My father owns a 1.9 130bhp TDI Octavia L&C Estate which he has owned from new but has now had a 4th turbo failure. The car then goes into limp home mode until it is restarted when it will be ok again for a while. What causes this failure and what is the solution? I am especially interested as I am considering buying the car from him when he buys another one next year.

Hard to tell without much diagnosis, but it's possibly as simple as sticky vanes, if he drives it gently all the time.

He does drive gently and has previously been told to open it up occasionally. Maybe he isn't doing this often enough? Will a good thrash sort it out? Are these engines generally reliable or are there any common faults?

Get it checked for fault codes, that should reveal the source of the problem. It could be that the vanes in the turbo are either clogged with soot or rusted up. An italian tune up may improve things, easy enough to try.

Driving gently does not help things.

the engines seem pretty reliable (same as in the fabia vrs) as long as they are run on the proper spec oil.

This is hardly a turbo failure. This is the ECU trying to prevent a turbo failure.

As above the problem could be sticky vanes on the turbo due to the car being driven gently too much of the time, and the vanes not getting full movement, or maybe there is a vacuum leak, sensor failure or control value issue.

Get the car scanned for fault codes as the first port of call.

Oh, and I suspect the car is an L&K (not L&C!), so should be a nice car, top of the trim range with most toys probably

Welcome to Brisky, if you are considering buying the car next year hang around on here for a bit and you will soon learn all about the common faults (across the engine/trim range), and anything specific to the 130 (can't think of much off the top of my head).

Yes, the PD130 engine is very reliable. I haven't seen many (if any) threads on Octavia 1 about problems with this engine.

I've had my car since it had about 45k on the clock and I'm now closing rapidly on 130k. The only engine-related issue I've had is the coolant temperature sensor but that's a common thing across all the engines, not just this one.

Oh, and the time my wife filled it with petrol!

I didn't think the 130 had a VVT?

I'd agree about the need for code reading, and suspect a blocked cat if I'm right about the turbo.

Oh, and the time my wife filled it with petrol!

Haha, I've nearly done that *once* in my first week of ownership whilst half asleep... glad it got sorted out!

I didn't think the 130 had a VVT?

All 1.9TDIs do apart from the 90, I think?

All 1.9TDIs do apart from the 90, I think?

early 90s has a wastegate, later ones where VVT (as is the 110, and 130 [iirc])