sweenpole2001

Love the pics! My input Enjoy! Andy

Excellent start! Get on Flickr, join some groups and get some tips and inspiration from there. I'm a canon man myself and i have an EOS 7D. Started with an EOS 400D and it was awesome. The 550D at the moment is pretty much the same as my camera with a couple less functions and a third of the price. Pay as much as you can afford, the more you pay the better the kit. The stock lenses that come with SLRs are fine to start off with and learn with. They do a good job. Make sure you have a tripod. Before you get into using flashes and learning that part, get used to low ISO, long exposures. If you want something smaller and with interchangable lenses, go for the canon G12 (i think that's what they are up to?). Loads of functions, size of a point and shoot Andy Sweeney http://ASweeneyPhotos.Tumblr.Com http://www.Facebook.com/ASweeneyPhotos

Let me have a look, i'll get back to ya. The under / over confusion is probably mine, i'm no mechanic

I'm kinda guessing about the turbo. The fact that when it went in the turbo was alright and when it came out after the new head and intake it kept 'overboosting' abd bringing up an error. Any gear, any revs... :(

24th November, 2011 Director of Customer Services Skoda Dear Sir or Madam Skoda Octavia registration no EK07JBV I write to ask for your help. My Octavia is 4 years old and has travelled 69,000 miles. The car has been regularly serviced and I really enjoy driving and owning it. I bought the car almost new (an ex. Demonstrator/Skoda manager’s car) with the expectation I would have a good few years of trouble-free driving, and was particularly influenced by Skoda’s reputation for excellent engineering and customer support. However, over the last 6 months there have been some unexpected problems with the injectors which were resolved with Skoda’s help but which did shake my confidence in the manufacture of this particular car. The last week or so further problems became apparent and have become an absolute horror story for me and my family. In essence I have day by day seen a repair bill grow to £3,500. If we had not just started our family and my wife had been working this would have been very annoying but we could have coped. However, she is on maternity leave and not working and we have had to use every penny of our emergency savings putting us in the worrying situation of not being able to deal with any further costs. Clearly no-one likes paying out large sums of money but in our case this has been annoying and stressful because the need for the repair arose from something completely out of my control, particularly as the car has been well maintained, regularly serviced and carefully driven. The damage was caused by the failure of a swirl flap in the inlet manifold, which is not a serviceable part. This surely can only have broken as a result of faulty material or production which made the manifold not fit for purpose. Once the broken swirl flap found its way into the cylinder, it bounced around and cracked the cylinder head and bent two valves causing power loss. This was all repaired at an annoying cost of £2,500 but my annoyance turned to misery as I drove the car away and the engine management light came on because of turbo failure due to increased pressure from the engine and the waste gate not being able to cope. This added a further £1,000 to the bill. I have discussed all this with someone in your customer services dept. who gave me many reasons why you should not help. I find these difficult to accept because I keep coming back to the fact that this huge and crippling bill results from mechanical failure in a part which does not require servicing and is integral to the engine which in my experience if regularly maintained should surely last for several hundred thousand miles. The effect of this bill on my family means that I have to ask you please, please consider helping me through an appropriate goodwill or ex-gratia payment. If required, I have photographs of the damage caused due to the original parts being returned in exchange for new ones and repair bills of which I can provide copies. Yours faithfully Andrew Sweeney

s'allrite, these things are sent to test us I don't have a clue how to get the EGR off. It does come away from the Inlet manifold and the pipe underneath, i assume it is bolted. Have a good look mate and see what you can see. If in doubt, contact your garage and ask them to do it for you. Andy

If you take the cover off the engine, look at the main head. come down towards you and you see the inlet manifold, out the bottom of the manifold there is a big grey metal tubey bit. That should be your EGR. Think the engine in the picture is the 140bhp one but it's to the right of the Dip Stick. To be fair, i didn't get close enough to touch the parts to find out the construction. Didn't have any gloves with me and tbh, didn't think to. UPDATE! New turbo as well :( extra £1000 on top :(

I'd say, even if you don't have the symptoms, i'd just have it looked at. Always good to have a clean engine and you'll recover lost horsepower JJBS3, thanks mate. Andy

Take it to a trusted garage, get them to use an aerosol turbo cleaner on the turbo, remove the EGR valve and you can ether clean that yourself by soaking in carb cleaner over night then going at it with a tooth brush or they might have a parts washer. Check the inlet manifold and either clean or replace. It's about a £350 part though :S

I now know that at about 40k miles or 3 years, i'm going to shell out for a complete de-coking and inspection to see if the problems persist.

I think the symptoms were a result of the coking problem in the intake. It got too sooted up and something must have happened to the end flap over pot 4. After the turbo was cleaned out, this must have forced too much though the intake causing the flap to come loose and out into the cylinder :( Cheers for the offer of help but it's done now and ready for collection Cant wait to get back in and spin it up. Andy

http://briskoda.net/forums/topic/219645-warning-octy-2-2007-vrs-pd-issue/

Righto, 2007 PD Octy2 VRS at 65000 miles. Here are the symptoms: Limp Home at 2000 RPM in 6th under load, on the VAG system it states "Turbo Underboost". Turbo Lag in 3rd. General lack of HP. Leading to 0 compression in a cylinder. MAKE SURE YOU GET THE FOLLOWING ITEMS CHECKED AND CLEANED: Turbo EGR Valve Intake Manifold THE COSTS! £2500 Coked up intake manifold. Broken flap. Pin indent on top of valve in pot 4. Offering the part up for comparison. Splits between most valves. Kerching! Oh, and SKODA say there is no good will as i've only had it serviced with them once and it is not being repaired with them. :( Andy

My 170PD came up with TURBO UNDERBOOST. Turbo cleaned, sorted the problem. £40 cleaning kit + Labour. used to go into limp home (reset after a engine reboot) at 2k revs up hill under load in 6th. Sorted now. My inlet filter has just gone causing a misfire in #4 pot. Having the EGR valve cleaned whilst it is off. I love my car but it costs, A LOT! Andy