3.0t TDI AdBlue Heater Failure ~ P205B Check Engine Light

Pouring diesel exhaust fluid seems fake.

Kind of like blinker fluid.

Oh wait.

Diesel exhaust fluid always seems like it's fake, kind of like blinker fluid.

What's going on everybody, Charles, in this video we are going to be fixing the check engine light.

On my TDI Touareg.

Now, I know when I said the car has a check engine light on, your brain exploded because that never happens.

However, it's real life and we do have some things we got to fix.

The code that popped up on the Touareg is a P205B00, Reductant Tank Temperature Sensor A Circuit Range Performance.

This is a pretty common failure on the Volkswagen and Audi TDIs that run diesel exhaust fluid or urea or AdBlue injection.

In fact, there is a technical service bulletin about this exact fault and how to make the repair.

The repair ends up just being the whole entire unit because there's really not anything available separately that you can service.

An important note on our diesel exhaust fluid or BlueDEF as Peak calls it, I'm going to call it AdBlue.

Because that's the language that Volkswagen and Audi use.

And big thanks to Peak for partnering with us on this video.

Since we're working on the exhaust fluid system, we're going to need to drain and refill it.

And to do that, we're going to be using Peak BlueDEF diesel exhaust fluid.

Which basically means my Touareg is the same exact thing.

As John Force's drag car.

Not really, but a boy can dream.

Now the good thing is, on a lot of these TDIs, they're still actually covered under warranty.

Because, well, we all remember the unpleasantness that went down a number of years ago.

However, I'm about 10,000 miles past warranty, so I'm on the hook to fix it.

And you're probably also thinking, hey Charles, why don't you just delete that super incredible emission system on your Touareg?

That, my friends, is a wonderful question, and I'm not trying to get in trouble with the EPA.

So instead of deleting it, I'm going to fix it.

I'm going to start by getting the spare tire out of our way.

That's going to make filling up our AdBlue at the end a little bit easier.

This is also a good place where if you want to pump that tank dry, do it this way.

It is easier when the tank is dry.

Also something worth noting, um, based on the labor time for what would be a customer pay job.

It looks like it's probably about a three-hour job, give or take anyway.

I'm going to be doing this up on the lift.

Now if you don't want to lift the car all the way up, this can be done probably on the ground.

Or really what would be better like the back end up on ramps.

We're going to be dropping the exhaust down and out of the way.

Which might be tricky with the car completely on the ground, but you don't need to have it up all the way.

We're going to put it up all the way.

All right, first thing we're going to do is we're going to take our exhaust down.

And that starts with a clamp right about here.

Right in the middle of where our gas tank saddles are.

Here's the clamp that we need to remove to get our back end of our exhaust off.

Now before you loosen this clamp, it's not a bad idea to mark where it is.

So you make sure you get your exhaust alignment back where it came from.

So we'll just do some Sharpie marks.

On either side.

Hit it with a little luby lube.

Charles, there's not even any rust on that.

I know.

It's a pretty new clamp.

Now I loosen that by hand for a reason.

Up, I don't know, about a foot from this clamp.

There is a sensor.

If you start going to town with an impact or like hammering this clamp to get it on and off.

I've actually seen that damage the sensor.

Make sure you're not banging on this stuff too much and damaging the sensor.

Luckily, this one's pretty new, so we can just slide our clamp like that.

I also have it supported here so that the back end of the exhaust doesn't completely drop out.

Now if you don't support the exhaust, it really only hangs down a little bit.

But if you can support it, go ahead and support it.

Go.

Next up, we need to get the back side of the exhaust undone.

There is a bracket on the left rear and the right rear just in front of where the tips are.

Also, we have it supported with this transmission jack so the whole thing doesn't come crashing down on us.

Now that we're exhaust is undonulated, let's go ahead and lower this guy down.

There should be no connectors of any kind or anything here.

I'm going to get my pull jacky thing out of the way.

