Brucemagoose511

As a previous DSG Fabia owner, I loved it but I wouldn't be revving it heavy in automatic anywhere near 1st gear. My DSG was faultless other than it seemed to sometimes get confused and drop down to 1st with crazy revs if I was driving on the threshold of 1st and 2nd (or downshifted from 3rd approaching a roundabout), and would then get stuck in 1st for a few worryingly high revving seconds. I'd suggest putting the DSG in manual shift, in 2nd gear, around 15mph before flooring it. OR have it in automatic in third gear around 20mph before flooring it. In either of those scenarios my old DSG car would have behaved. I don't know if Sports mode in a DSG overcomes those issues as I never used it!

Thanks, that's all very helpful and allays my concerns about damaging the engine. My usual driving these past two years is two return journeys of around 50miles each per week on very fast country A & B roads (roads I avoid when it is icey as they are less likely to be gritted). I have plenty of steep hill options to get the revs going on and should have the engine nicely warmed up before hitting the hills. If I add a couple of miles to my typical journey I'll take in a more hilly route to the same destination and the journey won't take me any more time. So I think I've plenty options to give the turbo a regular outing as part of my normal activity. I do wonder if my garage experiencing an up-tick of actuator issues is a result of less commuting (home working) and more 20mph limits being rolled out in both urban and rural areas. If these variables are impacting on a driver they'd probably want to consider the implications for their turbo.

Out of warranty now (only 90 days warranty with buying it online). I read elsewhere for the MkI that it starts around 1500rpm and really kicks in around 1900rpm - which is consistent with what you are saying. I presume it is something broadly similar. It gets lots of country drives, but is driven gently in winter. I didn't even notice something was wrong until 5 miles into my journey I started going up a very steep hill that it usually breezes up, and needed to downshift, and I then noticed the light. Could still get it up to 80mph. I guess once a week or so I'll just wait a few seconds longer before shifting up a gear than normal, then maybe once every few weeks give it a proper workout. Hopefully now it's been lubricated a bit it'll start behaving. Had an earlier squeaky clutch issue that unbelievably went away by itself over the course of a month, so maybe I'll get a second miracle.

MkIII TSI. I didn't have the stop/start error, but did get the EPC and engine warning light last week. This was after a period of not taking the car out so much and driving carefully due to winter conditions. A very knowledgeable and trustworthy independent garage said it was likely the Turbo Actuator and they are getting a lot of these for various makes and models. Turned out to be the case and poor mechanic after burning their hands managed to free up the part and get things working fine again since then. If it breaks sounds like it'll be around £250 parts and labour, which I can live with. Mechanic suggested driving the car hard from time to time to get the turbo going (presumably to stop it from seizing up again). Turbo seems to kick in at around 3000rpm in 2nd and 3rd gears, but does anyone have any more precise info on when the turbo kicks in? I don't really want to go revving the heck out of the machine every week or so. I'm hoping an occasional spurt on a straight B road during periods of reduced or gentler usage will be enough to keep the actuator in working order. Cheers.

Thanks again bud, that is perfect detail. Off to try my luck under the warranty.

Top info, thanks. Was this just the clutch pedal you got changed and not the master cylinder? Was the replacement pedal also plastic? Just trying to make sure I can get the right parts ordered by my local garage if, as I suspect, the company that sold me it mess me about with the warranty. If my worst case scenario is a couple of hundred quid I'll be keeping the car.

Does anyone know how much the above repairs (replacement. Master cylinder and clutch pedal) would cost and should it definitely fix the problem or would the replacement parts have to be just as cheaply built? I've just bought a nice enough MkIII TSI 95bhp, but on my first two journeys, after 20 miles the clutch pedal gets super squeaky every time it is pushed and released. I have a 7 day moneyback option and a 3 month warranty but I'm interested to know the possible cost of repairs incase I end up down the line having to get this repaired at an independent garage (as the company I bought the car from are not inspiring confidence).

Well I get a valuation of a over £3.7k on Regit and £2.6k on Evan's Halshaws, so I think it is Parkers that is the outlier (which I've also found when looking at cars to buy) by suggesting £1.9. Glass's used to be very accurate but they don't do free valuations anymore.

