hi all i have a new superb estate, 8 weeks old 6000 miles!! im a taxi driver! the car has died!! skoda blaming bad fuel but have not tested fuel im puzzled they originally thought i had a crank shaft sensor problem but since say its contaminated fuel! they are now trying to telll me car beeds 4 injectors, fuel pump and a fuel rail!! im totally miffed as i always get my fuel in the usual places bp etc!! can anyone give me any advice as theres not a chance i wanna/can pay the £2500 they are looking to fix my pride and joy!!

oh btw they have my car nearly 2 weeks!!! skoda uk dont wanna know!!!

A crank or camshaft sensor failure will only make the car difficult to start, it will start but take around 30-40 seconds on the starter. After this time the car will fall back to the other sensor and start. I ran my old Superb2 with duff camshaft sensor for months wondering why it would not start properly until I had the car scanned with VCDS.

Surely replacing all that due to duff fuel is overkill, you may get away with draining the duff fuel and refuelling with known good diesel.

It would pay to get the fuel tested so you can claim off the garage if that is what it is

hi all i have a new superb estate, 8 weeks old 6000 miles!! im a taxi driver! the car has died!! skoda blaming bad fuel but have not tested fuel im puzzled they originally thought i had a crank shaft sensor problem but since say its contaminated fuel! they are now trying to telll me car beeds 4 injectors, fuel pump and a fuel rail!! im totally miffed as i always get my fuel in the usual places bp etc!! can anyone give me any advice as theres not a chance i wanna/can pay the £2500 they are looking to fix my pride and joy!!

It seems like things don`t work as well as they do here.......concerning repairs.....

Surely replacing all that due to duff fuel is overkill, you may get away with draining the duff fuel and refuelling with known good diesel.

'Fraid not............ For a number of manufacturers, the only way they will guarantee a fix on a common rail diesel where fuel contamination is suspected, is by replacing all items associated with the fueling system. This on occasion can include all pipework and the fuel tank.

The rational is that contaminated fuel (or unleaded instead of diesel) leads to rapid wear of the fuel pump. Tiny metallic fragments then enter the fuel system, and cause problems when they reach the injectors. Since most common rail systems have a return to the fuel tank, then the particles can reach there too..

Only one of the reasons I have happily returned to petrol after 20 years of driving diesels........... (but there again, I'm doing a third of the miles the OP is doing)

Sorry to hear of your problems, made worse by a thoroughly incompetent dealership by all accounts. How can they "blame bad fuel" without testing it? Why would you need all the parts alleged from their "diagnosis," which yet again boils down to having a policy of replacing everything instead of searching for and diagnosing the actual problem. I accept what ksr says above, but they've not semed to have made such a case in this instance.

Skoda can't turn a blind eye to this - it's their product. You need to turn up the heat considerably to get anywhere. Local radio, press, other media, CAB - whatever you do, don't give up. Where's the replacement/courtesy car I would have expected? Name the dealer and the garage and get stuck in!

Ray

hi guys cheers for the comments/advice. The dealer is john mulholland motors, n.ireland!! They have now said skoda uk will test the fuel but they want the cylinder head removed to check if my valves are burnt!! seems they are not going to backdown on this even though i can produce fuel receipts for the life of the car as i said im a taxi driver and require these for my accountant. The said hire/loan car has been taken off me and im paying £54 per day now myself to hire a PSV taxi. Its a joke and looks like costing £2500 to replace 4 injectors in an attempt to ge the car to run!! Skoda UK dont really wanna know unless it comes back theres no contamination in the fuel!!

hi guys cheers for the comments/advice. The dealer is john mulholland motors, n.ireland!! They have now said skoda uk will test the fuel but they want the cylinder head removed to check if my valves are burnt!! seems they are not going to backdown on this even though i can produce fuel receipts for the life of the car as i said im a taxi driver and require these for my accountant. The said hire/loan car has been taken off me and im paying £54 per day now myself to hire a PSV taxi. Its a joke and looks like costing £2500 to replace 4 injectors in an attempt to ge the car to run!! Skoda UK dont really wanna know unless it comes back theres no contamination in the fuel!!

