Good morning all. I wanted to give an update and once again say thank you for all your help.
Also in the spirit of decreasing my density from a brick to say, something more like a 2x4, I have a few questions that I'd appreciate some answers to.
And Jack has generously offered to "learn" me.
So, I acquired a new (used) camshaft hub, and no surprise (but definitely a relief) it solved the problem.
Just for the record, this is what the keyway is supposed to look like:
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The car starts and runs perfectly and the manual transmission makes it a helluva lot more fun and peppy. It's amazing what a few degrees of timing will do.
So the big question is- "How did the key on my camshaft hub get so damaged without any other signs or known history of catastrophic engine event?"
It has been suggested that a "loose" bolt could cause it but it seems like there would be other signs of damage to the hub and if it were really loose it would be pretty obvious.
Jack's suggestion of a sudden mechanical failure, and the subsequent shear forces seems most plausible and consistent with the condition of the hub. The only problem is there is no observable or historical evidence of that kind of failure. The engine ran perfectly before the swap and the timing belt/bsm delete work. The previous owner religiously had all their work (including routine oil changes) done at the VW dealership and I've scoured all those past records with no evidence of major engine work. There was a timing belt done at 72,000 miles but normally that wouldn't entail messing with the camshaft hub.
The only other possibility, at the risk of sounding paranoid, is something that Jack brought up a few posts back (#112):
This would certainly be consistent and in character with the asshole that worked on the engine. It's hard for me to fathom that kind of pathos but if his aim was simply to cause suffering he certainly achieved that.
I would love to hear if anyone has seen this kind of camshaft hub damage before and/or other suggestions about how this may occur.
Also, I'm curious about the effect of engine temp on timing. The way that throttle response and timing shifted when the car warmed up was definitely a curveball. Is there some program in the ECU that overrides or compensates for wildly off timing that kicks in at a certain temperature?
In some other forums it was mentioned that when the timing is really off the Torsion Value defaults to 0.0 (which is what I observed). Is this true?
One special thanks to Jack who in post 19 said:
I guess in this case checking timing goes much deeper than just proper alignment of the belt.
Thanks for humoring my density.
Also in the spirit of decreasing my density from a brick to say, something more like a 2x4, I have a few questions that I'd appreciate some answers to.
And Jack has generously offered to "learn" me.
So, I acquired a new (used) camshaft hub, and no surprise (but definitely a relief) it solved the problem.
Just for the record, this is what the keyway is supposed to look like:
The car starts and runs perfectly and the manual transmission makes it a helluva lot more fun and peppy. It's amazing what a few degrees of timing will do.
So the big question is- "How did the key on my camshaft hub get so damaged without any other signs or known history of catastrophic engine event?"
It has been suggested that a "loose" bolt could cause it but it seems like there would be other signs of damage to the hub and if it were really loose it would be pretty obvious.
Jack's suggestion of a sudden mechanical failure, and the subsequent shear forces seems most plausible and consistent with the condition of the hub. The only problem is there is no observable or historical evidence of that kind of failure. The engine ran perfectly before the swap and the timing belt/bsm delete work. The previous owner religiously had all their work (including routine oil changes) done at the VW dealership and I've scoured all those past records with no evidence of major engine work. There was a timing belt done at 72,000 miles but normally that wouldn't entail messing with the camshaft hub.
The only other possibility, at the risk of sounding paranoid, is something that Jack brought up a few posts back (#112):
This would certainly be consistent and in character with the asshole that worked on the engine. It's hard for me to fathom that kind of pathos but if his aim was simply to cause suffering he certainly achieved that.
I would love to hear if anyone has seen this kind of camshaft hub damage before and/or other suggestions about how this may occur.
Also, I'm curious about the effect of engine temp on timing. The way that throttle response and timing shifted when the car warmed up was definitely a curveball. Is there some program in the ECU that overrides or compensates for wildly off timing that kicks in at a certain temperature?
In some other forums it was mentioned that when the timing is really off the Torsion Value defaults to 0.0 (which is what I observed). Is this true?
One special thanks to Jack who in post 19 said:
I guess in this case checking timing goes much deeper than just proper alignment of the belt.
Thanks for humoring my density.
