Awattam

In Galway atm but I'm heading up to Fermanagh to stay with family for the weekend this afternoon. If it makes that journey then I've got more faith in making it home. Once I get up there I'll have access to tools etc so I've got a better chance of sorting it if I can work out what's wrong.

The pipe to the EGR is a good suggestion, I'll check. My EGR is deactivated though, by blocking the tube that activates it. There's no smoke as far as I can see, and fuel consumption is normal. I had a crawl underneath today and I can't see any splits or holes in exhaust or boost hoses. I didn't really check the EGR stuff though. Tomorrow I'll check further with the engine running.

Anybody? This is happening all the time now, after we travelled about 40 miles today. Really quite worried that we're not going to make it home.

To add a bit more info... The noise happens at any revs, but is louder as the revs rise, it sounds exactly like a blowing exhaust or a cold noisy diesel. The power loss seems to happen at all revs too, pulling away requires a lot of throttle when the issue is present - I stalled setting off at one point because there was so little power available. The car had new cambelt, water pump, tensioners etc about 6k ago. There is plenty of oil in it and this was changed 2k ago. The car is generally well maintained. I have no warning lights and it doesn't overheat. If I think of anything else I will add it! I'm pretty desperate to get to the bottom of this.

I have a 90 hp tdi, I've done about 20k in it and it has always run fine, aside from a sticky turbo causing limp mode when I first got it (cured with the mr muscle treatment). I'm currently on holiday in Ireland and have done about 600 miles since setting off. In the last 200 miles I've had an intermittent power loss. From a constant speed sometimes it will accelerate and increase speed normally, other times I press the accelerator and there is no attempt from the car to accelerate. It can be fine one minute and bad the next. Initially I thought this might be a blocked filter or overboost/limp mode but it doesn't feel like either (I've had both before on this car). In the same time I have started to have a horrible clattering noise, the best description I can give is like a badly blowing exhaust or a very old diesel tractor. This too is intermittent and seems to vaguely correlate to the power loss. I have about 500 miles to do to get home. If this is something straightforward then I can get it fixed while over here. Mostly though I want to diagnose it so I know whether I'm likely to make it home and whether I am likely to do any further damage. Sorry for the long post, I really need help on this one!

No problem, I'll leave them to one of the other guys. I'm only using them for winter tyres so I'll pick up some steelies

Is £40 collected any good to you? I need some wheels to put winter tyres on. I'm only down the road in brough so can pop down whenever.

My car is a 1999 non PD tdi. When I got it the tensioner damper was knackered, and doing nothing apart from making a noise. I replaced the damper with a new one from ebay (the tensioner itself seemed fine). About 8k later, this damper is leaking badly and the belt is flapping about quite a bit. Reading on here, this seems a common problem, caused by a knackered one way pulley on the alternator. No problem I thought, I'll just replace the alt pulley and damper. However looking at my alt pulley, it seems to be a normal fixed single piece one, without the bulky centre that's in the clutched version. Mine is like this, found from the part number on the back of the alt. Were any cars fitted with a fixed pulley? Or is this a bodge by someone who's had a worn out one way pulley and has replaced it with a fixed? The alt looks like it's been changed relatively recently. Does anyone know if I can just fit the right pulley to this alt or do I need a whole new unit? Don't want to be changing dampers every 6 months!

I had this with mine, have a look at the bushes and linkages at the gear stick end. I replaced mine with ones that I made myself to remove the play. I should think you could buy some from the dealer if you don't fancy making them.

Are the estate and hatch seats the same?

Thanks, i had a search but wasn't sure what to search for really. Looks like my car is an A to Z of common faults! It'll be a goodun when I'm finished.

Since I've had my Octavia 1 tdi (about 5 months now) the readout for the resettable mileage counter, the average fuel consumption and the clock has reset every time I turn the ignition off. I finally got round to looking at this and found that the fuse for the constant live for the gauges was missing (fuse 15). I put one in and everything is remembered but none of the gauges now work! No speed, rev counter, temp etc! Take the fuse out and I'm back to where I was - gauges but no memory. Has anyone got nay ideas why this may be? It's not much hassle not having the memory but I like things to work and this is irritating.

Hi, I'm new here, having just bought a 1999 tdi 90 estate. It was described as the seller as a good runner, and as needing nothing, but since picking it up I've found that it was anything but. Anyway, this is the main issue.... I can't get reverse, putting it into the reverse position engages first gear instead, all the other gears go in ok. I've just spent a couple of hours messing with the linkage to try and find reverse. As it's an early box there isn't the easy adjustment procedure mentioned many times on here. Instead as far as I can tell the advice is to take it to a dealer as special tools are needed. While playing around I managed to wiggle it into reverse a few times, so the gear does work. However 20 mins to find reverse each time obviously isn't practical! Does anyone have a guide that will explain the adjustment, even if it just gets me somewhere close so I can use the car? I still have concerns that there's a gearbox problem, as after releasing both cables I couldn't get it to go in by hand. For now I'm going to assume the box is working though. Thanks in advance