Molgrips car #4 – A New Hope

i was thinkging “molgrips car #4 – no hope”

molgrips – Member
Well I know that the local specialists charge £400 +VAT for a refurbed ECU, and the dealer will be £1000-£1500.

Havn’t you already had a ‘refurbished’ (whatever that means) ECU fitted and that is what is causing these problems? Why would you risk that again?

I do wonder what we/you’d do if you got one… and had the exact same issue..

Give up!

And be £1500 down on what you can spend on a new car!

WBAC is offering you £1k less than the autotrader ad that I linked to, add your £1.5k to this and you will have a car that is £500 better than your passat if it was working properly.

How much have these problems cost you since you got the first mechanic out?

http://www.webuyanycar.com

Quick question, when they quoted you for the ecu did they include the VAT?, a lot of parts suppliers dont and add it on at the point of quote as most of thier sales are to garages who are vat registered and that may explain the difference. I really dont think its fraud as you agreed to pay the price he asked, what he paid is irrelevent, i really think you would be laughed at if you took that to court. Up to you of course but id really think hard about all of this because you have involved other garages it could really muddy the waters when considering a claim.

But you also have to factor in what income Molgrips is getting from STW and its advertisers for increasing the page impression/click count.

refurbed ecu = pulled out of a scrapped car and sold on good will that it was working for the kind of mega profit that lets them replace it FOC if it turns out to be gubbed 😉 but then im a known cynic.

refurbed ecu = removed ecu. Spray with pledge. refit…

Sod it – I call troll. 😉

trail_rat – Member
refurbed ecu = pulled out of a scrapped car and sold on good will that it was working for the kind of mega profit that lets them replace it FOC if it turns out to be gubbed but then im a known cynic.

greeble – Member
refurbed ecu = removed ecu. Spray with pledge. refit…

This is what I was thinking. Why would you run that risk twice.

Anyhow while I was typing a shed load happened and it transpires that Moly has so far paid around £1250 with no end in sight. How much was the new clutch?

If you had ditched the car at the outset without any investigations (I’m not saying that is a good idea) and had done what ScottChegg did. You would have had a reasonable deposit on a new car (the £1250) and the £1500 for a new ECU plus say £300 VAG labour would have lasted for around 7 months of payments on a new car then the say £3000 that you could have moved your faulty passat on for is another 12 months payments. During this 18 months of trouble and worry free ownership god knows what else would have gone wrong with your car that you need to fix.

Either that or you need to go and drive another similar car and make sure that the slow changes are not just a figment of your imagination.

How funny would that be. 😀

wafting through life on a sea of contentment

Hardly – he’ll be getting narked off about someone ‘jumping the queue’ because his FUBARed hearse won’t kick down.

You do all know that Moly will just continue to argue black is white until the end of time don’t you? I’m sure he must be the result of a drunken union between Padded Fred and TJ back in the day when even they were talking to each other.

All this grief and angst. Moly, you’ll give yourself an ulcer. Buy your way out of all this aggro and stop being silly. My last A6 was worth about £7k trade in but needed about £2k of work on it (mainly aircon and belts). I decided to trade as I couldn’t see the logic of sinking £2k into a £7k car when it was likely to need more soon.

Good luck with small claims and your continuing prep for the Divide. Have you got a place yet? 🙂

Seeing as you’re blatantly not learning anything from your very expensive lessons here

I dunno what you mean. I’ve learned a lot.

Unless you think I should go ‘OOOHH NOOO a complicated car thingy, I’d better phone THE EXPERTS and have them bend me over guessing what’s wrong with it’.

I’ve learned not accept the first offer for a replacement part, that’s for sure, and I’ve learned a lot about engines and electronics.

it transpires that Moly has so far paid around £1250

No, I’ve paid £1000.

Has no-one picked up on the fact that the mobile guy seems to have lied through his teeth?

Oh and another thing, whilst I’m at it, just because I don’t immediately do what you say, doesn’t mean I don’t take advice. It means I don’t think YOUR advice is good!

Oh and another thing, whilst I’m at it, just because I don’t immediately do what you say, doesn’t mean I don’t take advice. It means I don’t think YOUR advice is good!

You’ve got, within reason, pretty much everyone else posting on this thread in unanimous agreement as to what you should have done/should do now.

But you still don’t quite agree… 😕

Unless you think I should go ‘OOOHH NOOO a complicated car thingy, I’d better phone THE EXPERTS and have them bend me over guessing what’s wrong with it’.

