This is an issue we have had with this car since we brought it! It's not all the time when you are idling but it's irritating! The car has just had a worn and noisy timing chain replaced and this was supposed to get rid of this judder but it hasn't! It occurs maybe every 15-20 seconds.Any suggestions would be appreciated as usual!

If this is the 1.4 mpi. Its pretty standard as mine does this.. Usually slightly more when cold. I wouldnt worry.

Is it the 8 valve engine? They are well known for having a rough ilde. It can be made even worse by a poor battery due to the loading on the alternator.

It's weird it's like it's got the shakes!

It's called cam scatter, all ancient pushrod engines suffer from it.

It's called cam scatter, all ancient pushrod engines suffer from it.

Can you describe what happens? Google isn't helping me much.

It's due to the engine being tuned to meet emission standards. I had the same engine in several Skoda Estelles and a Rapid and they didn't have a rough idle back then.

Edited 29 November, 201510 yr by TMB

Can you describe what happens? Google isn't helping me much.

 

Sure, pushrod engines which have chain driven cams suffer from the cam timing moving back and forth a few degrees over a period of revolutions, this is called cam scatter and it leads to uneven idling, it's partly a function of the chain being loose enough to allow free rotation and partly because both the inlet and exhaust cam lobes are on a common camshaft and therefore advance or retard a variable amount from one cylinder to the next, it's exacerbated by the very lean mixtures that emissions regs dictate.