And we're just going to lower this down.

Just like that.

How, how fun is this?

I just got this transmission jack and I'm excited to use it.

We needed it so that when we manual swap the S4, we can manual swap the S4.

I don't know if you need a friend for this exhaust.

I don't remember how heavy it is.

Oh, it's super light.

Next up, we need to get this heat shield down and out of the way.

There's eight 10 millimeter the speed nut guys that you need to remove.

Oh, let's put our safety glasses on.

Usually you got to got to wiggle this guy out of here.

Just be careful and don't bend it up.

Now before you go pulling the AdBlue tank out, which is this unit right here.

If you have a 2009 or 2010, technically you're supposed to undo the brackets for the rear anti-sway bar.

This is a 2015, so officially we don't have to mess with it.

On the driver's side, right above where we had that heat shield, we have a bank of connectors.

And our exhaust fluid line.

This is a place where you want to do a quick check and make sure you don't have any wiring sadness.

So go ahead and get these two big boy connectors undone.

And then you want to take a look inside of here and look for any loose pins or really any corrosion.

This was an issue on some of the earlier diesels.

In fact, I think there used to be a TSB about it, but I couldn't find it.

You also want to look inside of these connectors as well.

Where the male side pins are, be sure there's no fuzzy green stuff or anything like that.

We need to get this little guy up here.

Disconnected.

Next, we need to do our injection line and get this unplugged.

You see this little whitish connector here.

You basically want to squeeze the two bits together.

And that should undo your line.

Like that.

Once you get that undone, inside of your repair kit, you have a couple of plugs.

You want to plug this stuff off so no yuck gets in there.

The smaller, long one goes on the line at the car.

And then the clear plastic tabulet goes inside.

Oh, right here.

But don't drip it on yourself like I just did.

I didn't taste it.

Eli asked if it tasted like urine, since that's kind of what it's made from.

Urea.

I don't make a habit of tasting gross things.

Now, just double check, make sure that you're undone.

This gives you a good opportunity to peek inside of there.

Eli just asked what the heck GFS is.

And that is a technical manufacturer term.

For green fuzzy stuff.

Next, we got to get our tank with this cover out of the way.

There's five bolts on the outskirts of this big black cover right here that you need to take out.

There's also four right in the center, these four 10 millimeter nuts hold the tank to this cover.

You want to leave those in.

Only take the exterior ones out.

Three across the back, then right where the cover kind of swoops in towards the front.

There's two nuts back here, one on the left and one on the right.

Now if your tank was full, this is going to be heavy.

It holds about five gallons, I think.

I'm supporting it with the trans jack.

So that hopefully we don't make a big mess.

Eli asked why I didn't drain it.

It's because I didn't.

Also, if you have a nine or a 10 model year nine or 10, you do need to drop this down a little bit in order to get to the connectors.

And apparently there's a couple of different variations of how this is bolted on.

So just be mindful of that.

Basically, take the outer bolts or nuts out, not the middle ones.

We're going to bump it down.

Then we're going to come back towards the back.

And kind of swoop it out.

Just be real careful.

There we go.

There we go.

So you do have to kind of drop the back side down a little bit and work your way around the sway bar.

You want to be extra careful of all this stuff.

Looks like my module wasn't clipped into place.

I was getting hung on the fill spout here.

All right, here we go.

This is our module and the part we're replacing actually lives inside of the tank underneath this.

All this white crusty stuff is urea, it's from spillage or whatever overflow.

It's not a bad idea to clean all this crusty off.

If you get it somewhere that's undesirable, rinsing it with water usually takes care of it, no problem.

Now there's a lot going on on top of this tank.

But we really don't need to worry about most of it.

If you feel more comfortable marking where things go, I would go ahead and do that.

Not a bad idea to grab a picture just in case you need it.

But let's go ahead and start unplugging our stuff.

Because we got to get our module out of the way.

If you don't take a picture, it's not a big deal, you just want to pay attention to where everything is routed and everything lives.

