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Mark 2 Octavia 1.9 TDI - Doing the Mr Muscle Treatment


FinlayF

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I own a 2006 Octavia Ambiente 1.9 TDI Estate that’s been going into limp mode under acceleration load. That’s been happening since about a week after I bought it so I’ve no real idea of how the car should drive without sticky vanes in the turbo!

 

I wanted to do the Mr Muscle treatment on the turbo as described here by Lofty79:

 

Lofty79's Mr Muscle Guide

 

but couldn’t find any descriptions or pictures for how to do this on a Mark II. It’s an old thread and my recent-ish questions on it found no answers, so I delayed tackling the problem for many months. I noted from the above thread above that many others had also sought details for a Mark II turbo clean so I decided I’d post my own experiences when I finally tackled the task last week.

 

Summary: First, I’d have to say that this is not a job for the faint-hearted. A job that would take me 20 minutes (excluding the 2-hour waiting time for the Mr Muscle to work) with the engine out of the car took me 4 hours because of the inaccessibility of the parts. 

 

My problem was compounded by the fact that previous owners had exchanged some bolts with a variety of others, so that there was a mixture of Allen bolts, Torx bolts, nuts and metric flat head bolts. Because at least 4 of these bolts are in positions where it was impossible for me to see the heads (even with a camera) I was attempting to discover their configuration by touch and experiment, losing much precious time.

 

A further problem is that space is so tight that many of the bolts were difficult to loosen simply because of a lack of room to apply leverage and torque. I’m not a professional mechanic but I’ve been doing mechanical work on engines for over 30 years and finished up using a variety of tools from a fairly substantial collection to get these bolts off.

 

Once the bolts and several components were removed to provide access, I still couldn’t actually see the turbo, and had to apply the Mr Muscle by touch alone. This involved laying padding on top of the engine, lying down on it and encircling the engine with both arms for extended periods to get access to the exhaust manifold.

 

Conclusion: Based on the fact that the limp mode has disappeared (hopefully for a long while!) I’d say that the job was worth it, but I can only imagine the frustration someone would feel if they spent 5 or 6 hours on this only to have the problem continue, and I’d suggest that could easily happen because getting the plastic tube into a turbo you can’t see is very difficult, and it would be easy to have the Mr Muscle miss the turbo altogether and for the vanes to remain clogged.

 

Of course, it could be that I failed to address the problem in the simplest way and therefore made things more difficult for myself, and if that’s the case then I hope others will comment below and show short-cuts that can be taken.

 

I’ll illustrate the steps I went through.

 

1. The turbo and its actuator are located on the back of my 1.9 engine, with very limited space between the exhaust manifold and the bulkhead. There is no access at all from above without removing various components. In the pic below I removed A, B and C. Then I loosened one of the anchor points for D and swung it around the side of the engine, giving me space to get my hands over the back (see pic 2). I then lay on the engine and encircled it with both arms to work ‘blind’ around the back and remove the pipe that leads from the EGR cooler to the exhaust manifold (see pic 3).

 

MM01.jpg.5dc497ece3febdec95e3729c54b800c4.jpg

 

MM01a.jpg.3a2bad3db70d7065603a89d0497935a1.jpg

 

2. Pic 3 below was one of several taken with a small camera shoved down the back of the engine and pointed randomly in various directions to let me know what I was dealing with.

 

MM02.jpg.d7124fb2612dbcaa04c9f07974ac45cb.jpg

 

The pipe E needs to come off to give access to the manifold. It’s fastened in 4 places, one of which (right up under the cooler and indicated by an arrow) is very tough to access. (TIP: on reassembly, it’s worth putting this difficult bolt in first with a few finger turns - if you can actually get your fingers in there! Tolerances are tight and if the difficult bolt is left until last you may not get it started without cross-threading. )


3. Once the pipe was off I needed to get the plastic hose into the turbo, ready for a burst of Mr Muscle (see the red line for the hose path indicated on pic 4). This is a tough ask because the pipe needs to go in horizontally, then to the side, then down into the turbo. This is no mean feat with a thin, pliable plastic tube held around the back of an engine and fed into an access hole you can’t see. I repeated the feeding operation about  12 times until I was as sure as I could be that the pipe had actually gone into the turbo. Even then, I had my fingers crossed!

 

MM03.jpg.ba4c773da49a8c64ebf0fee1f6fc41fd.jpg

I pumped in a very generous helping of Mr Muscle. Because I couldn’t see the hole, I had to use my fingers to assess when Mr Muscle was coming back out of the hole.
I then pumped the actuator F multiple times every 10 minutes for 2 hours. This actuator was far too hard to push down with thumb pressure, so used a long, thin dowel fed down from the side (but a long screwdriver would work as well).

