93 Passat Dies after it warms up

[markistaken]

I have a 93 passat that dies after it warms up. When it is cold it starts almost everytime, but after driving about 10 minutes the car will die on me. After that I can sit around and wait and sometimes it starts back up and sometimes not. The car dies while just idling and while I am driving down the freeway. I checked for spark and had none after it died and am pretty confused. I have replaced spark plugs, distributor cap, rotor, and fuel pump relay. Any thoughts....please help.

[Denny G]

Originally Posted by markistaken

I have a 93 passat that dies after it warms up. When it is cold it starts almost everytime, but after driving about 10 minutes the car will die on me. After that I can sit around and wait and sometimes it starts back up and sometimes not. The car dies while just idling and while I am driving down the freeway. I checked for spark and had none after it died and am pretty confused. I have replaced spark plugs, distributor cap, rotor, and fuel pump relay. Any thoughts....please help.

If there is no spark I wonder about the ignition switch or tumbler. This is just about what our 1990 did. It turned to be both the switch and the tumbler. I was able to troubleshoot this myself with the Bentley manual and a meter. It takes some digging into the schematics, though. I think what I did was to look for missing voltage when the problem occurred. I can't remember exactly, but I think a relay needs voltage before the ignition can operate. No voltage, ro relay action, no spark. I hope this turns out to be helpful.

Denny G

[FCTMQRH]

I have what sounds like the exact same problem with my 1994 / 1995 Passat GL 2.0L Auto Estate.

Mine would seem a consistently reproducable problem.... one which is basically described by saying that as soon as the car reaches its running temperature (approx 90C - 94C) - which occurs after, say, 10 minutes of driving - the engine completely cuts out (in the process of which the rev counter seems to go nuts for about 1 second) and the ignition lights come on; all whilst I gently coast to a, usually totally inconvenient, stopping place on the side of the road.

After a few minutes of trying to start the engine (courtesy of a good starter & battery) the car will sometimes start.
But sometimes it does not start and in which instance it would seem that allowing it to cool down (to about 80C) then allows it to start once again.

Nb. The car will always start and run fine from cold... for about 10 minutes... before it quits.

I took it to lads at my local garage and they seem to have come up blank... albeit in the process of their diagnostics they've replaced most of the high voltage electrical bits (and I still got the problem), as well as the thermostat (and I still got the problem!)... and charged me £250 for my trouble.

So I called VW dealership and their suggestion is that it might be a faulty 'Temperature Sender' so I'm going to get that replaced in next day or so and will report back.

At this rate, and probably sooner than later, I'm gonna end up with an almost new car - cool huh !

[veedubmechanic]

Very common problem if its a vr6 model is the crank position sensor and cam position sensor failures for this.

[FCTMQRH]

At last... it's fixed !

All it took was a change of the distributor unit (which cost me £25 from a breakers yard) and it took the boys in the garage only a few minutes to fit.

Apparently there's some sort of electrical thingee inside the distributor which was breaking down when it / the engine got hot... and obviously it's a real bugger to diagnose, but at least we did eventually track down what the problem was (albeit with me spending a small fortune in the process).

I can further report that since changing the distributor unit (that's the whole distributor unit I hasten to add) I have driven over 500 miles and the car as been as good as gold with not even so much as a blip... QED... & so I'm well chuffed about it!

[lithuanian2]

if u need anything i have 1994 vr6 5 speed not starting valves bended