioning EGR valve code. However, this should be ignored and if the car performs as it should pretty well defines what the root cause is without having to go to the dealers and have a load of numpties tell you that the code means you have to effectively buy a new car by the time they have finished with it.

[tiredTraveller]

So it's not a worst-case scenario then? that's slightly comforting...

 

Since then I've had no warning lights, but it is sounding a bit rough at times and sometimes it has just coughed and spluttered in 1st-3rd and just not responded to the accelerator unless I take my foot completely off and try again. Get it up to 40 and beyond and it's mostly okay, although the 'like trying to push a boulder up a hill to get it down a sliproad' issue still stands sometimes.

 

I suppose I'll have to see what the VW dealer suggests it might be, see how that ties up with the suggestions made here and work out where to go from there...

 

EDIT: Not to self - don't post words like 'it's working okay now' - tempting fate has rather predictable consequences... D'oh!

Edited May 29, 2012 by tiredTraveller

[tiredTraveller]

Just for completeness and closure - it turned out to be the camshaft position sensor.

 

nicely dealt with, seems to have solved the problem and they did at least try to get VW to chip in some goodwill as it's barely out of warranty (unprompted - I hadn't thought about that), but they refused as it's not in their list of known issues.

 

I'm no expert but it drives a lot better now and sounds a lot smoother so I'm happy with that.

[heliosuk]

So good news then. Am surprised it did not flag a fault code but may well have been hidden as many are, i.e. not visible to dealers test equipment ( as they will change the whole car before getting to the root cause. What will be interesting though is if the fault re-occurs. This will indicate a problem with cam timing device.

 

Come back here if it does re-occur.

[tiredTraveller]

Back again... D'oh!

 

It doesn't seem like it's going to die any more, but it's definitely not right. On the day of the repair it was great, and the first morning commute (just over 30 miles) was fine, but then it all started to go to pot on the way home.

 

From hitting the sliproad (junction 20 of the M25) at just under 50 with my foot to the floor I was almost at 19 when I finally reached 70MPH and pretty much everything overtook me on the way. at another point the engine just seemed to struggle and I dropped about 10mph a couple of times. This morning when I'd been in the car for about half an hour I tried to pick up speed from 20 to 30 in traffic and it hit 25, wouldn't accelerate for a few seconds then finally reluctantly went up to 30.

 

So I'm guessing that the sensors may have been a partial result (I hope - engine stalls were about 2-3 days driving apart and with the bank holiday it probably wouldn't have reoccurred by now without any action), but it's still bad. I've not had any dashboard lights on, so I have no idea where that leaves me in terms of logs

 

Time to get it booked back in for another look I think - what kind of thing should I be expecting this time?

[heliosuk]

Well it does depend on fault codes to a certain extent. One would presume that the garage who changed the cam pos sensors cleared down all codes which will include current and historic. So they need to read the car ECU again but make sure you get a print or a note of the current and historic codes. For them to diagnose properley they should be reading all as a historic code can lead to a current other code. Most codes that show repeated historic and current will illuminate the warning light on the dash. You don't state if this is the case.

 

On the assumption that the light is not lit then they need to go back to basics such as sufficient fuel, air etc. Timing is automatically controlled. One thing to watch would be crank position sensor. I think the codes are similar to cam sensor. Ask them to measure fuel pressure at idle and under load. Be sure to ask how they put the car under load.

 

Overall it does sound like fuel starvation but not actually being there it is impossible to tell.

 

One thing for certain though it's not the head issue.

[tiredTraveller]

Well that was confusing.

 

The issue was back, so I left it with the garage for 2 days. I had to chase them for updates and I was eventually told 'we can't find any fault with it' and 'we've fixed it' in the same breath.

I went to collect the car and was told that it's done about half my daily mileage over 2 trips and been looked at with the computer again and no faults were found in the computer or noticed by the engineer. Then I got the usual 'bring it back if it happens again, remember it is a low-spec car', it was heavily implied that I should have a wander around the forecourt should I feel the need for more power, etc.

 

I've been driving it for a few days since then (about 150 miles) and sure enough it is absolutely 100% fine with no issues whatsoever (I would've expected it to have reoccurred by now if it was still a problem), and the only other noticeable thing I can see is that this time the presets were wiped from the radio.

 

I'm happy enough to have a working car without having to pay out even more to get to this point, but for curiosities sake - does anybody have any idea what happened there?

[Bang!]

When it does this often - is it very heavy on fuel? When it happens, can you find your foot to the floor and the car sometimes still gradually decelerating, but then can sometimes suddenly pick up?

 

Also - if you shove your finger into the exhaust (before starting) is it black heavy soot comes out, or is it darkish grey like a darker version of what would be left in a barbecue?

[Ell-enn]

I had a 2007 Polo 1.2 which I loved for the first 3 years I had it, then it developed a similar problem to yours and no-one could find the real cause - the last garage replaced a fuel injector and it ran OK for a month or so after that, but in the end I decided to trade it in for a new car - I just couldn't stand the unpredictability of it. Like you - I almost got myself killed the first time it happened by a lorry on a dual carriage way when the car decided to stop dead !

[tiredTraveller]

When it does this often - is it very heavy on fuel? When it happens, can you find your foot to the floor and the car sometimes still gradually decelerating, but then can sometimes suddenly pick up?

 

That's exactly what I've been seeing - it doesn't usually just die - it just ends up with no power and then picks up slowly or just feels like it's doing nothing and will pick up a short time later. It can be incredibly heavy on fuel - once I got through 1/4 tank in about 30 miles, but that is an extreme case.

 

Since posting that it was fixed it did it again - was doing 20 mph in heavy motorway traffic, tried to move one lane left in a fairly limited gap in anticipation of the upcoming exit, realised nothing was happening and I was just flailing around halfway between lanes and used the remainder of my forward momentum to just give up and return to the lane I was trying to leave. It's generally good at motorway speeds though.

 

Also - if you shove your finger into the exhaust (before starting) is it black heavy soot comes out, or is it darkish grey like a darker version of what would be left in a barbecue?

 

I'll try this later.

[dr0800]

TT, did you manage to get the problem sorted. I have a problem with my wife's 2007 1.2e 60ps, in that it threw the EML and sometimes struggles to start when col. The local VW garage replaced the Cam position sensor to no avail. Having read extensively, I'm thinking the timing chain is stretched but not catastrphically. The cam and crank sensors ar no longer in sync. Could be a new timing chain kit.

[tiredTraveller]

In the end I gave up and traded it in for a Hyundai i30.

 

I know a few people I work with who find they woke up one day to go to work and their 1.2l Polos just didn't really have any power. They work in the sanse that they start and go places, they just feel like a shadow of their former selves and acceleration is laggy and unpredictable. All VW dealers just say 'well.. that's how this model is'.

[Conniff]

German engineering - probably the worlds best joke and a saying that has caught out tens of thousands.