Car went a bit funny yesterday but seems ok now. Just wondering if I should forget about it or get it seen to. 2008 Passat 1.9TDi.
I started it up yesterday and about 2 mins in to the journey I turned onto a fast steep hill, so floored it and pushed it pretty hard to get up to speed – nothing outrageous, probably not much above 3000rpm, but foot to the floor up from 1st, 2nd, 3rd 4th. About 5 secs into this hill, it suddenly lost power and I had to change all the way down to 2nd to crawl to the top of the hill. Had a look under the lid and couldn’t see or hear anything obvious. Left the engine running and limped home as I was worried it wouldn’t start again. The rest of the journey it drove like it had a 900cc Yaris engine and was towing a caravan. No power at all.
Got home, switched off, then a little while later started up and went for a spin, and it was absolutely fine.
So what was it?! The tank was on about 1/8 so fairly empty. I wondered if that, plus going up a steep hill had sloshed the sludge in the tank onto the fuel filter and perhaps restricted fuel flow? Turning off the engine might have let said sludge drop back into the tank. I don’t know anything about how this fuel system works so not sure if this is likely. I had thought the turbo might have died, but it now works again, so could the turbo have suffered some temporary fault? Something clogging a tube perhaps, which turning off might have cleared? There were no warning lights on the dash, and strangely the reported fuel economy was slightly above what I’d have expected (which makes me think it could be turbo-related).
I wondered if it’d be worth getting the fuel tank cleaned out and filters replaced? I’d rather not just go to a garage and give them a blank cheque to ‘find out what’s wrong’ as it could take ages to check all the different possibilities, and might not find anything at all.
Cheers!