My non car-mechanic buddy called me the other night, very unhappy with his 55K mile 2006 JCW. His car is extremely well maintained by the local dealer, and he does several road course events with me each year, so I know his car pretty well. He said he was driving home from work the other day and his car suddenly went into limp mode, at least he thinks it was in limp mode, he got a light on the dash and it had no power. He also noticed that the temp gauge was pegged! Uh-oh....I have a bad feeling about this. He pulled over and shut it off... He plugged his Garmin dongle in, restarted it and got the gauges up, that's when he noticed he also had no alternator output and when he turned on the a/c the battery voltage went to about 12. The temp gauge now read normal, and the Garmin confimed his temp was about 210. He didn't see anything particularly wrong, although he had been smelling coolant and seeing a couple drips on the garage floor the last couple of months. He had a newish serpentine belt and it was still on and seemed fine, all the pulleys were turning as it idled. It still had no power, and would hardly rev above idle. He managed to get it home and called the dealer who thought he might have a bad alternator or battery, or both. So all you techies, what do you think was wrong?
Crank pulley, -mine went at 65k- check out the ATI Super damper- ATI seems to be popular. I have had no problems with mine!
Wow, you guys are good, that was it! It all made sense in retrospect.... All the symptoms pointed to the serpentine drive once you thought about it.... No power - supercharger not turning Overheating - water pump driven by the supercharger No A/C No alternator output He also had a leaking thermostat housing - again! The dealer replaced it a couple of years ago when it was still under warranty with the new and improved version. Looks like it didn't hold.
Yup. :idea: I drove a busted crank pulley home from the track. It was fine as long as I kept the AC off and the boost in the vacuum range, i.e. no load on the 'charger. Sometimes the issue is the gasket, not the housing. I just replaced the thermostat and gasket on my car, and it's a tricky bugger. The torque spec is really low, too, like 12 N-m. I lubed up both sides of the gasket with a little bit of Sil-Glyde to make sure it didn't bind when I tightened everything up.