My 2010 1.9 tdi estate has been fine for the 1.5 years I've had it, but suddenly has started demanding cash. 88k miles, so I was hoping to afford the cambelt in the next month or so. Now the brakepads low light has come on and there is a weird rattle from somewhere underneath at the back.

 

Here's the question.

My previous 2006 1.9 tdi definitely had a dmf. Although it never failed, it always felt flaky and I could sometimes trigger it to go bang and stop the engine if it got its elasticky bits resonating out of sync with the pulses from the pistons.

The current 2010 one doesn't do that and has always felt smooth. I have, in fact, always wondered whether it had a later, better dmf or had at some time been fitted with a smf.

However, for the last couple of months I have worried about the clutch. Usually it feels fine but, if I spend a long time creeping forward in a queue (eg in the Mersey Tunnel in the rush hour) at the top of the clutch travel, there is a major judder. I suspect this is something getting hot, but don't really have any evidence. I would have thought the clutch would either judder or not, so wondered if this could be something else like engine mountings. When its there, it's bad enough to alarm the wife.

 

I'm now too old to climb over cars, usually get these "proper cars" from the local main dealer and have been happy with their service dept and charges,  but can see huge costs looming. Older readers might remember that I posted in the past about my (t)rusty Disco that caught fire while being welded and its foolish replacement by a Jeep Grand Cherokee to tow my 3-ton boat. Well that remains a money pit, and still no local garages want to go anywhere near it. The local Jeep garage is way, way, way beyond a joke.

 

So, any suggestions about the judder will be welcome.

 

The brake pad low light can sometimes come on way too early when there is still plenty of meat on the pads so the dealer will probably want to sell you a set of discs and pads at a fortune when all it may need is inspecting and then the wires shorting together to get the light off the dash.

 

What is the mileage of the car?

It's 88k miles, but they are mainly spent driving tiny distances taking the people we care for from home to shop to clinic to our house and so on. So 88k killer miles.

 

Each section can vary from a few hundred yards to a mile or so, but mainly the former There is a lot of bumping up onto kerbs and similar and huge times spent waiting outside supermarkets etc. That and 20 or 40 miles a day taking daughter to work. Retirement is not for the faint hearted.

 

Our dealer sold us replacement discs and pads for the last Octavia. They were only slightly dearer than the quotes I got from a couple of other places, and they washed the car.    I'll happily get warning wires shorted, but not sure about brake-related lights.

 

 

 

 

Sounds like you could be due a new clutch then really. At a guess the clutch judder could be coming from a faulty DMF which is getting out of alignment when it gets hot. You can try taking it to the garage for a diagnosis to to be honest there isn't really a lot you can do without taking the gearbox off anyway.

 

You could try rocking the engine yourself to see if there is excessive play in anything but if it was engine mounts you would think the problem would be there all the time.

 

 

Edited 26 April, 20179 yr by SuperbTWM