Because it kind of needs to go back where it came from.

Disconnect our module.

That out of the way.

If you feel better vacuuming all this crusty stuff up, it's probably a good idea.

In fact, I think I'm going to do exactly that.

Okay.

Now I'm going to go ahead and take the module off.

You also, in addition to paying attention to where everything's located, you want to pay attention to how things are clocked.

Because it really does need to go back a certain way.

Three, four millimeter bolts hold on the module on top.

These also aren't super common to fail, but they have been known to fail from time to time.

Not probably worth doing at the same time if you don't have a failure pointing to it.

Probably a few hundred dollars that you don't necessarily need to spend.

Take your module out.

Then I usually just leave it attached and just roll it out of the way.

There is a couple of seals that we're going to look at replacing eventually, but for now, we'll leave that there.

All right, so we'll get some of this other nonsense out of the way.

That leaves our module.

We do have one connector right here that is still attached to our tank.

We need to loosen or unfasten.

I guess it's more accurate.

There's a clip at the front side that you need to push.

And then you can slide the connector that way.

You can see here's the clip, if you just pry this clip back just a little bit.

You'll be able to slide this connector that way.

We need to get this line off here.

This piece is in our kit, so we're going to replace that.

When we go back together.

Next, we need to get this plastic ring off.

If you don't have the tool to take this plastic ring off, you can just take a hammer and screwdriver and tap it around loose.

But I just got this tool, so we're going to see if it works.

Loosen that.

Sometimes that dry urea gets all yucked up in there.

It might be stuck a little bit.

That worked pretty good.

Happy about that.

We have a new ring.

So we don't need that.

Let's go ahead and get this cleaned up again.

Now, it's not a big deal if a little of those crunchy crystals get in there.

But do your best to not have that even be an issue.

Now we can go ahead and take that unit out.

Be real careful, you don't want to pry against it and doink up your tank.

We're replacing this, so nobody cares about that.

If you don't want to mess the tank up.

Now, once you get the lid up, you need to reach your hand in, I definitely like wearing gloves here.

And rotate the lower portion counterclockwise.

There's a small tab down at the bottom that holds it in place.

This is another reason why it's important to pay attention to the orientation of all these things.

So you don't have to struggle with it for an hour trying to get locked in.

When you pull the unit up, let any extra exhaust fluid drain out.

Sometimes when you look inside of here, you can see some corruption.

But normally, you don't see anything wrong with it.

Looks fine, looks pretty much exactly the same as the brand new one does.

So go ahead and get your old unit out of the way.

Get your seal, look at this big old seal.

Out of the way.

Go ahead and clean this surface.

If your tank is full, it's going to be a lot more of a pain in the butt than when it's mostly empty.

I usually look down in there too and make sure there's nothing scandalous down there.

Did he just say scandalous and TDI in the same sentence?

All right, that's pretty much it on the removal side.

Now we got to go back together.

We have our brand new seal, which drops in.

This is a lot like working with a fuel tank, by the way.

I usually take a swig of dielectric.

Just lubricate that seal a little bit.

Now we got to put our new unit back in.

You see these nobules right here, that's what clips into that ring down at the bottom.

So we need to make sure we're semi-oriented right.

If you don't remember which way this went in any capacity.

There are four notches at the bottom, which correspond to four notches inside the tank.

If you stick your head just down.

If this were our clock, you can see there's one at 12, one at about two.

What is that, maybe 5:00 and about, I don't know, 8:00.

The one at 12 and the one at two are real close together.

Once you put it in the tank, you really can't see.

But you'll feel it like distinctly drop down.

And then hear it lock into place.

For orientation of the lid portion, there is an arrow right here on the lid.

And then there's two notches on the tank itself.

We want to be lined up like that.

So not this notch, this is for when you install it, this is where we want to be when we hit our final resting place for our unit we just replaced.

Then we can go ahead and get our new ring.