 

MM04.jpg.4d0cca5d30953ffff6b29231c7a9b36c.jpg
 
4. Two hours later I began the reassembly. Despite constant care I still had two bolts drop from slippery fingertips held at weird angles and was fantastically lucky to rescue both on blind fishing expeditions on the floor pan using a neodymium magnet held in a flexible claw. Short of that would have meant taking the floor pan out.
Reassembly complete, I then took the car for a ‘burn’ and less stuff came out the exhaust than I’d expected but it didn’t go into limp mode and the acceleration curve was better. This leads me to wonder if part of the problem was a sticky actuator also, because the whole assembly was certainly a bit dry and gunked up.


It’s now 2 weeks later and no more limp mode (yet). I’ve revved the engine to the red line repeatedly in all gears and it seems to respond well. The only problem I’ve got now (which I didn’t have before) is slight hesitation when accelerating at low revs. If anyone has any suggestions for that I’d be glad to hear them.

 

Good luck!
 

 

 

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  • 1 month later...

Hi Foeism

Thanks for the thumbs up.

I never actively sorted the hesitation on acceleration but it morphed into a different acceleration curve anyway. One of the aspects of my car is that the acceleration curve seems to keep changing subtly. As I mentioned above, I've never driven this car when it was performing properly, so I've no real comparison. It's still not going into limp mode but - to me, at least -  it feels 'flatter' and less sprightly than I think it should. I'd really like to strip the engine, clean everything and then see how it drives but I can't see that happening any time soon.

Good luck with yours. If you find some way of being absolutely certain that the plastic tube has actually gone right down into the turbo, please let me know.  

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Thanks for the reply. 

I've only had my car a week, and this is the first time it's happened. 

If you don't mind I'll update on this thread when I get the time. 

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Just drove back from Lincoln to Cardiff and it didn't go into limp mode. But I drove it fairly nicely. Eased it up to speed and didn't floor it or push it over or up to the red line.

Either way I still need to investigate as it went into limp mode twice on the way up to Lincoln and both times the car was under load. 

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On 13/08/2017 at 12:37, FinlayF said:

Please do! The more info the better! This limp mode problem is a pain! If we can find easier ways to address it we'll all benefit. 

So on speaking to the garage where I purchased the vehicle from. They are taking the car in, next week and will clean the turbo and check the vains for damage. Now that's service! 

Sorry I didn't have a chance to let you know how it went, if I did it myself, but thought I'd try the garage first. 

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2 hours ago, FinlayF said:

Please let me know how this goes, re. cost and what they found. If it's cheap enough I may have mine done.

Will do, I'll find out how much as they are not charging me as I've only had the car for two weeks.  

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  • 3 months later...

I've got a Question as I'm planning to do this soon. Could you not just get under the car a unbolt the CAT from the turbo and squirt it in from there? Seems a little easier to do than taking off the EGR pipe.  I.e one tensioning clip around the Turbo hard to reach but not impossible. Pictured below. Obviously I'd be protecting the drive shaft and anything else around it from the Mr Muscle.. 

IMG_8775.thumb.JPG.27d9f483abb9e98f0cf196899bec88b7.JPG

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This is going to be the next thing I try. Access on mine is tight, and not as easy as I saw on a video for a Seat Leon (see below) but it may be easier to get the Mr Muscle on to the vanes.
 

 

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Yes mate that's the way to do it if access is difficult on most vehicles and on some I have drilled into the down pipe and placed a bolt in for ease of reapplication.

 

Glad my thread from years ago is still of some use.

To the OP after doing it it is pretty critical that you get to running temp and give the car a good blast to rev limit a few times to burn off what's been loosened by Mr M.

Or it will return more quickly.

Obviously this is only something to do on VNT systems

 

Also if one returns to a driving style that causes this build up, it will return eventually.

These cars need a good hot blast from time to time

Edited by Lofty79
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Thanks, Lofty. Good to get some advice back from the guy who started this whole idea.

BTW, did you see a post on your other thread from someone who was concerned that the Mr Muscle would react with alloys inside the turbo and weaken the blades/vanes/components? Is there any truth in that, in your opinion?  

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No 

Its the intake side that is alluminium

 

The hot side is fine. That was covered in the thread as well. 

 

So many people have done it now that the concerns are pretty much quashed. If your turbo is needing replaced according to VW or other garages then you've nothing to lose anyway! 