I can put a computer together from component pieces, set it up, keep it running smooth and generally am pretty IT savvy. But that’s the easy part. The hard part is what happens inside, all the millions of computations and lines of code, and if anything went wrong there, I wouldn’t know where to start, so I’d either start again, or get an expert (that KNOWS what he’s talking about and I trust) to get involved.

Cars are essentially computers with wheels these days. Most of us are more than capable of changing the physical components on them with a Haynes Manual and a socket set, but when something fundamentally goes wrong with the electrics of the car, it’s time to call in someone with the right knowledge and the tools to fix it.

I’ve learned a lot

But too late to help.

Has no-one picked up on the fact that the mobile guy seems to have lied through his teeth?

So? He wasn’t as clever as he thought he was. He fooled you, though. Anyone can talk the talk; when it comes to action, results matter. It was worth him having a punt, he’s lost nothing. In fact he’s quids in. Your quids, as it happens.

If you had done the right thing and gone to the main dealer, you would be no worse off financially, and your car might work.

Is that a life lesson you could take to heart? It’s easy with hindsight, I know, but it really is the path of least resistance when you are talking about anything as complex as the main electronic brains of your wheels.

Is that a life lesson you could take to heart?

Yep, certainly – I’ll choose my garages with far more care next time.

But remember, every other thread on here tells you NOT to go to the main dealer. So should I have ignored that advice?

it’s time to call in someone with the right knowledge and the tools to fix it.

And that’s exactly what I tried to do.

So should I have ignored that advice?

Yes. Really, Yes.

There are times when Main Dealer is the best way.

This was one of them.

There are times when Main Dealer is the best way.

This was one of them.

Hindsight is good like that.

Of course, if I’d done enough research myself, I’d have had it fixed for £40, since that’s all the original problem cost to fix. But that’s apparently the wrong thing to do according to this thread.

Has no-one picked up on the fact that the mobile guy seems to have lied through his teeth?

Has he tho really? It could be argued that fixing cars isn’t an exact science and he did what he thought was the best thing to do with the limited equipment he had available to him. Apart from that and you paying more for the ECU than you thought it was worth when has he lied?

Well, he told me that the specialist had told him the ECU was water damaged and needed replacing, as he’d originally thought.

The specialist themselves told me that they’d told him they’d tested it and there was nothing wrong with the ECU, and he’d gone back several times trying to persuade them that it was faulty. Eventually they sold him a new one to get him to go away, despite knowing that the old one was not faulty.

Now it may be that the specialist is lying to try and stitch him up, but that does seem rather unlikely.

Of course, if I’d done enough research myself, I’d have had it fixed for £40, since that’s all the original problem cost to fix. But that’s apparently the wrong thing to do according to this thread.

but you still took it to 3 other garages? since the original troubled one…..

Sod it – I call troll.

You only just realising that? Molgrips is the Keyser Söze of trolling.

but you still took it to 3 other garages?

You’re not following. I only found the real problem AFTER the ECU had been replaced.

So, youre initial issue was a result of CAN bus errors, caused by water ingress into the TrCM. This had a knock on effect (due to the CAN data corruption) into other control modules. I assume the TCU was changed erroneously because the transmission was going into limp mode when it “lost” its CAN data exchange.

There is, in reality, unlikely to be a fault with the “new” ecu (assuming it is roughly of the correct type. All these modules are now “coded” to your car, and that includes the firmware (the operating instructions) and the calibration (the operating variables) data. These devices are also fully ‘adaptive’ and aim to learn your driving style and modify their shift points etc to suit you. As such, if this adaptive data has not been properly reset, the TCU may do funny things, or if the coding is incorrect, it may also not operate exactly as before.

If it were my car, i’d want to have the following done:

1) an independent review of the CAN data to ensure the bus is viable (using software that records the raw data stream and identifies arbitration and bit errors)
2) Talk to VW Uk to identify the exact variant coding for your car
3) Get the TCU flashed with this s/w and the adaptive tables cleared
4) Once ‘fixed” data log some important parameters to validate the fix is working!

Sorry, just saw Maxtorque’s post.

The engine ECU was changed, the tranny was never in limp mode, never has been.

I’ve had the adaption reset procedure done twice by garages and done several times by me. No change.

Canbus is fine NOW since I’ve taken bits of it out of water. Car works perfectly well apart from the two problems. ECU and gearbox have been flashed with the appropriate software from Autologic. No change…

…and your ECU still reports a ground fault on the manifold flap sensor thingummy.

something not right with dat dere doohickey.

