First of all I know that this is not a VW forums, but the 2002 Passat and my Audi have the same motor (1.8t).
My girlfriend has a 2002 passat and was driving down the interstate over the weekend and she said the car started to jolt a little bit, followed by the brakes going out and then finally the engine shut off. She had to pul over and wait for me to come get her, and we called a tow truck.
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When I was there i tried to start the car. The started seems to work just fine, there was plenty of juice in the battery, but the car would not start. A couple of times it sounded like it was going to but never did.
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2002 Passat with only 38k miles. Oil changed every 3k. She read on some other forum that the motor might have to be replaced due to a sluge issue. Can anyone give me an idea, or heard of somthing like this b4. Thanks

 

First things first, scan it for codes and see what pops up.

 

^^ definitely get codes,as for sludge with those miles I doubt it due to synthetic oil sludge is in the past but its known the oil pumps fail with high mileage engines but mostly down to poor maintenance and cheap oil,

lets hope its not the timing belt[:-]

 

Yeah, that would be bad.

Josh

 

If it sounds like you have compression (if you know what that sounds like) when your cranking the motor take off the fuel feed line and stick it in an old water bottle, then crank over the motor and see if any GAS comes out. If not, you need a fuel pump.