Totally harmless when used in the hot side.

As a side note I did test on alluminium out of interest at the time and left it on there, it cleaned off the next day.

 

Obviously you do not apply it to alluminium on the cold side so it'll not be a consideration.

I've done it now 3 times on the same car that has covered 170,000 miles in that time. 

Turbo is spot on

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Thanks Lofty.  I tried to get the exhaust of the other day and do the job but the strip clap thing holding it onto the turbo seemed pretty seized on...  Any advice on getting that off?  I didn't want to snap it..  

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I would always buy a new clamp and replace it. But if you can drill and tap into exhaust then bolt it up there's a permanent access point. 

Without seeing your clamp I wouldn't like to advise but cutting old one off and replacing would be my method.

 

Also seen some DPF regen stuff if put in the tank lowers the combustible temp of the soot and burns off unwanted stuff over a few days.

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1 hour ago, Lofty79 said:

No 

Its the intake side that is aluminium

 

The hot side is fine. That was covered in the thread as well. 

 

Thanks, Lofty. I'm going to try access via the exhaust pipe next time.

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  • 9 months later...

Following on from my earlier (ineffective) attempt at accessing the turbo from the top (described in the opening post of this topic), I decided to go in from underneath. In this regard the following video was invaluable, but I will add notes below that pertain to doing this on a Mk 2 Octavia 1.9 Estate (2006 model).

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56oIU-sF7d0

 

The above video features a Seat and there are a couple of differences that need to be taken into account when doing this on a Skoda Octavia Mk2. I’ll include them in the following notes on the whole job.

 

1. Access from underneath was considerably faster than from above!

 

2. I put the car up on ramps – 5 mins

 

3. I removed the undertray - 10 mins.

 

4. There are two bolts that secure the strap that attaches the CAT housing to the engine body. I removed the lower bolt and loosened the upper. I think they’re 15mm or 16mm. The upper one was fiddly to access – 10 mins.

 

5. This left the connection between the CAT housing and the turbo. Unlike the Seat (which has three bolts) the Octavia uses a circular clamp (see photo - credit Dave Searle post above)

 

clamp-in-situ-credit-dave-s.jpg.b5221563871db261dc2984248ebd82a5.jpg

 

that holds the two flanges together. My exhaust looks slightly different to the one shown in Dave's photo but the clamp is identical. It’s pinched up tight by an Allen bolt, but simply loosening that will not cause the clamp to fall off since it’s likely to be wedged on (it’s an interference fit on its 3 internal clips). You can wrestle with it, bend it and hit it, destroying it in the process because you plan to renew it, but as it costs over £22 for a new one I’d prefer to reuse the old one if possible. To this end, I suggest gently tapping the three clips that fit over the flanges to drive them off the flanges. It’s awkward, and space is limited, but not much force was needed on mine. I used a stubby flat blade screwdriver and small hammer for the top and bottom clips nearest the clamp opening, and then gently bent down the outer ring and used a slightly longer screwdriver to tap off the back clip. Once off, the clamp was easy to bend back onto decent alignment and reuse. But buy a new one if you're unsure or are dealing with a limited time window. – 25 mins.

 

clamp-off.thumb.jpg.d032628bcd10cf85ab2dae045cf958f4.jpg

 

6. Once the clamp is loosened, the cat housing can be easily pulled aside on its flexible pipe. There is a metal gasket attached to the CAT pipe flange (see photo above). I renewed mine for about £3.

 

7. Now to the Mr Muscle … I have to confess that I did this operation twice, on two successive weeks, because the first attempt was only partially successful. I’m assuming this is because my Octavia has 120,000+ miles on it and is coked to the max, BUT also because just squirting a bit of Mr Muscle into the turbo is effective only on turbos with lighter soiling. I think mine is thickly coated, so the first treatment didn’t seem to clean much. So… for the second treatment, I decided to make it worthwhile…

 

8. I fashioned something that would force the MR Muscle right through the turbo under pressure. I cut the bottom off a plastic bottle (see pic) that was close in diameter to the turbo flange. I then padded it with some Duct tape to make it a push fit on the turbo. Before adding a jubilee clip and clamping it to the turbo I drilled a hole in it, inserted some plastic tubing and glued that in place with 4 separate thick applications of UHU glue (you can see that I had time to prepare this before doing the job, based on measurements I’d taken the previous week). I’m not sure what the plastic bottle once held but the internal diameter of the section I cut is 75mm.

