Engine is losing coolant. Started at ~50k miles marked. Coolant needs to be topped off. Now the car is at 71k miles. Low coolant triggered warning light again! Coolant needs to be topped off. There appears to be white crusty marked near the engine oil pan and seem to be coming off from the thermostat housing.
2017 Volkswagen GTI engine complaints
Page 2 of 2: complaints 11 to 14 of 14, newest first, as owners wrote them.
Thermostat housing & associated seals on the current 1.8l and 2.0l volkswagen/audi ea888 gen 3 engine are prone to failure, causing loss of engine coolant. This could affect any vw/audi vehicle using the 1.8 or 2.0l ea888 gen 3 engine. Vw has a long history of water pump/thermostat housing issues and the current generation of vehicles is no exception. Many other reports can be found on various online forums such as reddit.com, golfmk7.com and vwvortex.com, etc. This is a costly out of warranty repair requiring removal of the intake manifold and has been reported online by owners of 2015 '2019 us my vehicles. Some vehicles, such as ours, experienced a repeat failure. There are three failure modes that I am aware of as reported on the sites mentioned above. My wife and I have experienced failure modes 1 and 2. When this issue is occurring owners often report the smell of coolant outside the vehicle 1. Housing heating/cooling causes expansion/contraction and warping resulting in a slow weep or leak from thermostat housing assembly & associated seal, most of the time not detectable at the housing assembly/seal without pressure test. Often, vw service centers are unable to verify there is a leak, even after pressure test, owners are sent on their way, and yet coolant still disappears from the tank. My wife's car went in for testing multiple times before issue was found. 2. Housing heating/cooling causes expansion/contraction and warping resulting in a small but constant leak large enough to create a small puddle or stream under the car. A low coolant alert may/may not appear depending on speed of the leak. 3. Housing heating/cooling causes expansion/contraction and warping resulting in a sudden catastrophic failure resulting in rapid loss of coolant and causing a visible large puddle under the car and a warning alert to appear on the dashboard.
Noticed burning coolant smell coming from the engine compartment after the vehicle reached operating temperature and the car was stopped. Could hear a sizzling noise with the engine off and the hood open. The coolant level was at the minimum line. The dealer diagnosed a leaking thermostat housing. Dealership replaced the part under warranty. The repair was performed at 34,655 miles.
The "combi" valve on my gti stays stuck open causing more exhaust gases to flow through the catalytic converter. As a result nmy catalytic converter had to be replaced. After replacing to combi valve. It happened again
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