do rats eat vw's?
Turbo Mini Forums

Finally got a car sorted for my mum, a 40k vw gt tdi (the 160ps 6 speed badboy)

Anyway, im a bit pissed off, a family friend is in the trade, came round last night and really bad mouthed it :(

He said that the common rail injection is a time bomb, the front wishbones will want replacing soon, and get this, apparently an additive vw and audi use in the wiring insulation attracts rats, and they eat the looms from inside out.

Now the wishbone and fuel rail problems seem plausible (any truth in it?) but has anyone heard the rat thing?

"Turbo's make torque, and torque makes fun"

"did you know you can toast potato waffles?"

Never heard of it... know quite a lot of people with vw's or the like. Own a seat altea myself

Sounds like he just has a general dislike of VWs .... a lot of people in the trade do as they don't go wrong much so you don't go back and pay £1m per hour having them tighten something up as it's not included in the cover as it's "wear and tear"!!!! They would mostly like you to buy french cars off them so they will be seeing lots of you!!!


Right then back to the questions.

Wiring, yes actually it is try!!!!! But not just VW it's the whole european car industry as the old 'dip covering' for the wiring has been banned because it apparently isn't very nice to fish if it gets in the water courses. The new covering is actually made from a more natural base and it's apparently quite liked by rodents. It's not a problem when new but once hoenst john's motors have given the engine bay a good steam clean to hide any oil leaks and make it look like the millage they ahve just invented for the car the anti-odour coating ingrediant is lost and the rats can smell it from litterally metres away!!
A problem? Not really!

The wishbone bushes needing replacing every couple of years is a bit of a myth too. If the car is driven by an idiot and smacked into every curb they pass in an atempt to park the car at the strangest angle possible then they car suffer at about 60k miles but if driven well (and the roads aren't to pot hole filled) they should be fine for much longer. Put it this way they have no where near as much of an hunger for them as the Pug 206s have!!!!!

Common rail injection being a time bomb .... LOL. There is a reason common rail is becoming the current standard, it just works and is very simple! I am currently working on common rail systems design at work and to be fair it is a lot less problematic than old pump-pipe-passive injector systems.

As far as the VW engines are concerned though you do have the least efficient one as far as brake specific fuel consumption is concerned but that isn't directly related to the common rail injection, rather to the reason it's there in the first place!

The original pump-pipe-injector system went out in 2000 as the emmision regulations required more control than a passive injector could give so they went to the electronic unit injector system (single pumping element per cylinder mounted over the nozzle and run from the overhead camshaft). This gave them a control advantage which meant that essentially an old engine could carry onto the next millenium (just like the MPi Minis)

The next emissions regs meant that further tightening of control was required and although the EUIs could have been modified to work BOSCH didn't want to supply so VW were forced down the road of common rail.
My company could have bailed them out wth EUIs but shall we just say that certain poor decissions resulted in the retraction of the bid to tender a few years back and the knock on effects meant that VW essentially had little choice.

Anyway back on topic you should be very pleased with your car. It's easily the best handling car in it's class .... by leaps and bounds .... head and shoulders ahead.

The engine is a peach. The interior will remain free of rattle until the car is approaching middle age and everything will work as intended .... for a very long time.

Don't worry, just enjoy it!!!

Every day is a school day ...........

How fast and how expensive ...... the same question...

I've heard tales of the PD TDI engines wearing camshafts, this is because of the extra load on the cam from the indivdual cylinder injection pump.

So I'd say best quality oil and sticking rigidly to the service intervals if not shortening them is adviseable to avoid problems.

As for wishbone bushes any car will suffer from those depending where its used.

Yeah, been warned to change the oil quite frequently

Living next to a harbour there are rats a plenty round here, might have to break out the .22 ahahah

Cheers guys, has put my mind at ease a bit.

Joe

"Turbo's make torque, and torque makes fun"

"did you know you can toast potato waffles?"

Another fine example of the wealth of knowledge and expertise we have on TM! Other forums must be jealous.

joey when you change the oil make sure you use something that is rated to VWs 506 standard .... a lot of the diesel oils out there only met vw505 and you'll find that isn't up to the job.

