wilcopshot

I actually can't leave the car with the battery connected at the moment, so I've been effectively doing this every few hours. I also tried crossing the terminals to discharge capacitors. I'm wondering if it thinks it's mid dpf clean and is stuck in that state? Might be worth me taking it for a long hard drive perhaps? Cheers, Greg

Just realised I never gave you the punchline to this long joke! It was the machatronics unit in the gearbox. An electrical error. I had to send the mech unit away for a professional repair, and it's been driving good as gold since! Takes a bow

Hi there! 2011 Skoda Octavia 1.6 TDI CAYC estate. It was sat for about 6 months. Battery completely dead. Charger wouldn't charge it, so had to jump it. Let it run for a bit to get enough charge for the charger to work. Battery tests at 54% health now, good CCA, good voltage. When the ignition is on, the radiator fan behaves normally. When the ignition is switched off, after about 30 seconds the fan comes on full, and does not switch off. When you then switch the ignition back on, the fan behaves normally again. I've timed it for 17 minutes going after the engine is turned off and key removed. I've disconnected and reconnected the fan. Connectors look clean. Fuse box looks clean. I've tried it with the radio removed due to radio fault codes, no different. If I leave the battery disconnected for a long time (hours), the fan doesn't come on when it's reconnected, until you turn the car on and run it, and then turn it off again. Coolant temperature reads perfect through my scanner and correlates to the dashboard dial (as much as they do in these cars). 4 fault codes. Seemingly unrelated. 01134 [046E00] Alarm horn - No signal/communication 02394 [095A00] Bulb for left front parking light - Open circuit/short circuit to B+ 01304 [051800] Radio - No signal/communication 01044 [041400] Control unit coding error The radio is after market Chinese tat, so that explains the second 2. I'm not sure if the first 2 could be affecting the signals to the fan. I'm a bit stumped on this one. With the fan disconnected I applied 12v to the fan it's self, and it did not spin up, so I feel it's not the fan, but the messages it's receiving. Any ideas anyone? Thanks for your time! Greg

The oil filter!

Howdy fellas! Sorry for my absence. Had bad weather (I was working outside), other commitments, and a bit of a procrastination phase as far as getting the gearbox back in. I got my brother in law and nephew to help me get it lined up. They left me with the last couple of inches to go. I eventually got it all back up and in position, but couldn't for the life of me get that last 1/4" to meet up. After half a day trying I decided to bite the bullet and buy a transmission floor jack and start from scratch. With that, I managed to get it in by my self. It took 6 hours. When it finally effortlessly pinched together I was holding it and I'd left the bolts out of reach. I actually called my mum on the phone (the car owner) to come out and hand me the bolts. There was no way I was letting go at that point. Reassembly from that point was pretty good. Aside from having to put the sub frame on twice because I forgot the steering column rubber seal, the whole car was rebuilt in about 16 hours. That may seem long but I was taking my time and fixing up some stuff as I went (all the steering loom connectors disintegrated in my hands when I took them off). I managed to get the sub frame bolts to line up almost exactly on their previous markings, and the tracking feels good, but I will take it for alignment once I've had a quick go over the adjustable bits, making sure they can still be adjusted and don't need to be replaced. The first drive of the car was good from my perspective, however my mother noticed something, which has developed in to a larger issue. When coming to a stop and gently pulling away, the car is jerky, like the gearbox is fighting the brakes. It jolts when you select Drive or Reverse. At times it even stalls when trying to get in to drive, and then repeats that when selecting drive and reverse until you clear the fault codes. I did a DSG reset, which improved things, but hasn't completely sorted it. I did some scans, clears, drives and scans again. 2 faults seemed to be recurring. P1741 Clutch pressure adaptation: adaptation limit reached; P0716 Input Shaft Speed Sensor-G182: implausible signal; I believe P1741 may have been fixed by me tightening the transmission oil bolt. There was a bit of oil around it so I'm assuming it just needed pinching a little over spec. I only loosened it to make sure I had the right size hex key, and probably didn't pinch it up enough. I changed the oil filter, but haven't gotten round to the oil itself yet. The second one seems to be recurring. I don't know if it had this fault before. I never thought to scan it before starting the flywheel replacement. It could be an old fault that is being made more apparent by having a new flywheel, or I suppose I could have damaged the gearbox at some point, though it never fell or anything. It did roll on to it's side when I first removed it, but it was about as gently as a 100kg chunk of metal can roll. I haven't gotten round to the transmission oil change yet. Judging by the state of the previous filter, it may never have been done, and could help. That P0716 code troubles me though. I'm worried I might be disassembling the mechatronics section next to get at that sensor if this oil change doesn't smooth out the ride. Thanks again for all your help. Here's hoping I'll get this gorilla off my back soon. It really is a lovely car to drive, even with it's currently clunking. Cheers, Greg

I disconnected my brain, but didn't have the service manual 🤣

Yeah that one. I've got it back in by snipping an already damaged section. It was a bit bent out of shape from the initial levering. I'm guessing it's just for space and maybe acoustics?

