At 73,000 miles the engine started to misfire between 1800-3000 rpm only, most of the time. If I accelerated normally or under load it would misfire; I'd have to accelerate very gently for it not to or change down so that the revs were above 3000. Unfortunately, I was travelling to a wedding 300 miles away at the time and didn't take it to the dealer until I was back in Scotland which, with the benefit of hindsight, almost certainly caused more damage to the engine. It was particularly rough when cold and produced a lot of white cloudy exhaust fumes too. The misfire was spread across a wider rev range when cold too - lower but still not more than 3000.

The engine required major work, including in order that they were diagnosed - new camshaft (wear on third cylinder) and followers, new injector (3rd cylinder), new injector seals on remaining cylinders, new short engine (wear to 3rd cylinder - poss crank too - can't recall) and finally a new tandem pump (the spinning thingy had sheared on one side). The cost to me of putting this right was probably only £600 (The total bill was about £1200 but this included a service, new cam built and waterpump obviously, possibly 2 new disks and pads).

Now, at 109,000 miles and just over two years and 36,000 miles later I'm having more engine problems! They started at 2:30am on Hogmanay this year when the engine would not start. It's been generally a good starter so I probably didn't help matters through the quick key turn I'd habitually conditioned my hand to do. It would almost start but was very rough and then cut out. I checked the oil and topped it up and this helped. I also was much more intentional when turning the key and this also helped. Unfortunately a couple of weeks ago the misfire was back this time at about 1500 revs across a 200 - 300 band. It would only occur when the engine was cold for the first couple of accelerations and then it'd disappear. This happened for a few weeks. I took it to my local dealer in Bannockburn and they did a diagnostic. It came back showing no faults and the compression test also came back within Skoda limits. At this point I was considering a trade in and they encouraged that route or suggested using a diesel specialist.

Initially I was looking at a trade in but a few weeks later it was plugged into another diagnostic computer and this time it did show up four faults:

glow plug 2

glow plug 2

intermittent problem with injector circuit

intermittent misfire

Unfortunately, it was not booked into this specialist and it was 250 miles from home so I re-booked it into Bannockburn again for Monday this week. Thursday two weeks ago , on the way to an interview, it started to misfire badly continuously and this time would not stop misfiring. I pulled onto the hard shoulder and had the RAC recovery lorry take the car directly to the dealer early and two 1/2 weeks on it is still there. The problem lies with an injector.

The workshop manager confirmed that the injector to cylinder 2 had failed. He quoted the following costs for the part depending on what option I chose:

New injector (including 2 yr warranty) - £607.66 plus VAT

Service Exchange injector - £460.95 plus VAT

Recondition own injector - £175 plus VAT

All I can say is "NO WONDER VWAG HAVE DITCHED THE PD ENGINES AND SWITCHED TO COMMON RAIL!!!!" (Although my dad told me today that my brother's two year old A4 2 litre CR TDi 170 bhp with 60,000 is sounding pretty rough)

Anyway, hardly cheap is it. Yes, those are the prices for just one injector. Given that Injector 3 was replaced about 36,000 miles ago and the rest have done 109,000 miles this is what I've decided: to recondition injectors 1,2 and 4 only. If they have any doubts that injector 2 can be effectively reconditioned then I'll have them replace that one with a new one. The reason I've decided to recondition the other 2 is the labour cost. The engine is already stripped. If either one was to fail in the near future the labour is £200 plus VAT to replace it. I'd rather have them reconditioned now while the engine is stripped then risk not doing so and pay more for labour in the long run.

The injectors came back on Friday last week and number two had ceased functioning altogether, number one was pretty bad and number four was not that great either. Now I'm wondering whether I should have had number 3 looked at even though it's only done about 36,000.

Hopefully these measures will fix my engine. I'll find out by Wednesday which is when I will hopefully get the car back.

By the way, there was a fault on cylinders 2 and 3 with the glow plugs. I was thinking of getting these done too.

Any thoughts. Would appreciate any tips/advice....

Edited 8 March, 201016 yr by Unlucky Octavia owner

Wow thats pretty bad! I certainly feel for you with those faults. The glow plugs are easy to sort, and should clear the fault codes. I've the bjb engine, apart from the turbo tearing apart at 125k its upto 142.5k now. The problems I have seem to be a really haggered upper gearbox mount. But the box had been reconditioned at 117k before I bought it. So it doesn't look as though its been put together right.

Ok...so here is an update on my Octavia.

The good news is that the engine has done almost 2000 miles since it has been fixed and that it didn't cost too much having decided to have three of the injectors reconditioned rather than replaced . The bad news is that it still has a few quirks :S . Quite often if I've driven for a while and have to stop for a moment (Eg. to fill up) and switch off the engine takes a good few seconds to fire up again. I guess the engine doesn't sound as smooth either, at least not compared to the same engine in another Octavia I drove a few months ago but on the whole it is performing well and I do drive more briskly than most Octavia 1.9Tdi PD 105 drivers.

I have learnt more about diesel engines through the process realising that common rail engines also need these expensive injectors making my earlier statement about why VW may have ditched PD for CR seem quite daft. However, what came as a surprise was something I read in a Haines diesel engine manual. Don't quote me but the gist was that injectors (for PD and CR) need to be serviced at 50,000 and reconditioned (or a more thorough service) after 100,000. This was news to me and something I don't think any of the dealers (and I've been to four over the years) told me.

So that begs the question: how many are there out there driving not just Skoda's or any VWAG vehical but any diesel car with worn out injectors that are performing less than optimally? And how many dealers include servicing injectors as a periodic requirement of a service (like brake disc's etc...)?

Any thoughts/comments?

Edited 4 May, 201016 yr by Unlucky Octavia owner

By the way one of the other quirks is that the engine's tickover revs can fluctuate. Typically tickover is about 850 - 900 revs but sometimes I've noticed it can rise as high as 1100. Is this normal?

It would be interesting to know the oil change history of your PD . also what oil was used?