Know-how protects against engine damage

Know-how protects against engine damage

Dietmar Schmidt is a technician, entrepreneur and passionate driver. He made his single-family home in Lower Austria energy-independent with a highly efficient photovoltaic system, electricity storage and heat pump and immediately set up a consulting company with the know-how he acquired. As a profound expert on PC architecture, he knows how to operate computers with significantly less power without sacrificing performance and has also developed a business model based on this. As a passionate off-road driver, he is also president of the Jeep Club Austria. “What can annoy me are obvious faulty designs, planned obsolescence or worsening improvements to proven technical achievements,” says the now 60-year-old trained master mechanic, who also completed the HTL in the field of electrical engineering at the time.

As the owner of a 12-year-old Seat Altea with a 1.8 liter TSI engine, Schmidt one day had to register a significantly increased oil consumption. From around 120,000 kilometers on the clock, oil consumption increased to up to 1.5 liters per 1000 kilometers driven. Schmidt was otherwise very happy with his Altea and got to the bottom of the matter. He helped take the engine apart in the workshop of a car mechanic friend. It turned out that the combustion chambers and valves were already heavily carbonized because engine oil had obviously gotten into the combustion chamber. “Upon closer inspection, we discovered that the oil scraper ring was clogged and the oil could no longer drain properly,” explains Schmidt. What particularly annoyed him about it as an experienced automotive technician: "Since the 1930s, oil scraper rings have been equipped with elongated slots through which the oil can drain easily. VW obviously wanted to reinvent this and instead made small holes that become clogged over time and thus block the oil drain." Schmidt also discovered obvious technical inadequacies when examining the timing chain and measuring the oil pressure of the oil pump. “The oil pressure at 5000 rpm was only 1.5 bar, and when idling it was only 0.5 bar – the engine was practically always running at the lower limit.” So it was no wonder that the purely hydraulically driven chain tensioner could no longer keep the timing chain, which had lengthened over time, properly under tension. This meant that there was a risk of the chain links jumping at any time, resulting in major engine damage.

Schmidt now had two options: Either replace the engine - which, however, would not have solved the problems underlying the design - or replace individual components with improved spare parts. After some research, Schmidt found a complete TSI repair kit from Mahle, which not only contains a set of pistons with traditional and proven oil scraper rings, but also a performance timing chain that does not stretch and a stronger oil pump that increases the oil pressure when idling and raises it to 5 bar at 5000 rpm. After around four hours of work, all components were replaced and the engine was reassembled. 35,000 kilometers later, Schmidt is extremely satisfied with the result: "The repair only cost me around a quarter of a replacement engine. Since then, the Seat has been running better than ever before and doesn't even need a thimbleful of oil per 1,000 kilometers!"