Anyone else in the 100000km club?

[jamez]

Hi All,

My 2014 Mk7 1.4 90 TSI CXSA engine started consuming large amounts of oil at around the 100000km mark.
Made it to 137000 and has now lost compression in cylinder 2.

I have heard that the oil consumption problem is due to piston/oil ring design used in the earlier Mk7 engines, is this true?
It would be nice if VW would own up to this problem if it is widespread.

Does anyone know what year/engine they changed the piston/ring design ?

I want to buy a later engine from a wreck, and would like to avoid a repeat performance....

Cheers.

[DV52]

hmm.......... CXSA = 4-cylinder injection engine (1.4 l direct injection engine, turbocharger) - used in Golf 2013, Golf Sportsvan 2015, Golf Variant 2014 and Passat 2015, Passat Variant 2015.

Are you sure that "they changed the piston/ring design" on this engine?

Don

[Lucas_R]

Oil consumption in the 1.4T engine is very common. Im not sure that VW ever updated the pistons/ring design in this engine (they did in an earlier 1.4 litre engine which was used in the Mk6 Golf and known as the 118TSI).

[Gutoneto]

Yep, been there unfortunately... All the CXSA engines manufactured until mid 14 have problems in the piston rings and/or valve seals. I downloaded a technical bulletin from ERWIN and the recommendation is change the pistons and rings and/or cylinder head depending of the date of manufacturing.

I just got my replaced and I moved away from the CXSAs. I got the new CZCA one but it's not a simple swap.

Here's what the bulletin recommend:

If the valve spring plate has no lettering (illustration 2), the production date of the cylinder head (see illustration 3) is
before 01.01.2014 and the engine number after the introduction of the optimised piston (see Production change):
• replace the cylinder head according to the repair manual/parts catalogue.
If the valve spring plate has no lettering (illustration 2), the production date of the cylinder head (see illustration 3) is
before 01.01.2014 and the engine number before the introduction of the optimised piston (see Production change):
• Replace cylinder head, pistons and piston rings according to the repair manual/parts catalogue.
If the valve spring plate has no lettering (illustration 2), the production date of the cylinder head (see illustration 3) is on or
after 01.01.2014 and the engine number before the introduction of the optimised piston (see Production change):
• Replace pistons and piston rings according to the repair manual/parts catalogue.
If the valve spring plate has lettering (illustration 1), the production date of the cylinder head (see illustration 3) is before
01.01.2014 and the engine number before the introduction of the optimised piston (see Production change):
• Replace pistons and piston rings according to the repair manual/parts catalogue.
If the valve spring plate has lettering (illustration 1), the production date of the cylinder head (see illustration 3) is on or
after 01.01.2014 and the engine number before the introduction of the optimised piston (see Production change):
• Replace pistons and piston rings according to the repair manual/parts catalogue.

[jamez]

Thanks for the feedback.

I just got my replaced and I moved away from the CXSAs. I got the new CZCA one but it's not a simple swap.

I have obtained a low km CZCA engine from the wrecker too - looked like a simple swap (of course it is not...).

What issues did you run into ?

I have swapped the engine in, and got it running.
It was throwing a high pressure fuel regulator solenoid shorted to ground fault.

I did some checking and worked out the engine wiring harness changed slightly on the donor engine.
The HPFP solenoid has one side connected to the ECU and the other side connected to 12V on the CXSA.
On the CZCA both pins of the solenoid are connected to the ECU.

Also worked out the HPFP is not compatible between engines (bolt pattern and size, plus solenoid onnector changes)

Anyway, after swapping my original engine wiring harness onto the donor engine, and splicing the new plug to suit the HPFP solenoid, I now have very loud HPFP solenoid actuation noise when the engine is running.

Is it possible the solenoid voltage is lower on the newer pump, or perhaps the newer pump is faulty due to sitting around for a long time ?

Cheers,
James

[Gutoneto]

Thanks for the feedback.



I have obtained a low km CZCA engine from the wrecker too - looked like a simple swap (of course it is not...).

What issues did you run into ?

I have swapped the engine in, and got it running.
It was throwing a high pressure fuel regulator solenoid shorted to ground fault.

I did some checking and worked out the engine wiring harness changed slightly on the donor engine.
The HPFP solenoid has one side connected to the ECU and the other side connected to 12V on the CXSA.
On the CZCA both pins of the solenoid are connected to the ECU.

Also worked out the HPFP is not compatible between engines (bolt pattern and size, plus solenoid onnector changes)

Anyway, after swapping my original engine wiring harness onto the donor engine, and splicing the new plug to suit the HPFP solenoid, I now have very loud HPFP solenoid actuation noise when the engine is running.