Found it. Snugly back in place. How important is the aluminium gasket between the engine and the gearbox? I forgot to put it back in place before putting the new flywheel on. The old one got a bit bent out of shape anyway, so I got it back on by snipping one of the thin bits. If it's very important to be intact I'm gonna have to order a new one, and more flywheel bolts so I can re-do the flywheel with it in place.

Mildly terrifying, but actually went pretty smooth with my planned method. Got the Mrs to slowly unscrew the chain on the engine hanger while I was underneath (to one side) with a lever gently nudging it in the right directions, with a jack to help in places and hold it up while I adjusted the chain and reset the thread for more distance. Flywheel replacement tomorrow! Not sure how to approach getting it back in just yet. Might have to marry someone stronger.

I only managed to get back under the car today. And only for an hour or so, but it was productive. After some more levering I decided there was definitely something I had not undone. I got an 8mm hex and took off the surround sheet of metal above the flange (picture 1). I hadn't tried it yet as it appeared to only be attached to the transfer box. Once off it revealed a super secret bracket. 2x 16mm bolts (pic 2) later and the gearbox is swinging with ease, ready to drop. Then the alarm went off to get the kid from school and my time had run out. I'll get that gearbox dropped at the weekend and start on the actual flywheel. Then I'll try and remember how it all goes back together. I'll watch some videos on alignment before I do the final tighten on the sub frame bolts, and see if I can get ahead of any alignment issues. I'll also look in to those prop shaft couplers while I'm at it. Is there anything else that is worth looking over while I'm £1k of labour deep on this thing?

Yeah I hadn't heard of those locating pins either. Is that something that standard wheel alignment can fix? Or is this taking the alignment beyond the scope of the adjustment bolts? Yeah right now I'm just worrying more about getting this flywheel replaced and the car back together. Very daunting job!

Oh ok. So just to clarify the removal of the flange was just to get to that 1 bolt. So this gearbox should come out now if I give it a bit of levering, twisting and more than gentle persuasion? I've currently got it hanging from the engine suspension bar with a long chain wrapped around, but I think this is actually working against me as I think the whole thing might have to twist slightly to clear that flange from the engine block enough to get the distance I need towards passenger side. I'm doing this all on axel stands, so I can get a couple of jacks up to it as well for safety, provided there is still room for me underneath!

Haha. I think I'm gonna cry! The previous biggest job I did on a car was replacing the sub frame in my SMAX so this was quite a big step up. There is no time constraint though, and I'm up for investing in necessary tools. I do want to learn cars more thoroughly. This job is tricky though, as I've found pretty much no media on the steps, so I'm making it up with reference to the none 4x4 videos, and 1 single, relatively poor walk through of a manual 4x4 gearbox removal, so not a great amount to go on. If you know of any sources, they would be a huge help. Sub frame is removed with both axels and control arms. The other side facing bolt (the one nestled right under the transfer box) is removed. I did cut the bolt in the above pictures (1 hour with a hack saw!). I've got about 1cm of separation so I know I'm close. So far the DPF hasn't been in the way, but with the next steps you say I need, it will probably have to come out. Do you know where I can buy those 450mm hex keys? I can't find anything quite long enough from my usual sites. Will it likely be the same size as the flange on the other side of the gearbox? I can reach that one to find the size. Thanks for your help! This is a pretty steep learning curve.

So I think I found the bolt. I'd just bought a flexible head ratchet spanner set, so I thought I had just the tool for the job. It started undoing fairly easily but was longer than I had expected. I then realised I'd backed my self in to a corner, in that I cant get the spanner off, and I cant reverse the ratchet as it's only one way and I seem to have undone it as far as the space allows. I thought to remove the flange to get more room. The whole in the middle though is over 30cm and seems to go right through to the gearbox. I don't own anything remotely long enough to get down there, if that's even how you get the flange off. I've got some pictures. Any further advice? I think my next step would be to try and cut the bolt if the flange isn't easily removed. I suspect I've damaged the thread anyway.

Great. Thanks for that. I'll crawl under tomorrow when the light is back and see what I can find.