poiuytre111

So one of the dual circuits is not getting any brake pressure - tends to suggest that the master cyl is duff. Given the risk that the bore is scored I might be tempted to start with a different master cyl (a number 2nd hand on ebay sub £10) before fitting new seals from about £10 ... or ideally buy a new master cylinder though your reference to a repair kit suggests that was not the plan. ECP want £52 for a new pagid (bare) master cylinder

Interested to hear how they compared in daily driving i.e. did the smallest turbo come on boost earlier giving improved response say between 1500 - 2000 rpm ? I do a lot of miles in this rev range.

If it has been run on bio there may be residual muck in the fuel system as has been suggested and times of high flow may mean this starts to cause an impediment. Even the fuel injector pump can be effected - there are phots on the web. Short of a strip down I can only suggest use of a diesel cleaning agent run through the tank.

I changed mine yesterday (sdi) and even when faulty I didn't get any cutting out but it can effect the engine. Basically the ecu is told the engine is cold and compensates with additional fuel pressure. In my case, this just meant an odd hot-start behaviour and high idle speed but even this was only occasional - all gone since new sensor. For your symptoms I would think it is caused by something else though it cant hurt to fix the temp sensor and it isn't hard to do.

Key point here is that a flashing glow plug light is a fairly non-specific warning about something being wrong - it is certainly not just about the glow plugs. Need to use vcds or your equivalent and look for error codes.

The basic engine can do over 300k miles if regularly maintained with the correct oil. Some ancillaries may become unreliable before this stage - drive shafts go and some feel the turbo will need changing before this. My local taxi firm ran tdi passats with a very similar engine and used to sell them after about 300k "before they get unreliable".

If you are swapping from a 1.2 you might want to consider a non-vrs diesel, the 1.9 tdi. Depending on your insurance situation its 100bhp might be all you need and they can be had for a lower price of course.

There is a combined boost pressure sensor / charge temp sensor device plumbed into the side mounted intercooler trunking towards the front of the driver's side inside wing. Might be worth checking the wiring and ideally substitute with a known good of the same type. It just "plugs" into the boost piping and also of course the wiring loom. I changed mine before realising the wires were broken just before the plug - duh !

Only if you were drawing a lot of current, otherwise the readings would be the same.

Thanks for that - temp guage is a bit iffy so I will take a new sender with me when I get the belt done - excellent !

My 2001 SDI (97k) is running very well generally - my usage pattern tends to be whole days starting with a longish run then gaps of an hour or two so parked up - the car is more or less running warm all day. I have noticed lately that (when warm) it sometimes returns to a higher idle speed of about 1100 rpm c.f. the normal 900 rpm. Also when warm starting, I occasionally find it starts with a succession of short bursts of higher revs - as If I was trying to wind someone up at the traffic lights by blipping the accelerator. Again this will continue for a few mins if I re-start but then go away. Car is due for a new cambelt next week so if there anything I should ask the specialist to look at - egr or crank breather perhaps ? Otherwise I am tempted to put some injector cleaner in the next tank to run through the injection pump.

It sounds like clutch drag which can either be due to the hyraulics not fully releasing or can be due to warping of the flywheel. Having once changed a clutch only to find the dragging symptom not going away because I hadn't checked and fixed the flywheel with a skim, I sympathise.

When I thought I had this problem (on an Alfasud in 197x) I drilled a 1mm hole in the plastic fuel filler cap and had no more trouble. A colleague told me of a drive he did from Calais to Frejus when he found his fuel tank seemed to hold less and less fuel on each fill up - it was - his pump was collapsing the tank (Triumph Dolomite !).

Never having changed the pump myself - this may be a dumb question but are the hydraulic connections to the pump correct or might they have been crossed/reversed when the bump was repaired ? I have driven a fair distance with the main fuse removed to be sure the pump wasn't being put under undue stress when I knew I had a dodgy angle sensor - might be interesting to try driving like this to see if the rack feels uniform in its action to left and to right. Need strong biceps at parking speeds though.

I would suggest that at that price you will get a generic map which will suit an unaltered car - comparable to the sort of thing you can buy from blacksmoke.co.uk for £45, provided you are happy to upload it to the ecu yourself of course. At a higher price you would expect dyno runs before/after and a map optimised for your car and your preferences.

Passenger side wheel bearing ?

The original radio supplies power down the aerial lead to an active aerial. If you have one of the power feeds missing, this may explain why power is not getting to the aerial making your radio "deaf". When fitting an alternative radio, people buy an adapter that intercepts the aerial cable after the radio to provide the power that a skoda radio would normally feed. A diy adapter of this sort could be very simple.

What made it crystal clear for me in a similar situation was to leave a voltmeter semi-permanently connected so I knew when it was and when it wasn't charging. I picked up a cheap dash-mounted temp and voltage guage on ebay. In my case I could see that it wasn't always charging and it was the infamous wire - Wino usually provides links to some excellent pictures. By the way, mine did the normal thing with the alternator light but it was lying.

My son and I have 2x SDI needing a cambelt kit/water pump change by the end of the month (uncertain histories, mots due feb, wet outside). Can anyone suggest a garage around the NW of M25 - Watford/Slough/Uxbridge. Trying to avoid London prices... thanks

Pure speculation but.... the cruise control acts through the ecu and not the physical throttle (e.g. via a bellows or whatever). Is it possible that the way it works is interacting with elements of the remap ? I would be tempted to ask whoever created the map.

You seem to suggest only two wheels are binding. Are they on a common circuit? ( Assuming dual cct brakes). I once had an odd problem on an alfa where bits of rubber had been shed on inside of a flexible creating a form of one way valve which, in your case, would be holding one circuit on after you have released brakes.

The 2litre BM chips well past 210bhp (or more if you start with a 123/5) and is significantly lighter. The 6 pot lump makes itself known whenever you turn the steering wheel.

Yeah, one of those

If are really looking for the cheapest option (and don't mind diy) you can get just the wear bits called a CHRS or cassette at about £100. Also need to change the oil feed pipe and any o rings and gaskets. Lots of video on you tube.

The alternator rotor needs to be magnetised if you are to get a charging current. Normally the wire mentioned ensures that a current flows to create this magnetic field. When it has broken, you are reliant on there being a residual field from the last time it was working to get any alternator output at all - in my case the engine needed to rise to over 3000 rpm before this weak field produced enough output to kick the alternator into life. If I started the car and didn't rev too high the car would splutter to a halt after a few miles with a flat battery but if I revved the engine all was well until the next start. In my case the red light on the dash did indeed light - back in the 70's this was a sure sign that the alternator field was getting current but it is apparently driven by the ecu these days so doesn't necessarily prove that the alternator is working.