Shop Shots Volume 34 Insider Pictures of Automotive Service

Hey everyone. I hope that you are all having a great week so far. I am back in the shop today. Last weekend was my long weekend off. Ah the beauty of a 4 day work week. Okay, let’s get these pictures rolling. One more thing, I emailed the winner of the tray again. If I don’t hear from them by the end of the day, I will pic another winner.

This nasty mess is the outlet side of a failed TDI turbocharger. Normally this would be nice and shiny looking If you look close you can see he blades of the turbine. They are caked with oil sludge and carbon build up. I am not really sure what caused this to happen, or how long the customer had been driving the car like this. When it came into the shop, it was smoking like crazy.

The shaft that connects the compressor wheel and the turbine wheel broke. The turbine wheel is what you are looking at here. It is completely seized. We tried moving it with a hammer and it would not budge. The fix for this issue, anew turbocharger.

You may or may not know this, but I am a pretty big fan of The Simpsons. So when I seen this I had to snap a picture of it. This was a 4ft tall stuffed Bart Simpson. So big in fact that it would not fit in the trunk of this New Jetta. I have no idea where the customer got it, or why they still had it, but I think it’s pretty cool. If it were next week I would assume they won it at the State Fair. We may never know the truth. I just like seeing fun stuff like this.

I posted this to Facebook earlier today, but I wanted to tell more of the story here. This is the carnage of a VR6 engine. The bolt for the oil pump backed out of the pump. This caused the crankshaft to turn, but the cam shafts to stay still. This is equivalent to a timing belt breaking. The end result is 18 bent valves, a whole lot of gaskets and seals, and about 20+ hours of labor.

I have heard these make noise before. It get really loud long before engine damage occurs. Generally the MIL comes on too. I am not sure the exact circumstance with this one. I guess it doesn’t really matter, the damage is done.

Last up is a video I shot last week. Unlike the picture above, this shows a really lucky customer. One of the guys I work with called me over to check out a timing belt on a V8 Touareg. The belt was so loose that I could have taken it right off. I am not sure how the belt was even on the engine. It looked as if the tensioner failed. Seriously, this is one lucky customer.

Well that wraps up another Shop Shots. Don’t forget you can follow me on Facebook and Twitter. It is really easy, just click one of the little icons to the right, or to the left if you are reading upside down.