Have had a 56 reg 1.9Tdi Elegance for just on two months now, and so far have been very impressed with what is my first non Ford car in 11 years of car ownership. The build quality, features, and design both interior and exterior beats Ford (Fiestas & Foci) by a long way. Having said that, have had a few small issues. The first and most serious was a juddering "sensation" from the engine under hard acceleration, and also no output from the rear windscreen wash.

Numerous posts indicate the DMF is at fault for this juddering, which has also made hill starts, and slow speed cold temperture running rather difficult, and I have had confirmation just now from the dealer (Claybank Motors, Manchester) that the DMF is the fault, and they will have the part in for tomorrow. There was no hesitation about changing this with clear indication that the waranty would cover this. IMPRESSED

They also acknowledged the rear washer is due to the hose coming loose.

Other than these two issues, I had the radio sound stop once, but after switching the engine off and on again, this has not been repeated, I can say that the first two months of ownership has been enjoyable. A recent trip to the far end of the Llyn Penninsula in N.Wales saw 62MPG on the computer, including at least an hour crawling on the A55. That was with some cruising, and occasional bursts of overtaking (hampered by the DMF threating to destroy itself!).

Car should be back tomorrow, so will report on how it has cured the problem

Juddering sensation from the engine could be the DMF.Quite a few do it and there was a recall on the 2.0TDI,s as well.

what's the DMF stand for?

DMF - Dual Mass Flywheel. It seems to be a modern way of taking something simple, and making it complicated!! There are lots of posts on here which describe how it works, but basically intead of a big lump of metal providing the inertia to keep the engine rotating, they use several individual components, to provide the same effect, but reduce the vibration through the drive train etc.

As most things these days, in trying to make things better, they make it worse. Lots of people have had this problem, but after only 20,000 miles on the car, I was not expecting this to happen so soon!!

Hopefully whatever they are fitting today will last me longer if not for as long as I keep the car (100,000 miles minimum) ! I got 145,000 miles out of my focus TDCi which uses a similar Dual mass flywheel with no problems!

Wow, that sounds like a lot of work for them! Reinventing the wheel, huh?

Tell me about it! From what i have read on other posts, its a cheap way out of designing the engine's mounts and interfaces with transmission to reduce vibration properly. Most modern diesels seem to use them. With so many failures, and as the engine is used in so many of the VAG range including the "premium" sector with Audi, I would have thought they would have done something about it by now! The part alone is £200 on ebay!

Blimey! I didn't think it'd be cheap, those sort of things never are: flywheels, lightened clutches, cranks, etc.

Are they only on diesels then as i'd imagine they'd be across the board (I know engines ARE built differently, but don't know much about differences in diesel/petrol)

I am not sure. I think they are on diesels only, as they are prone to more vibration due to the compression ignition.

The car is back from the garage now, and aside from them forgetting to put the wheel centres back on, its like driving a brand new car!!! The clutch always juddered a bit, no matter how lightly i tried to lift it and match the revs.

A tank of Shell Diesel extra has also made a MASSIVE difference to the Tesco rubbish I had been using to try and save a few pennies. I think the solving of the flywheel issue has given me a bit more confidence to rev the engine without it destroying itself, and the performance certainly seems better to the Focus TDCi i ran for 6 years. Much more smoother across the rev range, and no discernable lag or drop off on the top end.

Rear windscreen washer also repaired no, so I am a happy Octavia owner again!!!