Stupid TDI

"bobbe17" (rob-runte)
05/15/2017 at 12:09 • Filed to: None

The saga continues on the TDI and the replacement GTI. A quick recap, we bought a 2016 GTI to replace my wife’s Golf TDI. The TDI appointment is scheduled for two weeks from now.

The GTI has some recall work to be done so we figured it’d be a good idea to get it done while we still have the TDI and she can take that to work while the GTI is at the dealer. The Golfs are the only automatics that we have and that’s all she can drive. So my wife calls me this morning and says the TDI is running rough and doesn’t even have enough power to pull forwards a few feet. I turn around and head home to diagnose the issue.

I start the car and it idles pretty smooth, but any touch of the accelerator only revs it up to about 1200 rpm and it gets really rough. I then pulled the codes and got a P0638 for a throttle actuator issue. The first solution I read was unplug the battery and plug it back in after a while. That didn’t work so that was all the time I was willing to spend this morning. She’s either working from home or getting to work by some other means.

It looks like I’ll be pulling the throttle body at a minimum and possibly the EGR as well to clean them up. The damn car only needs to make it 25 miles to the dealer running under its own power and we’ll be done with it. Funny because I almost felt bad about giving up a perfectly good car, not anymore.