Davey

You are having some hassles here. I bought my Superb from J. Mulholland (Campsie), and had great customer support.

This is a puzzling one! I'm not a professional mechanic, but I've been fixing cars (including building engines) for 35 years.

I cannot see for the life of me why they want to check burnt valves on a 2 month old / 6000 mile diesel! If they suspect that the valves are burned, is it because they have done a compression test? If so, what has this got to do with the injectors.

Fuel problems led to burnt valves in the early days of unleaded petrol. (Shell had a particularly horrendous episode, particularly on Vauxhall engines)

Here, I'm just puzzled. When they say contaminated fuel, are they hinting at water in it (drain the filter - you'll soon see!) Or unleaded petrol - You would know if you had misfuelled, or if the tanker driver had misfuelled, then other drivers buying from the same filling station would be in trouble too.

Are they perhaps suspicious that the fuel started life as red diesel - note, I'm not suggesting that you have used 'dodgy' diesel, but they might be querying that.

I think you need to be getting along to your local CAB, if you have one. Is there any taxi operators association that could give you advice?

Have you spoken to the petrol station ??

Wouldn't there be many other customers with the same problem if the fuel was contaminated? I'd have thought that this would be well publicised in the local press or, as a taxi driver, by word of mouth from other taxi drivers or people they know.

hi guys, they have now put 4 new injectors in the car and its fixed!! well it will be when they fit the new parts!! they put parts from another car in to see if it would work and it did so they are ordering 4 injectors to be in on monday so fingers crossed!! downside £2500 repair bill but mullhollands are helping me out now thank god!! will have a go at skoda to help pay the bill

Did you get the car on finance? Perhaps you could claim gainst them for the repairs.

I dont know how things stand over in Ireland but if that happened to me over in the UK I would be rejecting the car as not fit for purpose.

Do you have anything like the sale of goods act over there like here or is it different?

mate i have exactly the same rules as you do as i live in n.ireland which is part of the UK lol

I would expect this to be a warranty claim unless Skoda can prove you put the incorrect fuel in the car. Firstly, I would expect the common rail pump to destroy itself as it needs the lubricating properties of diesel. If petrol is sent through a CR pump, it lunches itself rather quickly.

Keep asking them questions until you get some answers. They can't expect you to cough up £2500 because they SUSPECT dodgy fuel.

If there was a genuine fuel problem then the CR pump is a ticking time bomb and I would be tracing the source of the dodgy fuel ASAP.

hi guys, they have now put 4 new injectors in the car and its fixed!! well it will be when they fit the new parts!! they put parts from another car in to see if it would work and it did so they are ordering 4 injectors to be in on monday so fingers crossed!! downside £2500 repair bill but mullhollands are helping me out now thank god!! will have a go at skoda to help pay the bill

Davey

I know you need the car back on the road. It's your living, but something doesn't ring true here. If they believed the problem was down to contaminated fuel, they were actually risking another set of injectors by putting them into a potentially contaminated system. Yet they were willing to do this! I don't think their story adds up. Until they can show you that these injectors failed due to contaminated fuel, you should not be paying for them. Unless they can prove its contaminated fuel ( and I would be looking for an independent engineer's report), then this should be a warranty job. Plain and simple.

i agree mate and thats why this fuel is now being independantly tested. I hope to get these results by Tuesday. Another mechanic has also stated the likelihood that all 4 injectors are duff is slim!!

they are saying the diesel smelt funny, had water present and dirt!! but i buy from tescos, maxol and bp

Did you fill it up from one of the drainage gullies at the petrol station? :think:

My first port of call would be the fuel filter as any crap in the system would be concentrated there.

The filter should have stopped all of the dirt and most of the water.

