Shop Shots Volume 50 Insider Pictures of Automotive Service
Welcome to this weeks edition of Shop Shots. There is a funny thing that happened with the pictures from last week. I posted the pictures, you guys commented on them, everything was great. I went back today(I copy and paste some of the SEO type stuff) and it was gone. It doesn’t show up in the list of posts. I can see the comments, but the post has gone rouge. So that was the long way around saying there is no longer a Shop Shots Volume 49(you may want to remember that for the future). Okay, let’s get to it.
If you search the web for VW problems you will find a few things. VW is “known for” electrical issues and wiring problems. This little gem is nice find. I was doing a service on a Golf, 2000 I think. I opened the rear hatch to check the customer’s spare tire. This caught my eye. It looks like someone repaired a leak, and maybe some wires.?. I can tell you this was not a wiring or a parts failure. Someone had their hands on this.
I didn’t mention it to the customer. He had a ton of other things wrong with the car. It would have been last on the ‘important’ list. Not only that, getting your hands in something like this can get really messy.
I am sure that I have posted pictures of this type of thing before. You are looking at the intake valves on a VW Touareg. These valves let air into the engine. Notice that they are coated in a crusty goo. That is carbon build up. This car was mis-firing when the engine was cold. The chucks can actually get caught in the seating surface and prevent the valve from fully closing. We are starting to see this on the 2.0 turbo FSI and TSI engines. This is not the worst I have seen, but totally bad enough to cause your car to run poorly.
This is one of my favorite pictures of the year. Just when you think you have seen some crazy stuff, something like this comes through. This customer made a hole at the top of the headlight switch. He then inserted a zip tie into that hole. The zip tie just sits there looking cool.
The more I looked at it, the more I thought about why a customer would do this. I mean it can’t just be for good looks right? 😉 Then it all made sense. It is to tell if the headlights are on. Now, you might be thinking, who doesn’t know if their headlights are on? Well, the car has daytime running lights. So the headlights are always on. It also has a fully lit instrument cluster, so that doesn’t help. The customer may not have known that there is a little green light on the cluster that says DRL. When the light is on, the DRLs(daytime running lights) are on. So I gotta say, not as crazy as I thought.
Well with that we are going to wrap up Shop Shots. I hope that you all enjoyed this weeks pictures. If I can figure out what happened to last weeks pictures, I will repost it. One last thing, are any of you planning on attending Southern Worthersee? It is a German car event in Helen, GA. I am most likely planning on going. Post in the comments if you are going to be there, maybe we can arrange a cool little get together.
Nice shop shots collection there. You run into some crazy stuff!
I tell ya, I sometimes want to strangle the brainiac who came up with the idea for fully lighting the instrument cluster even when the headlights are off. That is one of the simplest and most obvious indicators that you need to turn your lights on: when you can’t see the dashboard, it’s definitely time to turn the lights on!
Oh, there are two other brainiac ideas that drive me batty: 1- late-model GM vehicles now illuminate the reverse lights when the user unlocks the doors. I see those back-up and think that the vehicle is in reverse. 2- flashing cyclops lights. Um, that light should only go out when you take your foot off the brake.
With the carbon build-up. I have heard that some direct injection engines have problems with that, since the gasoline isn’t spraying through the intake ports, but the EGV valve still lets exhaust as a source of carbon through. It is amazing how much can build up.
I agree with Daniel on the strangling the brainiac who thought it would be good to illuminate the cluster when the lights aren’t on. Arghh!!! I also wish my VW (mk6) would make an annoying noise when I leave the lights on and get out with the key in hand. My mk3 plays the worst song ever that we all call “la cucaracha”. I never left the lights on in that car but have done it numerous times in the mk6. Once even ran the battery completely dead.
That zip tie used above is a bit much though. Id think itd be more annoying and even get in the way than actually letting me know if the lights are on or not. Looks like they have some other contraption mounted on their dash as well…
Oh and SOWO, I’ll be there! Staying next to the Helendorf at Country Inn & Suites. My first year there, very excited! Pretty good sized group coming from Texas it seems.
Maybe his lights weren’t bright enough for him to know whether they were on during the day.