Is it possible the solenoid voltage is lower on the newer pump, or perhaps the newer pump is faulty due to sitting around for a long time ?

Cheers,
James

Hi James,

Yes, that's exactly the same error that I had. The HPFP has a different impedance and it will give the ECU the wrong signal.

Unfortunately you only have two options: The first one to use the CXSA harness and swap the cam box with the HPFP across to the new engine. Doing that you will still be using the old ECU and everything will be as the same as came out of the factory.

The second option is to swap the ECU from a CZCA and it will be everything normal. The only problem is to get the ECU swapped it's very complicated and you'll need to find someone to do that for you.

I ended going to the option 2 and took me 5 weeks to get the car back on the road (until figure out what need to be done and get it sorted) as I didn't want to put old parts on the new engine. I was able to get a very low mileage one with just 25084 km from a 2018 A1.

[jamez]

Hi Gutoneto,

Thanks for the info, that confirms what I thought.

I considered changing over the cam cassette for 1 second, but like you, I got a really low mileage engine around 26K as well, and it literally is like a new engine compared to my nearly 10 year old CXSA.
Makes sense to keep and use the newer parts.

I have a couple of VW specialists in Adelaide I will consult to see what they can do about the ECU.
I have seen post mentioning that they can all be flashed with firmware to suit the engine type...

James

[Gutoneto]

Hi Gutoneto,

Thanks for the info, that confirms what I thought.

I considered changing over the cam cassette for 1 second, but like you, I got a really low mileage engine around 26K as well, and it literally is like a new engine compared to my nearly 10 year old CXSA.
Makes sense to keep and use the newer parts.

I have a couple of VW specialists in Adelaide I will consult to see what they can do about the ECU.
I have seen post mentioning that they can all be flashed with firmware to suit the engine type...

James

You will need a new ECU, the original one for the CXSA is a MED17.5.21 and the new CZCA uses a MED17.5.25.

Whatever you do do not connect the ECU to the car!!! It will need to be bench read and and they will need to transfer that IMMO data from your old ECU to the new one. Once it's done you will need to deal with the radiator fan working at 100%. The guy that done it for me told me that it needs to swap the wire's order on the connector to work properly ( I wasn't around and didn't see him do it that but I think it will be more coding stuff).

Once that done it should be working fine. A very good tip it to get the ECU for the VW CZCA, that will come with the right firmware and will make your life easier (the CZDA also uses the same HW part number but the SW number is different and will give you some trouble to get it running). The IMMO system is different from the AUDI's ECU and won't work.

Hope that help you a bit as I mentioned it took weeks to get all sorted for me...

PS.: If you ever consider to do any type of stages tune the ECU will need to do bench read and use the original file as base map and reflash again via bench, any OBD2 port reading, also known as virtual reading, it will break the IMMO system and the car won't turn on anymore. To get it running will need to flash the modified file again to be able to fix it. I've been there and done it, was very frustrating to find out when the guy was flashing back without tell me after I mentioned what I had to do get the car back on the road...

[jamez]

Hi Gutoneto,

Thanks so much for the info on your experience with the swap, it will save me a lot of time, and hopefully guide anyone else going down this path.

I won't be doing any tuning on this car as its a daily driver, and I would be happy just to get it back on the road with normal oil consumption!

James

[jamez]

Hi All,

Just a quick update, the car is now back on the road.
I swapped out the ECU as per Gutoneto's advice above, and had it recoded - thanks to Volks Mechanical.

One wire in the ECU harness needed to be moved - the control line to the radiator fan: in the large ECU connector T94 - move pin 11 to pin 70 (yellow purple wire)
I found videos detailing how to de-pin and re-pin VAG ECU connectors:
VW/Audi ECU pin removal - YouTube and vw pin tool (terminal release tool) making your own for free and repairing broken harness plugs - YouTube
If the links don't work, search for 'VW/Audi ECU pin removal' and 'vw pin tool (terminal release tool) making your own for free and repairing broken harness plugs'
All I had to do was remove the back cover, remove the locking plates, and then I used piano wire to release the pin and the plastic blanking pin.

For those playing along at home, the engine fired up fine, but I noticed a fault code: 18065 - Coolant Pump 2 P261C 00 [039] - Short to GND.
Did some further investigation, and worked out that can indicate the +12V supply to the sensor/item in question is missing.
Sure enough the fuse SB7 that supplies the charge air cooling pump (intercooler) was blown.
Most likely popped when I was mucking around with the donor high pressure fuel pump on the original harness and ECU.

I hope by posting this info, I can give back to the community that has provided me with useful advice, and help someone else sort out their engine swap.

James