If the fuel was a mix of diesel and petrol then it would smell a little odd but again, it would need to be a good percentage of petrol to kill injectors like that.

The chances of a petrol mix wrecking the injectors but doing no damage to the CR pump are slim at best. It doesn't add up.

they have also stated that it could have been in the tank for a while!!! heads melted with it also have maxol and tesco running tests on fuel.

the diesel they showed me in pictures was like a green color

im in chat room if you would like to discuss

£2500 repair bill but mullhollands are helping me out now thank god!! will have a go at skoda to help pay the bill

I appreciate that you're pleased to be getting your car back, but this is still not right by a long chalk. Where did the contamination come from if there's no other local incidences of it? Posts 15 and 19 by dstev2000 are both relevant and significant (apart from mentioning petrol, which is not a factor if you can prove you only put in diesel from receipts) and need strenuous following up.

What do you mean by "mullhollands are helping me out" please? This should have been handled differently from the start and that comment suggests that they're already wriggling. Don't accept that a small discount does anything to improve an appalling set of circumstances here. Someone is not telling the truth and - BTW - some diesel does have a greenish tinge depending on how it's lit when photographing it. A picture is not a test, a smell is not definitive proof of anything, so we await the results of the fuel testing with interest. Finally, how independent are the testing authority?

Ray

The chances of a petrol mix wrecking the injectors but doing no damage to the CR pump are slim at best. It doesn't add up.

With you on this dstev. The damage works the other way. The lack of lubricity damages the pump, and tiny metal fragments from it get to the injectors and wreak havoc.. So if petrol was the culprit, the chances of injector damage without pump damage seems slim to me.

A little clarification on this:

Make yourself comfortable and make a cuppa before proceeding :think:

I spoke to the OP in the chat room last night and the car was filled with fuel and conked out about 5 miles later which adds weight to the dodgy fuel argument.

If the fuel was dirty, the filter should have caught any particulates.

If the fuel is a blend of diesel and petrol, that will obviously pass through the filter and get to the CR pump and injectors. What are the chances it lunched the injectors AND damaged the CR pump but not to an extent where it has failed completely?

Or it could just be a batch of dodgy diesel, mistakes can and do happen between the refinery, depot, tanker and filing station.

We all know these pumps need the lubrication of diesel to operate smoothly and pure petrol will no doubt destroy the pump quickly. If it was a blend of fuels it might have been enough to prevent the pump going bang as quickly as it might otherwise do when pumping petrol.

The chances of all 4 injectors mechanically failing at once is slim to say the least, it has to be something that is common to them all, which is of course the fuel.

If bad fuel is confirmed as the culprit, it will be highly irresponsible to put the car back on the road after merely changing the injectors.

I for one would demand the CR pump, fuel rail and all other fuel related parts are changed including the lift pump, return cooler (are these still used on CRs?) fuel filter etc etc as well as a full flush of the entire fuel system. A recommendation from Skoda technical would be the best way forward here.

Of course, the biggest problem is proving the source of the bad fuel and getting the retailer to admit liability and cough up accordingly.

I wouldn't expect the retailer to admit there is a problem straight off the bat which is why my next port of call would be Trading Standards/Consumer direct.

They may well have received complaints from other drivers with the same problem.

Of course, the results of the fuel testing will determine the direction that this debacle goes in. To reiterate Ray's point: who is doing the testing and what kind of test(s) are they doing?

Ray is spot on with his point about the colour of diesel fuel, it's a strange substance like that and can vary in colour depending on how you look at it. I noted a greenish tinge to some derv when I changed my fuel filter a few weeks back.

Either way, it's all an unpleasant experience for the OP and he is losing money hand over fist, being self employed I can sympathise.

But in fairness to Skoda UK and the dealer in question; if they suspect it is down to a misfuelling or contaminated fuel, they will be less than enthusiastic about sorting the problem out.

None of this justifies being so damned slow in arriving at a diagnosis though.

Time is money when you need your car to make a living.