('98-'00) Passat For Sale with Issues - Need Advice

[redfarmer84]

Hey guys....I've came across a VW Passat with the 1.8 Turbo in it. Not sure of the year but it is between 1998 and 2000. The car is a stick shift and has 130,000 miles. It belongs to a friends neighbor and the friend has a bankruptcy auction service she runs at her farm. She agreed to auction it off for the neighbor and someone bidded $1,500 on it and the guy wouldn't take that so the deal was off. Today she had an auction and she just offered it to the crowd for $1,000 cash (he came down this time) and noone wanted it. It was sitting there without a battery and it has been sitting at her barn for several months now. She did tell everyone that it was having trouble overheating.

After the auction was well over I decided to ride over there with a hot battery and check it out. Found out it only has 130k miles (seems fair to me for today's cars). Went to start it up and it would just turn about 1/4 rotation and stop. Did this 3 times so we almost gave up on trying to start it. I let it sit there with the key on for about 30 seconds and tried it.....it started turning over just fine then.....kind of like it had been sitting for so long it just needed to get some juice to it.

I had to crank and crank on it and hit the gas pedal but she finally started right up. Ran really smooth, powerful and good. Since we knew it had overheating problems, I had already filled it with water....and then began checking for leaks.....none that I could see.

That is when we noticed that it was smoking out of the exhaust heavily with white smoke. I shut the car off and checked the oil. Oil was a LITTLE BIT milky.....but that could be from condensation from sitting for so long. It wasn't that bad.

I decided to start it back up and it started great and as it should this time around. I went to take it for a test drive to see if it overheated. I drove the car heavily for about 3 miles (didn't get above 55 mph). The manual tranny shifted great and the car had tons of "get up" and power. That turbo sure is nice. Temperature rode in the middle at 190 for the whole 3 miles. I turned around and headed back and went about 2 miles when it started to climb hotter and it didn't take very long at all for it to peg the temperature gauge out. I ended up driving it back pegged out for about 1 mile.

I should also mention that the car never showed ANY smoke while driving it. It only did that for about 30 - 45 seconds after starting it up the first time.


WHAT DO YOU ALL THINK IS WRONG WITH IT????

HEAD GASKET ?

WATER PUMP ?

CRACKED HEAD ?


IS IT WORTH ME GETTING AND TRYING TO FIX MYSELF ?

[ps2375]

I'd start with timing belt, tensioner and water pump. You might also want to do a compression check just to see if the HG is leaking from that side. The water pumps on those are known for having plastic impellors on the pumps, some last and others don't.

[redfarmer84]

[redfarmer84]

I read where someone posted that the water pump with plastic impeller MIGHT be on the recall list for these cars. Is that so? If that is what this car has, maybe I could buy it and get a "free" fix on the water pump. ???

[ps2375]