The latest update to the Octavia review on the Honest John site has the following:

"7-7-2011: 1.8TSI and 2.0TSI VRS have dual mass flywheel that can fail"

from here:

Honest John Octavia review

(near bottom of page)

Has anyone with either of these engines had this happen to them or know of anyone else who has had this problem?

I thought it was mainly the diesels that were affected by DMF failures due to the amount of torque they produce.

I'm not convinced by the accuracy of the Honest John site, as the Honda Civic forums has countless people talking about their clutch failing on the diesel model, yet it's not even mentioned on the Civic review. Whereas the review for the Octavia mentions about the DMF but I've never read on this forum about one failing on a petol model.

Edited 25 July, 201114 yr by Ultima

Pretty sure you're right and they're only in diesels - seems to be confirmed by a Google search which yields several posts on Honest John's website

HJ is not all that accurate, take it with a pinch of salt.

HJ is not all that accurate, take it with a pinch of salt.

Yes he seems to attribute problems to the wrong models, or blow tiny problems out of all proportion. eg for years he warned against buying HDi engined cars due to clutch release bearing failures. Amongst myself, family, friends, colleagues over the past decade we must have owned dozens of cars with PSA HDi engines and I can't recall a single clutch release bearing problem with any of them!

This is the problem with the internet, it's turned all of us into automotive hypercondriacs.

Pretty sure you're right and they're only in diesels

The TPS (Trade Parts Specialists) book yields part numbers for a DMF for both the 1.8 and 2.0 turbo-charged petrol engines (can't remember whether it's the TSI or TFSI variant). However, I've not heard of any of them failing whilst I've been on here ...

Haven't heard about a DMF failure with a TSI engine so far. But that doesn't mean it's impossible.

Maybe we should read it differently: 1.8TSI and 2.0TSI VRS have dual mass flywheel that CAN fail.

1.8TSI and 2.0TSI VRS also have a turbo charger that CAN fail, too. If you've got one there's always a possibility of a failure. :p

ive been at tps 4 years now and i can count on one hand how many i've done any so no it isnt a common problem

Every modern diesel engine car has a DMF that can fail. Just have a search through any car owners forum and you will get an idea of what percentage of them actually do and at what age and mileage this happens. Just step back and think about the numbers you will probably find less than 100 reports of DMF failures online from every manufacturer over the past 5 years so that is 100 failures from a production run of millions of cars?