I took the (18yr old) Micra in for an MOT the other day.
Had to spend an extra bloody pound on a rear number plate bulb!
Cars are just money pits. 😥

😀

So is it fixed? And if not what needs doing now?

…and your ECU still reports a ground fault on the manifold flap sensor thingummy.

something not right with dat dere doohickey.

Yeah, and it still says it when the flap is disconnected…

Yeah, and it still says it when the flap is disconnected…

Not sure I’d trust it to correctly detect a fault if the flap isn’t connected, unless it says ‘Flap not connected’. There could be all sorts of electronics stuff on the inputs which could make it look like a ground.
Do you know what it means by a ground? Complete short (zero ohms) or less then x ohms?

Good point, I don’t know. The flap actuator is made by Pierburg, I found some blurb on it but no pin out diagrams. There are 5 pins – motor +ve, motor -ve, controller power, position sensor and ground. So in saying there is a short to ground on the position sensor, it is being very specific about a fault on a particular wire. The thing is, using my multimeter I can’t detect any shorts to ground.

So the ONLY possibilities are an internal fault or I’m not testing it properly. I opened up the case on it to check for bits of swarf etc but nothing.

The internet is full of people with faults in this flap, almost all are bad motors or implausible signals, some are open circuit too.

I’m not sure how the sensor works, but it could be a variable resistor type, so if faulty it ‘could’ look like a short, but it’s very poor fault reporting if this is the case. I’d always put money on the mechanical bits being faulty, esp. if they sit somewhere hot.

And the clutch and valve thing?

Yeah lots of possibilities for a faulty flap actuator, but why is there a fault when it’s unplugged? Seems odd.

Ed, dunno about the gearbox, current thinking is still that it’s caused by the engine issue. Or some other engine misconfiguratiom.

Good that with all your research you’re getting close to working out how to fix it then Moly. Y’know, without giving any more money to experts 🙂

Stop pissing about. Either sell or pay to fix it (or put up and stop moaning). Every time you drive it, it’s just going to wind you up wondering what could have been….

You mean every time I post on here I get wound up…

Inlet flap pin out according to autodata

Pin 1 brown wire earth
2 white & red 12v
3 violet & yellow pin 25 engine ecu
4 violet & grey pin 60 engine ecu
Doesn’t show a pin 5 i’m affraid

Unpluging the motor won’t erase the fault from the control unit , therefore the fault will still be present .
Do you happen to have a cooling fan fault also saved in the engine ecu ?

I don’t get everyone’s faith in main dealers, they know very little about car ECUs, esp VW dealers who know naff all about car electrics. They are just trained to read fault codes and swap parts. I had endless miss-fire problems on my V6 4Motion Golf, which had no end of parts swapped under warranty by VW’s highest qualified ‘technicians’. In the end I went to a specialist engine tuner who ran it up on a rolling road and spotted the fault in about 5 minutes. Cost me about £600 to get it fixed, but finally solved the problem (Air mass filter fault which only affected power under load).

The VW professionals were a joke. I forced the local dealers ‘specialist’ to go for a test drive with me and demonstrated the missfire and he agreed there was a fault. Drove back to main dealer, plugged it in to Computer, which said 100% OK and then he said ‘well it’s fixed, there’s no fault’. Complete idiot. This had been going on for months at this point with all sorts of random things changed eg fuel pump, HT leads, Coil packs, etc.

Footflap – what was the engine ? My mates 1.4 tsfi scirocco had similar misfiring change coil packs etc etc went on for weeks at the specialist ( volks centre kingswells)

Specialist cars vw sorted it in a week – turned out the ecu was fapped but the code reader always said coil pack- live diagnostics while driving showed otherwise.

Doesn’t show a pin 5 i’m affraid

Huh.. That backs up the different hardware version theory. There’s at least two versions of the wiring on ELSA for slightly different variants of the car, and Pierburg make a 4 and 5 pin version of the flap. The pin numbers I have from ELSA are quite different.

Unpluging the motor won’t erase the fault from the control unit , therefore the fault will still be present .
Do you happen to have a cooling fan fault also saved in the engine ecu ?

Yeah I know, I erase them every time and the flap fault immediately reappears. Followed after a bit of engine running by the EGR insufficient flow one, which is linked. No other fault codes for the entire car.

Footflaps’s story is exactly what I’m afraid of.

Footflap – what was the engine

2.8l V6