Its a 60 plate, 68,000 miles. Surprised by the valuation (for a functioning car obviously) of £3,400 on Webuyanycar (way above the estimated private sale value on Parkers) so I might stick some more money into experimental repairs / investigation. Probably going to have one last conversation with my independent garage to get his thoughts on some of the points raised here (spark plugs, borescope, wiring, coil packs) before I do anything else. Oil consumption has actually been reduced in recent months (it has been fairly thirsty in that regard historically, but nothing crazy). Usually I have to top up every 600 miles, but its 1,000+ miles since the last topup.

They must have done something when they examined it because the car is now undriveable, as weak as a kitten and I barely got it home whereas before it was misfiring a lot but still had oomph. I don't know if a compression test would have done that, but there is no hard feelings from me. The bottom line is I've now had a dealer, a freelance VAG technician and a standard independent garage all tell me they aren't willing or able to get to the bottom of the matter and advising me to keep my money in my pocket rather than pay them to undertake further investigations. So my options appear somewhat limited. I've only had to pay £100 in total on a car valued at £2k to reach this state and any money I don't spend on investigating it goes towards the replacement car. The dealer basically said the spark plugs looked in order, that it was low compression and that previous investigations into that weren't things they could be confident of getting to the bottom of or resolving. I didn't mention the coils because he was so certain it was a compression issue. I'm going to leave the car a week and see if it has a Lazarus-like recovery to the ECP state where I could do 50mph easily enough (sounds mad, but the engine warning lights can disappear after a few days and vehicle performance can change - although I imagine there is a less than 1% chance of that happening here). Then it is either a post on Gumtree for any one looking for VRS parts or getting it taken away to the scrappies. I'll wait and see how the car is performing in a few days before making that decision. Then the Joy's of trying to buy a car with confidence when it's just been announced in Scotland that the 'lockdown' continues for at least another month (so no test drives until at least then from my local Skoda dealers). Thankfully I don't have to drive to get to my work so I've nowhere to drive to at the moment anyway!

If I was in manual 1st or even 2nd and switched to D there was always a risk it would select D1 or even change down to D1, get stuck there and over rev quite badly. Maybe it was just a quirk with mine though but it was never a nice experience!

Quite alright, I should have said it was from a 2010 MkII, so may not be comparing 100% like with like in terms of my preferred driving style with it.

As a MkII VRS DSG user (7 gear) with similar driving habits to the OP I can only enthuse about the DSG. My preferences are: - keep it in D at all times in when you typically expect to be in 1st or 2nd. This prevents near 100% of any instances when the DSGgets a bit confused and puts you in far too low a gear (with very high RPM). - if in dense stop start traffic, I just switch back to D (rather than do any manual shift) and let the DSG take over and do what it thinks is right in response to me braking, cruising at low speed etc. - switch to manual shifting with the stick for gears 3 to 7 (my preference over the VRS tiptronic flaps on steering wheel, unless throwing it around winding country roads and wanting to keep both hands on the wheel). This way you are shifting more intelligently than an auto could ever do (as the auto (without AI self driving) can't possibly anticipate future road and traffic conditions in the way a human being can) - switch to D if you plan an aggressive acceleration. When in manual mode and you floor it the DSG will change your gear and can sometimes give you too high RPM in too low a gear, whereas flooring it in D is a joy to behold and the DSG always makes a wise selection. - for a less aggressive overtake then staying in manual is fine, but requires some experience and judgement to ensure you dont push the DSG into maximum acceleration. Once I learnt these rules I never had a massive over revving or any sort of experience that didnt feel very smooth. Aiming for the DSG in my next used Fabia as love how it works compared to clutch and manual shift and there seems to be no major concerns over DSG reliability.

Took it to dealers after all. Error code is "low compression in cylinder 3" and mechanic consider it needing a replaced engine and not worth trying things with. They said spark plugs were in order and set at an apporpriate position/gap. So I don't see much point in going for speculative repairs but am very grateful for the advice from folks.

Apologies, totally wrong thread. Any mod please feel free to delete!