Make sure this actually goes on straight.

I've had these sometimes not want to go on right.

And it's usually on cars with like super high miles.

Sometimes these get sideways on you.

And then it seems like it's tight, but it's not actually tight.

Also a good idea to clean these threads out too on the tank itself.

That, if you're struggling, that can help.

That might be.

That Eli might have had it down.

So officially, this is supposed to be torqued to 80 Newton meters.

Like with the factory tool.

That seems way too tight for me.

So I'm just going to snug it.

Like that.

Okay, we have our lid here.

Now we need to get our module put back on.

But there are seals that go in the top of the unit we just replaced.

We have new seals and screws in our kit here.

Put our little guy in.

That one goes there.

Now it actually looks like our big boy is already in there.

So we may not need to even mess with that.

Yeah, we'll just leave that, so this is the seal that would go normally right here.

But we don't want to double gasket it.

So we'll just leave it off.

Make sure these are clean.

No crusties.

And then go ahead and get it installed.

Just like that.

Put your new three new screws in.

We'll go ahead and snug our bolts down.

I like to hold the module down while I tighten these, that way you don't run the risk of getting it like twisted to the side and have those seals leak.

I mean, as you see, it's not horrible to take this back out.

But I'd hate to have to take it back out.

Also in our kit is this new little breather plug thing.

So, pop that guy off, the old one.

Put the new one on.

And snap it in.

Then what we're going to do is we're just going to go back.

Connect all the connectors that we unconnected to make the connections for connecting.

Let's see, this is where if you took a picture, you could follow your picture.

If you didn't, well, you can't.

There's also these zip tie clips that actually clip on to the ribs of the retainer that we have.

On these connectors with the gray piece, make sure that you not only click the connector in, but push that gray tab in.

That's a connector lock.

Get this one on.

Then make sure you cut the zip tie at a very sharp angle.

To make sure that the next guy that goes in there gets his arm sliced open.

Little baby scar right there from someone doing that.

Thanks, Rootan.

Okay, that's it, we're all snugabugged down.

Everybody's connected.

Make sure that all your connectors are connected if I didn't already say that.

Now it's time to put it back in.

Next, we're going to go back, this feels heavier.

To our little stand.

Like that.

Time to go up.

Oh, my jack's rolling.

I'm going to get another a better leg workout on my right leg.

Check it out when we go to stage two, we go real fast.

When you're going up with the tank, you need to be extra careful of the alignment of the spout to the body of the car.

If you just slam this thing up here, you're going to break it.

So you need to get the cover over the sway bar first.

So you want to make sure you're lined up left to right.

Which is pretty easy.

And then you got to kind of work it up and in.

There we go.

There we go.

Okay, once you have it mostly lined up.

Go ahead and give it that final little bit of pumpage.

Then we can go ahead and bolt it back up.

If you're using nuts on studs.

Can you say bolted back up?

Now we're going to go ahead and get our stuff all plugged back in.

Make sure you take this pluggy out of the line.

We were also supposed to plug up those lines at the module, but we didn't really take them off.

So no need to do that.

When you connect the injection line, give it a little tug.

Make sure it's plugged in.

Make sure everything's in its retainer, like this line in retainer, this connector in retainer, and these two bigger boys in retainer.

Two.

Get in there.

Next up, we are going to put our heat shield in.

Because that's what's next.

Sometimes these are a pain in the butt to line back up.

Not going to lie.

Oof.

I swear this is lighter than the Mark VIII exhaust.

All about that Touareg weight reduction, bruh.

Get our 13s back in.

Where's in general, I like to start all four bolts first.

So we can make sure our exhaust tips are lined up.

I'm sure they're off by like millimeters.

And that's okay.

Then we got to get our back clamp on.

Slide our clamp over, we'll follow our marks that we made.

Probably a bit overcautious, really, but man.

I just don't want to have to replace a sensor.

You can make the impact gun noise if you want.

Or the torque wrench noise.

