Hi All,

I'm wondering if anyone can offer me an opinion before I spend un-necessarily?

I've got a 55 plate Octavia Estate 1.9TDi, and when cold it is surging/stuttering as I accelerate, usually at around 2000 revs. This problem seems to disappear if I drive it for a bit, turn off, and re-start the ignition.

This orignially made me think it was an injector or a heater plug. I have a friend who has a diagnostics box, and when we plugged it in, it showed a heater plug error.

I managed to source some used plugs in good condition, removed the existing, checked their resistance and found one that seemed to be way too high, then put back in 4 that seemed to have no problem (all tested approx 0.5 Ohms).

Unfortunately this has not cured the problem, so before I go out and buy a complete new set of heater plugs, has anyone come across this problem before? Could it be something else?

Thanks for your time!

Flip.

Hi Mike,

Thanks for the response - that helps with my decision as to whether to invest in new plugs!. I was under the impression that the plugs helped ignite the diesel compression while the engine wasn't up to temperature, but your reply seems to imply I've got my facts wrong on that one.

As I say, the diagnostics box we got hold of said that it was a plug problem, but I'm aware that sometimes they aren't a perfect diagnosis... I changed the fuel filter only a couple of months ago (the primary injector started to go and I tried the filter first on that one, I ended up changing the injector and it cleared the poblem, wonder if this is related to that problem?). Might have a look at the air filter though!

Don't have any mods such as tuning boxes or otherwise, car is standard set-up - bought second hand from work. Any way of checking those sensors on the engine? I'm not sure where to start on that one!

Cheers, Flip.

Hmmm, that's an interesting thought... it was only the other day that I thought 'I swear the fuel consumption on this car has gone up a bit'...not massively but enough to make me wonder!

Thanks for all that, I'll have a good look into it this weekend and see what I can find out. Would make sense... losing small quantities of fuel, and hole in the airpipe when cold sealing as the engine gets warm could explain why I never have the problem when the car is warm.

Thanks again. Flip.