Did the Cam Follower job this past Saturday. Big thanks to BJ McGee and illegititmus@yahoo.com. Job went well, instructions were clear, and I caught it at just about the right time. Coating was almost all gone, but no wear on the follower yet, and cam lobe was clean as well. Installed new follower and will do it every 35,000 miles from here on. Guys (and Gals), if you can change your spark plugs, you can do this job with the instructions supplied by illegititmus@yahoo.com. Do it, don't run the chance of lunching your cam and need to do a much bigger job, or paying the stealership obscene money for him to do it

 

here's mine after 50,000 km. it didn't feel warn down at all.

 

Once the coating is gone like yours (MOST EVERYONE HERE HAS ONE THAT LOOKS JUST LIKE THAT) Thats when it starts to wear fast and plow a hole. People are not serious about these and one day..Kaput.

 

Esandes:

Mine looked jus a bit cleaner than your's. However, Blazer is right. Both of ours were at the point of becoming a problem real fast. For the amount of work, it seems to me that changing these every 30 to 35K would be a good idea. That said, it would have been a better idea for Audi to have done a better design.

These direct injection systems are causing loads of problems. Just a few days ago, BMW did a recall because their high pressure pumps are failing. Add to that the valve deposit problem caused by the fuel never hitting the valve stems and we have a technology that needs to be re-thought.

 

Audi Dan - When you say, "Mine went at 86,000 miles on my 2006 2.0T. Took the cam with it.", do you mean that it broke the camshaft resulting in catastrophic damage to the entire engine? (Requiring a new engine)?

 

2wdBlazer - It sounds like you know what you're talking about.

Please pardon my lack of knowledge...but when you refer to "major cam failure" caused by the failure of the cam follower, could that include of the camshaft actually being broken clean through? Even possibly directly in front of the timing chain?

(FYI...I already understand that a broken camshaft can result in an engine being totally ruined and needing to be replaced.)

 

MRF:

What I meant by "took the cam with it" should have been worded differently I guess. I should have said it damaged the high pressure fuel pump lobe on the cam. That damage does mean the intake cam needs to be replaced, and the "bits and pieces' of both the worn out follower and cam need to be chased down, it was not a catastophic failure in that the engine did not need to be replaced.

 

As stated your cam lobe will wear down which controlls your High Pressure FP. If you are hauling *** when this pump failure happens, thats when you go clabooie on the engine. A different failure is It could just affect your car running poorly throw a code but by then if you have no warranty you have an expensive cam replacement.

 

We've done maybe a 100 of these so far, and no one has had an engine replaced cause of it.

Intake cam, High pressure pump, and the follower. The follower is updated and has a teflon coating

 

ill be looking into doing mine soon.

if i read that tsb correctly, the dealer wont warranty the work unless the check engine light is on eh?