OK the Fabia (2001 Tdi ATD with 125k on the clock) has started doing a couple of strange things recently so I’m after some suggestions…

The first is the glow plugs have started staying on for significantly longer than usual (10 seconds or so?) and when it does this the car starts with a significant blip of revs but then does settle down as normal. Could this be a sticky relay or a glow plug on the way out?

The second is that on a couple of occasions when cold and stopped the idle has fluctuated from it’s normal 850 - 900 rpm to say 1500 rpm every three or four seconds. Once warm it’s fine. Also on one occasion, before it was warmed up the temp gauge swung to about a ¾ position before dropping back down to cold and then rising normally. I guess the gauge thing is likely to be a temperature sensor issue but will that account for the revs oscillating as well or could that be the EGR valve?

OK the Fabia (2001 Tdi ATD with 125k on the clock) has started doing a couple of strange things recently so I’m after some suggestions…

The first is the glow plugs have started staying on for significantly longer than usual (10 seconds or so?) and when it does this the car starts with a significant blip of revs but then does settle down as normal. Could this be a sticky relay or a glow plug on the way out?

The second is that on a couple of occasions when cold and stopped the idle has fluctuated from it’s normal 850 - 900 rpm to say 1500 rpm every three or four seconds. Once warm it’s fine. Also on one occasion, before it was warmed up the temp gauge swung to about a ¾ position before dropping back down to cold and then rising normally. I guess the gauge thing is likely to be a temperature sensor issue but will that account for the revs oscillating as well or could that be the EGR valve?

I would say replace the temperature sensor purely on the basis of the cars age, it should fix all your problems at once.

I had the revs flaring on startup thing. Fuel temp sensor had failed, then whilst I had the EML on for that, the coolant one started playing up too. That'll teach me to ignore the EML when I haven't got VAGCOM! Sensors were somewhere around the £10 mark, from memory. That's an old memory though...

HTH

J.

OK ta - just need to check out where and how much...

just a thought - are the sensors the same across all engines as I can only seem to find 2 wire sensors for petrols??

thanks guys - done the sensor today and it seems sorted