Prospero seriously ill!

[ScottA]

Good to hear your happy with him again.
Shame they did not hive you more of a clue about what happened.
piston damage could be caused by many things including turbo failure. timing Chain failed.

I was thinking timing chain

New engine does sound catastrophic but then they are fitters not mechanics.

And I was thinking this too




Glad it's all ok now 

[Rolfe]

The part I still find strange is that this wasn't an engine that blew up or failed while running.  The car was perfectly normal when driving to work (just over 11 miles on a fairly fast A road), and when parked.  Then the engine failed to start in the evening.

Odd.

[Snoopy]

Can happen like that, my winter hack died in a similar way.

[Mr GTD]

Good to hear he's back and in good running order...must be nice to be back in a proper car!

[Exonian]

Glad to hear your hero is alive and well with his new bionic heart Morag. Fingers crossed this time and the new engine will be under VW guarantee for a couple of years.

[ScottA]

Glad to hear your hero is alive and well with his new bionic heart Morag. Fingers crossed this time and the new engine will be under VW guarantee for a couple of years.

Probably worth checking out the warranty/guarantee supplied with the new engine, isn't it 2 years for all new parts? And since every part on the engine is brand new .......... I'd find out, could save a small fortune on extended warranty costs!

[Egbutt Wash]

The Mk6 Gti uses a timing chain.  This is kept nice and tight by a hydraulic tensioner, running off engine oil pressure.  When the engine is stopped the oil pressure drops to zero and some oil in the tensioner can leak past it's stop valve, leading to a more sloppy timing chain.  This is when the chain can skip.  Constant turning over of the engine in this state can cause more skipping and in the end allow the valves to open onto the top of the piston, which is no good.

You often hear the sloppy timing chain on start up on all VW's TSI engines.

[R32UK]

The part I still find strange is that this wasn't an engine that blew up or failed while running.  The car was perfectly normal when driving to work (just over 11 miles on a fairly fast A road), and when parked.  Then the engine failed to start in the evening.

Odd.

exactly the same thing as mine. made worse by trying to start it 50x afterwards

[ScottA]

The part I still find strange is that this wasn't an engine that blew up or failed while running.  The car was perfectly normal when driving to work (just over 11 miles on a fairly fast A road), and when parked.  Then the engine failed to start in the evening.

Odd.

exactly the same thing as mine. made worse by trying to start it 50x afterwards

problem is, if you didn't try to start it 50x, breakdown would, and if you got them to tow you straight to a garage, be it VW or an indy, they'd try and start it a few times too before stripping it down (and maybe try some other things first to get it going), so unfortunately it's a no win situation

[Rolfe]

Breakdown really flogged it.  There were a couple of seriously alarming bangs during that process.  I wouldn't be at all surprised if that was what did the major part of the damage.  But I don't see how that could have been completely avoided.  You can't expect all non-starting cars to e towed to a garage and immediately stripped down, just on the off-chance.