Hi all,

A short while ago, I took my '54 plate Fabia 1.9tdi to be serviced and MOT'd at a local garage (non-dealership). All seemed well as they handed me my MOT cert, then they mentioned "one thing you should be aware of"... they had found that the wire (it's actually a thick bit of cable insulated with plastic) from the glow plugs that runs across the top of the engine had at some point overheated and melted the plastic coating along several inches. The wire in question is in full view as soon as the plastic engine cover is removed, running horizontally across the top of the engine block, and was indeed melted along a portion and had clearly burnt at some point. The thing is, I was advised to either 1) carry on driving until something happens or 2) let them put in an entire new wiring loom at a cost of in excess of £900 !!!

Since the car is of an age where £900+ would be a massive spend compared to it's value, I have chosen option 1 for now, but making regular checks on the car - there has been no further change. When I can, I am inclined to take it to a Skoda dealer to attach it to a diagnostic machine, for which I will pay around £100.00

My question is this: Does anyone recognise (from my admittedly imprecise description) this problem? Or, are my local garage just 'fishing' to try and fleece money from me? Personally, I find it hard to believe that this problem can require an entire wiring loom replacement as everything else seems to be fine. In any case, my confidence in my local garage has, erm, gone up in smoke.

Cheers

Strawman

Find someone local with VCDS to scan it for considerably less than £100 (like free-ish) and see whether it is generating any fault codes.

Does the car run as normal? any symptoms?

Pics of damaged area?

I'm sort of thinking out loud here a bit, but from the description I can't imagine it being anything other than the glowplug feed which:-

1. Is only live when doing a cold start below 5C.
   
2. Could be replaced by an auto electrician, Bosch Diesel or TurnerTune without needing a complete engine bay loom.
   
3. Can probably be fixed using heat-shrink; see above about auto electrician.
   

If any of these don't take a 0 off the bill. I'll be most surprised.

Thanks for the suggestions, I will try to get some pics on tomorrow if poss. Car is running normally, still getting excellent mpg, engine sounds fine, not noticing any sluggishness.

Wish I'd thought of coming on to the forum earlier.

As said if its glow plug wire it wont effect anything regarding how the car runs.. mpg etc.. all it will effect is cold starts.

If it was me I'd tape it up with insulation tape to stop it touching something and arcing out then just leave it if there's no other problems

If it was me I'd tape it up with insulation tape to stop it touching something and arcing out then just leave it if there's no other problems

I'd go easy with that sort of advice, it sounds like there is a common supply to all the plugs, so that means there will be quite a lot of current, and so a bit of heat, common insulating tape is "okayish" as a temporary repair on signal leads, but not of main high current lines. I'd think that a plug had shorted out and caused that wire to overheat.