Hey Scotty and the community! I live in Europe and have a 2004 Volkswagen Golf 2.0 FSI with a manual transmission and 145k miles. It's been a while (about 12k miles) that the fuel system seems to be working kind of awkward. When I start the car and the engine is cold, it smells quite a lot like gasoline, when it's warm not so much and I have the feeling that this didn't use to be the case earlier, since I've had it for 4 years and 70k miles now. When the car idles, it oftentimes shakes a bit and the consuption goes form standard 0.6 liter per hour up to 1.1 liter per hour. When I drive, it can also shake a bit sometimes, but pretty rare, it's more when it idles or goes very slow. It happened twice that the car even shut off because of that (like when you don't release the clutch properly), but this hasn't happened since about 10k miles. The check-engine light sometimes pops up and stays for a few days, then goes off again and then again. It's been quite a while now. This 2.0 FSI is direct injected, non-turbocharged. The day before yesterday it cranked a bit before it started, but yesterday and today it was totally normal. Should I be worried or can I just drive? What could it be?
Okay. You mentioned you smell gasoline. Sometimes when you start it. Open the hood. See if you smell the gasoline under the hood, or if you will only smell it if you put your nose by the tailpipe where the gas is coming out. . If it's coming only out of the exhaust then it's running to Rich. Knowing Volkswagens, it's probably coming out of the tailpipe and if so it could be the fuel injector or injectors are starting to wear out. Those gdis taking awful lot of pressure. But if it's under the hood often, it's the high pressure pump