Click, buzz, vibrate.

Ta-da.

Now your first thought might be, let's fill this thing back up.

And we're going to fill it up at some point, but before we do that.

We need to jump into the scan tool just in case we need to come back down.

Pretty unlikely, but I always like to play it safe.

I will go ahead and put the cap back on.

Because this stuff stinks.

Next up, we got to jump in our scan tool and take care of the fault that we had.

We can go into either control module or auto scan.

We're really only worried about the ECM here.

We'll go into engine.

We'll go into fault codes.

And you can see here was the fault that prompted this replacement, Reductant Tank Temperature Sensor P205 Bravo 00 Implausible Signal.

So if you haven't saved your code, go ahead and save it.

Then we'll clear it out.

Done, go back.

Now, in most cases, that's all you need to do.

However, there's some faults that require an AdBlue system reset.

Unfortunately, I can't screen record the tech bulletin, there's some pretty strict legal nonsense at the bottom of it from Volkswagen.

But I will link it up for you where you can check it out on how to do all those resets.

The short of it is, you go into basic settings.

You can see there's a ton of basic settings in our engine.

This is also where you would do if you needed a particulate regen or anything like that.

What you're going to be looking for is the basic settings or reset of anything SCR.

So if you have an SCR light or an AdBlue light or check engine light that won't go away.

This one right here would be the one that you would want to do.

You have a ton of stuff.

You can see here, this is the one you need to be careful of.

This is the reset learned values after you replace the SCR catalytic converter.

This requires you sitting in the car for about 30 minutes, foot on gas, foot on brake.

If you've run the fluid down to a level where it won't start.

Or you had an issue with the tank level detection.

You can reset the SCR lockout right here.

The SCR lockout, you'll get a ton of warnings for it and then all of a sudden after a certain mileage, you won't be able to start your car.

Even after clearing this fault code though, it's not a bad idea to take it on a test drive.

Make sure that you don't have any other issues.

Once you've cleared your fault and done any of those basic settings, you really want to follow the tech bulletins.

Based on the codes you have for the AdBlue system.

And again, I'll link all that up for you so you can go and check out each individual one based on the code that you have.

Go ahead and key cycle the car, recheck the faults.

And then double check the system.

As you can see, we have no fault codes.

So we should be good to go.

And if you're wondering about OBD11, all that stuff should be in there as well.

Now that we're done with the scan tool, we need to fill our tank up.

Now our peak bottle comes with this little accordion guy.

Uh, so that you don't glurble it all over your car, which is nice.

I still like to use a funnel because, well, not this funnel so much.

Because luckily, this little glurbler, anti-glurbler has a double anti-glurbler on it.

So you don't glurble all over the place.

So Eli just asked if there's a way to know you're putting too much in.

That is very easy because then it makes a giant mess.

What I'll do is I'll just take a flashlight, just shine it down there.

Normally, I also wait to top off my exhaust fluid until the warning light's on.

So usually it takes a bunch for me.

Also not a bad idea while you're here before you get too wild and crazy with your urea fill up.

Make sure you don't have any leaks.

Let's get our spare tire on in.

It's kind of cool.

Of course, what they don't account for.

Is what do you do with the tire that's flat?

Also, I think these wheels would look dope on a golf.

All right, we are done.

All right, that's it.

Pretty easy and straightforward job on replacing that whole unit.

There are some other faults that are also related to that unit failure.

Like I mentioned earlier, I will put links to those technical service bulletins down in the description.

Because I can't screen show them because it says right on the bottom not to do that.

But I can link them up.

And remember for a lot of you guys that are under 120,000 miles, that's probably covered under warranty.

So before you pay for it yourself, make sure you're out of the warranty.

I'm at 130, so I'm out of the warranty.

Big thanks to Peak for partnering with us on this video.

With that, I am out.

Have an awesome day.

And I'll talk to you again next time.

Bye.

Eli, let me out.

I'm stuck.