Hi all and thank you in advance for any advice you can give me.

 

I should say up front that what I know about cars and mechanics can be written on the back of a piece of confetti...so please use short words and speak slowly! ;-)

 

My Yeti was registered March 2010 so six years old with a full service history at 2 different Skoda garages. I bought the car after one owner with 18,000 miles on the clock and it has now done 68,000 miles

 

My compressor has just broken and I'd like to get some feedback from other Skoda Yeti owners. Obviously I'm not delighted to have something as expensive as this need replacing. Having taken good care of the car and kept up with the service schedule at Skoda dealerships I feel like this unit shouldn't be breaking down so soon.

 

So first up, does anyone share that view or is a compressor breaking down after 6 years just par for the course? I live in France and the Skoda garage that has been servicing the car for the last 3 years has just disbanded but even if it hadn't the French don't do much in the way of customer satisfaction. I guess I was wondering if Skoda itself stood by it's components in anyway outside of the first three or five year warranty?

 

Also at the same time I have an engine noise issue. If I push down on the clutch while the car is idling then the engine starts sounding more like a tractor than a smoothly running Skoda Yeti. Okay, not that bad but it's the best way I can describe the change in engine noise. I took the car into a new Skoda garage to discuss this and the mechanic did the old sharp intake of breath and said that it was either a problem with the clutch/flywheel or the gear box (I think!) and that even diagnosing the problem would be a big job. 

 

If I understood correctly, if the problem isn't something simple with the clutch then it would probably be a gear box problem requiring the replacement of it!

 

I'm taking the car somewhere else for a second opinion so I'll update here when I know more.

 

I guess my overriding feeling is that, despite the care I've taken with the car, maybe now is the time to sell it and upgrade...Is six years and 65 - 70,000 miles just about the time everything starts to break on a Skoda?

 

Thanks in advance for any views. 

 

Jamie

 

 

 

 

The a/c on my Octavia failed at about 4 years and I was informed that I'd need to cover the £1200-odd bill myself. A local independent would supply and fit the same part (sourced from TPS) for about £450.

The route I took was to trade the car in for my Yeti.

I'd certainly expect the part to last the life of the car, but that doesn't seem to be the case, and in my experience, Skoda were not keen to pay for it

Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk

Any part on any car can fail at any time but on the Skoda Fabia I had for 10½ years nothing apart from a window regulator broke unexpectedly.

 

The engine noise is probably the DMF or clutch release bearing.

Welcome to this friendly and helpful facility!

 

Sadly air con compressor failure is a 'known' issue right across the VAG range. If you have a comprehensive service history your dealer may be able to reduce the headline cost considerably - on the other hand there are companies who can undercut dealer prices by a large margin.

 

I went down the main dealer route at 5+ years, 39k miles and received a 45% contribution via Rainworth Skoda, who are my preferred choice over here.

 

HTH

Edited 14 June, 201610 yr by Merlinman

Thanks for your replies and the warm welcome!

 

Sounds like the compressor is just one of those things, as you say Merlinman, I don't think I'm going to get any help from Skoda after 6 years

 

The engine noise is probably the DMF or clutch release bearing.

 

Hmmm..that doesn't sound good. What causes that and how urgent is it to get fixed? At the moment its just a slightly noisy engine intermittently rather than an obvious, constant issue?

 

And how much could something like that be?

Get quotes for supply and fit of a clutch kit

And

Get quotes for supply and fit of a DMF and clutch kit combined, which would be the long term best way to go if you are keeping it.

I would imagine £500-1000 minimum

Add

Get a scan done first ......it might show up something that needs fixing which is going to be accessible whilst doing the clutch job as there is a lot of labour involved extracting it

If yours is a diesel the EGR valve will be one item worth checking out.

Edited 14 June, 201610 yr by Ryeman

The aircon issue can wait but I would get the dmf rattle seen to as if it fails completely it could cause damage to the gearbox as well

Edited 14 June, 201610 yr by wiilydog

Thanks guys...I'm going to see if I can get a second hand compressor from anywhere and take the car back to the garage where I bought it for an assessment for the rest of it.

UPDATE: 

 

Hi all...I just wanted to pop back and say thank you for your comments and advice to my original question...and to let you know how it panned out.

 

DMF and clutch kit: Good call. I did indeed need to replace this...the cost was €1250 (Just over £1000)

 

Air con: I've never been very trusting of garages...always suspicious that I'm being ripped off which isn't helped by my complete lack of knowledge. Well my air-con issue hasn't done anything to change my opinion. I took my car to a company in France called Nurauto (the French equivalent of Kwik-Fit) because they were offering a complete service of the air-con system for about €50 which included re-gassing. At that point my air-con had stopped blowing cold and I was pretty sure it just needed re-gassing. 

 

So they contact me after having the car for an hour and tell me the compressor is bust and they give me a quote. As I also have the rattle in my engine that needs looking at I take the car to a Skoda dealership garage when the mechanic shines a light down into the engine for all of 5 seconds and confirms the compressor is broken. As I got a really bad vibe of this second guy and the garage was a long way from where I live I end up taking the car to my local garage and long story short the compressor was not broken and the guy was honest enough to just service the system and re-gas it!

 

I'm not positive but I believe what needed doing was adjusting the screw on the side of the compressor?

 

So basically Norauto were either completely incompetent or actually tried to make work for themselves, and the second guy wasn't about to contradict the assessment!

 

Anyway...up and running again and thanks again for your help.

 

Jamie