Every day is a school day ...........

How fast and how expensive ...... the same question...

defo use a good oil, replaced a turbo in one of these (the 6 speed gttdi) as it was mistreated and ran into the ground. look after her and shell be perfectly reliable!

turbo 16v k-series 11.9@118.9 :)

Denis O'Brien.

I can'r see that rats will be any more attracted to your car than anything else.

Basically rats eat or knaw on anything. Frequently they chew right through the 650 V cables on the railway; neither the cables/fuses or the rat generally survive!

Fastest 998 mini in the world? 13.05 1/4 mile 106mph

Joey .... as soon as it's out of manufactures cover then get it down to a superchips dealer (nobody else compare for this application) and they will turn it into a monster .... best £500 you'll spend on the car.

Every day is a school day ...........

How fast and how expensive ...... the same question...

I've got a pd130 and absolutely love it. Handling is amusing but not great, but the engine is incredible even in standard tune. It's not mega quick, but it's quite pokey and on a run can crack 60mpg.

I've heard horror stories of turbo and camshaft wear too a little concerned about it. Mine's on the longlife service schedule too... something just seems really wrong with leaving a car 20k between services.

rogers the wrong man to ask-hes biased...

if you cut roger in half you'd find a vw badge running through him like a stick of rock


anyone got any scissors.....

How do rats eat wiring looms from inside out? What do they do - crawl between the copper strands?

Mk4 golf was a great car but compaired to the MK5 chassis it handles like a garden shed!!!!

LOL @ Nic ...... when did you see the X-rays???

Every day is a school day ...........

How fast and how expensive ...... the same question...

righto, bit of an update, the car is running fine mechanically, but is acting up bigtime on the handling front.

I dont drive it at all really, but recently been using it whilst the folks have been away.
I spun it at very low speed in the wet, around 20mph, on the airport roundabout (quite a small round about), no damage and luckily no embarassment as no one was behind.

Thought it might just be very slippery, but it tried to do it to me again later that day on a twisty backroad, managed to catch it.

Told my mum about it and she said that she almost lost the back end on a bend dodging round a pothole...

The geometry all seems fine (nothing obvious visually, no play etc), and the (budget) tyres are all in great nick and at the correct pressure.

Could it be just terrible tyres in damp conditions?

Any recommendations?

Cheers

Joe

"Turbo's make torque, and torque makes fun"

"did you know you can toast potato waffles?"

Budget tyres? could this be the problem? had some very dodgy tyres on cars in the past! nankang ditch finders were the best!

Joe i had a tdi anniversary 150 at start of year (wanted something sensible) lovley car but i had within a month of owning it had the cam go ? , new cam ,followers etc etc and £600 lighter .

Anyway , also the back axel bushers were shot, aparently common for a 50k + motor with 18" . then found out air con controllers go and put fans on full speed wich in turn fucks fan motors so the car would vibrate like mad, (ideal for a chick tho )

so decided to get rid. Everybody that i spoke to tho couldnt praise them enough id just obviously got a shitter.

Rick

In Austria are not rats eating the cables, there are marten:



And they like every car-label, not only VW's...

http://www.minifreunde.at

A note on the Oil, at work over the summer we delt with lots of VW group PD engines.

Make sure the oil you use is PD specific oil, apparantly regular oil breaks down very quickly in these engines.

I read somewhere about rodent attack of wiring looms, apparently due to the new insulation as well but I can't recall how i found the article.

As for handling, check the rear axle bushes - i'm assuming the mk5 has a similar set up to the mk4. My mk4 used to slip and slide when i first got it and it turned out to be one of the bushes.

Have to say I'm not a fan of many budget tyres. I try now to stay with what the manufacturer supplied as new unless there is a proven alternative. the same tyre on 2 different cars can perform very differently - an experience of P6000's on a pug 306 and a 3series BMW showed me that!

Well if that's the sort of thing you find under your bonnet in Austria, remind me never to go there! It's got ears like a human!

I did have mice in my mk1 golf GTi, happy living behind the blove box in a nest made of chewed up sound deadening...

Serious...

JF.

Hi,
With teeth like that you're worried about it's ears?
Cheers,
Gavin :)

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