Dew to the severe wear of “bank1” and “bank2” swirl flap manifolds found in 2.7TDI & 3.0TDI engines, control units detect malfunction accompanied with dashboard error. As a result your vehicle does not function up to the OEM parameters. Among most common side effects are: higher consumption and CO2 levels, uneven idle RPMs, impaired acceleration and de-acceleration, Cruise Control struggles to maintain speed, harder gear changes by Tiptronic (Automatic Transmission) etc.

Every intake manifold with swirl flap mechanism (2.7TDI & 3.0TDI) has been built from the following components: housing, servo motor, pulling rod, shaft with 3x valves and 6x shaft bearings. Most worn out parts after moderate use of 80 000miles are the pulling rod and shaft bearings. Severe wear occurs due to the excess temperature of the exhaust gasses which reenter into the intake manifold through EGR (Exhaust_Gas_Recirculation) valve, resulting in abnormal carbon buildup around individual components of the swirl flaps. Accumulated in the small gaps around the shaft and its bearings, the carbon buildup acts as a file/sandpaper resulting in inability of the servo motor to control the pulling rod as programmed from the factory.

Important
If you are interested in more detailed information about the technical operation of the swirl flap mechanism, please use this link.

No doubt this is the best alternative but unfortunately the most expensive. Due to the fact that dealers sell the manifold as a whole price quotes are steep. As a separate spare part, only the connection rod is available, however this is only a Band-Aid which will not cure the source of the problem which is the excess play of the shaft, because of the worn out shaft bearings.

Cheapest possibility, which we do not recommend due to the fact it is not even a Band-Aid. By eliminating the signal and malfunction error recognition your ECU will not be able to read the data supposed to alert about components which cannot fulfill manufacturer suggested specifications. Sooner or later such kind of manipulation will severely wear out other components and suddenly the cheapest alternative could become the most expensive one. Be cautious about such tempting opportunities.