VW Cabriolet start up problem

look for head gasket leakage. there may not be oil in the water, just gas in the coolant - a chemical test will tell you. or bubbles in the expansion bottle.

I saw smoke coming from engine area and then the car stopped.

We added carburetor cleaner / gas treatment, and checked the engine oil level. Don't see any problem. The car just starts at extremely high RPM idle. We dare not even drive. I wonder if driving it would break the "lock" and go back to normal.

Thanks for the pointer. You meant water in the oil? If that's the case, only the professional can fix it, then! I will let him know.

Just about anything. Pull the codes and tell me what you see.

--scott

on some cars you get coolant in the oil, others oil in the coolant. they're easy to diagnose. the harder ones are where you just get combustion gas in the coolant. if you've had overheating, and the idle control system is freaking out, that could be gasket and bubbles in the coolant. [idle control is heavily dependent on coolant temp. if the computer's temp sensor isn't fully bathed, readings go awry, and idle speed with it.]

but as scott says, check for engine codes too.

Could be omething as simple as a vacuum leak or as serious as a cracked block.....

--scott

Thank you all for more information.

Where to pull the codes? Do you need to drive it to Autozone or a similar store to get the reading?

Thanks,

I'd take it to a real mechanic, if you don't have a scanner. Because the next step is going to be to look at the ECU parameters if there aren't any codes set, and you are going to need a scanner for that (and a better one than the ones the kids at Autozone have).

Without the scanner you basically can do only very limited diagnosis on modern cars, because you can't tell what the engine control system is doing.

With the crappy Autozone-grade scanners you can see if any error codes have been set, but beyond that you can't really see anything. Sometimes that's enough to tell you what is going on, sometimes it's not.

--scott

It's a V.W. Enough said.