Hi all, I am new here but not new to Skoda's. I am having a problem with my 2003 fabia tdi PD100, It vibrates and judders due to the torque of the engine, Symptoms below....

Driving at low road speed and engine speed maybe in 4th or 5th gear cruising any slight touch of the throttle generates a huge amount of vibration through the car, this happens in all gears if the revs are below 2000rpm, I know that at low revs the engine will struggle in a high gear but have had plenty of VW pd tdi cars and they could always smoothly cruise along at 40mph in 5th gear and smoothly pull from 40mph upwards in 5th but I have to change down to stop the vibration.

Sit at 60 mph in 5th gear cruising the car sort of pulses like it is holding back or loosing power but doesnt actually slow down. Engine is not misfiring and always runs well, full service history, replaced oil, filter, fuel filter etc...

Generally under load there is a clattery noise and lots of vibration, I have had this car for 3 years and it has done 140k but has been very well looked after but this problem is slowly getting worse. I am guessing that this could be the dual mass flywheel coming to the end of it's life??

Any advice would be great as in these times of austerity I don't want to be spending hundreds of pounds and getting it wrong.

Cheers

Marty.

Thanks then... Has anyone got a tdi with the same charactoristics they could confirm if mine is normal or buggered

Helpful lot on here Think I will try another forum where people may acnowledge my existence

Sounds like you answered your own question

Doesn't sound right, sounds like you have a problem which you, or someone else will need to look at, certainly sounds like clutch/DMF doesn't it.

May be costlier if it takes your gearbox in part with it. I wouldn't drive in 5th at 40mph and you'd be best trying to drive it more "normally".

I've started to get the idle clatter (a bit) but none of your symptoms on driving and I'm damn sure I'm not going to encourage it with poor use of the gearbox (no offence). Surely if you know the DMF to be a weakness then it would be daft to encourage it with forcing the point with torque through a high gear in low revs - just my 10p worth

Martytdi I think you have answered your own question too. it does sound like DMF problems and it is best to get things checked. I certainly would not recommend labouring the car off boost at low speed in the high gears though. Apparently one of the biggest DMF killers is people pulling away on idle in traffic without bringing up the revs a bit. Yes the Diesel flexibility allows you to do it but it puts strain on the DMP apparently. Get the thing checked but exercise a bit of mechanical sympathy meanwhile

P.S It is always good trying other forums for advice. Probably the biggest advice resource for the VW TDI engine is www.tdiclub.com. Have a search of their excellent advice pages and join their forum to0

Edited 14 March, 201214 yr by Matt Bodycombe

I had a Golf Tdi with a dodgy DMF, you could feel it through the pedal and the noise/vibration went away when you put your foot right down on the clutch.

As for the forum, your thread needs to have VRS in the title, otherwise interest seems very limited, that's my experience anyway :(

Might be worth paying £12 for freedom and getting an expert opinion in the "ask a tech2 section too