So, driving down to Northampton form Edinburgh on Saturday. 10 miles from destination and suddenly the car stutters and loses all power. I slow down to 50 and give it a couple of minutes to recover. No engine lights on the dash, no smoke from the exhaust. Put the foot down and still nothing except a loud whooshing noise (like an industrial leaf blower).

So, very quickly realise I have no turbo (all those driving the 1.8 20v non turbo car, you have my sympathies).

Limp the last 10 miles to my destination and give the car the once over. All looks fine in the engine bay and VAG-COM (fortunately I had my laptop with me) reports a pressure difference between turbo outlet and throttle inlet.

Trace turbo outlet through and eventually find that the rubber hose that joins onto the intercooler inlet (directly behind drivers side front wheel) has come loose.

Easy repair to do, just loosened clip reattached hose and tightened clip. All done.

However why did it pop loose in the first place? Well, my guess is the garage I paid to do the timing belt did not release this hose when the jacked the engine up to do the water pump. So, they ended up pulling the hose most of the way off the intercooler inlet and left it waiting to fail.

So, one key learning and one question.

Learning, do not ever trust a garage to do the job you paid them to.

Question, while the hose was off, I had to drive several miles with the turbo spinning unloaded. I was careful to drive off-boost but occasionally did hear the turbo spin up. Could I have damaged it? It seems okay so far but I dodn't like the idea of it spinning up to god-knows-what rpm unloaded.

Cheers,

iep

Doh!

Things do get very oily down there, as it's the low point of the system. So if they moved the hose about and didn't clean up the contact surfaces, that may have been why it slipped off.

I replaced that short hose a while ago with a new genuine one. Got a couple of stanless jubilee clips and fixed her on good.

Let me know if you want a price/PN for it.

Hopefully the ECU sensed the leak and opened the wastegate to slow the turbo down for you. Fingers crossed mate.

Cheers Bodge. You're right it is pretty oily down there but once the clip is on tight there is no way it is coming off. Either the garage did not romve it in the first place (seems likely as the intercooler inlet attachment points to the chassis were all bent) or they did detach it and failed to re-attach properly afterwards. Either way smarts of incompetence.

Pretty sure the ECU wouldn't have opened the wastegate as it only does this when pressure exceeds the max threshold. Saying that, I'm not sure opening the wastegate would necessarily help as this would not slow the turbo down (or would it?). I was careful not to let it spin too often or too fast but who knows how robust they are when run without any load.

iep

When mine dropped into limp mode due to the same error code, it reduced the boost to 5psi max from 10. Turned out it was just a grubby throttle body for me.

When the N75 opens the wastegate, your effectively allowing the exhaust gases to bypass the turbine, which will slow the turbo down and reduce your boost pressure as a result. Another thing to note is that wastegate movement is progressive, so the N75 can hold it a little bit open to just reduce the boost pressure by a bit, or it can chose to wang it full open and kill all the boost!

As you say, no idea what safety margin they have on turbo speed, but I'm sure you'll be fine mate. If it didn't go BANG, then your probably OK!

Sorry to hear about this IEP, glad you got it sorted though and it wasnt more serious.

bit off topic but how long did it take to get to northampton from edinburgh? a random question i know lol, but i live in northampton and i was thinking of taking my girlfriend to edinburgh for her birthday in september lol. wasnt sure whether to drive or fly....!?

Hi Addis, 5.5 hours sticking more or less to limits.

Recommended route is to leave Northampton on the M1, join the M6 asap and then follow that road all the way up until it becomes the M74 (I think) and then, crucially, take the turnoff for Moffat. It is very very important to leave the M74 at the Moffat junction and then take this road in to Edinburgh. If you miss this turning you will also miss one of the best driving roads in the UK!

Cheers,

iep

Same thing happened to me last November after I took my intercooler off to clean it and didn't tighten the hose clip enough when I refitted it. I drove it about two miles to my house with no problems (apart from it sounding like a tractor ). The turbo was spooling up slightly but I assume the N75 valve was holding the wastegate open because the ECU had noticed the boost leak.

Hi Addis, 5.5 hours sticking more or less to limits.

Recommended route is to leave Northampton on the M1, join the M6 asap and then follow that road all the way up until it becomes the M74 (I think) and then, crucially, take the turnoff for Moffat. It is very very important to leave the M74 at the Moffat junction and then take this road in to Edinburgh. If you miss this turning you will also miss one of the best driving roads in the UK!

Cheers,

iep

quality, thanks. i thought it was longer than that!!

Hi Addis, 5.5 hours sticking more or less to limits.

Recommended route is to leave Northampton on the M1, join the M6 asap and then follow that road all the way up until it becomes the M74 (I think) and then, crucially, take the turnoff for Moffat. It is very very important to leave the M74 at the Moffat junction and then take this road in to Edinburgh. If you miss this turning you will also miss one of the best driving roads in the UK!

Cheers,

iep

And the quickest route ...the biggar road takes forever.

And the quickest route ...the biggar road takes forever.

lol ok cheers