 

bottle-top.jpg.d98f7f3f1f4e033de4b81a26371697b6.jpg

 

bottle-side.thumb.jpg.fa5f3c70c43b4ac8d9ab0cb567aee387.jpg

 

9. I then clamped this on the turbo flange with a jubilee clip and squirted Mr Muscle up the tube. My plastic tube is a push fit over the stem on the Mr Muscle can (once the nozzle has been pulled off) so there was no need to mess around with the WD40 ‘straw’ shown in the video.

 

10. Having squirted in Mr Muscle until it began to push out a little around the plastic housing, I then began pumping the actuator. As mentioned before, my actuator certainly can’t be depressed with a thumb (unless it’s an iron thumb!) even when it's moving freely, as the spring seems pretty strong. So I reached up behind the engine with the hook end of a small crowbar and used that to pull the actuator down before letting its spring push it back up.

 

11. Over the next 2 hours I pumped the actuator every 10 mins but also squirted more Mr Muscle in to keep the plastic housing pressurised and to force the Mr Muscle up through the system.

 

12. The actuator was moving freely from the start but I was fooled by that on my previous attempts so I kept pumping and refreshed the Mr Muscle every 30 mins.

 

13. After 2 hours I removed my plastic housing, put everything back together (this time applying some copper grease to the inside of the clips on the exhaust clamp to aid its future removal) and left the car for another 30 mins.

 

14. Assembly was obviously faster than disassembly with the following points noted:

 

15. It can be fiddly to load the gasket, hold the flanges together and get the clamp positioned correctly. Took me 5 mins of jiggling.

 

16. BEFORE fully tightening the clamp it’s necessary to position the securing strap for the CAT and loosely tighten the two fixing bolts. Once in final position the two bolts and the Allen screw can all be tightened. CARE should be taken with the lower strap securing bolt because it’s steel going in to alloy and easily stripped. The diddy who’d worked on mine in the past had overtightened it and bits of alloy thread came out when I first removed the bolt! It’s now held in with about 25% of its thread! Going to have to do something about that… Took 10 mins

 

17. Undertray back on. 5 mins.

 

18. I then started the engine while it was still on the ramps and pulsed it up to the red line and back about 20 times. The amount of crap that came out of it was satisfyingly more than on the previous attempt!

 

crap-on-pavement.thumb.jpg.697924ad2dd442a3ed006a04d567a786.jpg

 

19. I then took it for a test drive, took it up to the red line in every gear and saw a fair bit of crap blowing out and watched it gradually clear. So far, no limp mode and the car has a different feel and torque.

 

I have no illusion that the car is fixed for good (there is simply too much crud inside the EGR valve pipes to make me think the turbo must be anything but caked with it) but at least I now know (a) I can access the turbo in under 30 mins, (b) doing so will be effective because I’ll actually be able to get the Mr Muscle where it needs to go. I’m hoping this treatment will see me through the winter and I’ll give it another burst in spring. I’ve been living with this limp mode problem for two years, so any improvement is a blessing!!!

 

 

 

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32 minutes ago, FinlayF said:

Following on from my earlier (ineffective) attempt at accessing the turbo from the top (described in the opening post of this topic), I decided to go in from underneath. In this regard the following video was invaluable, but I will add notes below that pertain to doing this on a Mk 2 Octavia 1.9 Estate (2006 model).

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56oIU-sF7d0

 

The above video features a Seat and there are a couple of differences that need to be taken into account when doing this on a Skoda Octavia Mk2. I’ll include them in the following notes on the whole job.


// CUT //

 

19. I then took it for a test drive, took it up to the red line in every gear and saw a fair bit of crap blowing out and watched it gradually clear. So far, no limp mode and the car has a different feel and torque.

 

I have no illusion that the car is fixed for good (there is simply too much crud inside the EGR valve pipes to make me think the turbo must be anything but caked with it) but at least I now know (a) I can access the turbo in under 30 mins, (b) doing so will be effective because I’ll actually be able to get the Mr Muscle where it needs to go. I’m hoping this treatment will see me through the winter and I’ll give it another burst in spring. I’ve been living with this limp mode problem for two years, so any improvement is a blessing!!!

 


Awesome write up :thumbup:

I *always* find trying to get the exhaust gasket and clamp back on to be the most tricky. Normally ends up with some choice words whilst flailing around underneath.

 

Did find your choice of applying Mr.M via a plastic bottle bottom to be genius! I had always struggled to remove part of the EGR piping before trying to feed the flexi-hose down into the turbo, hoping it was in the right hole. Will have to try this the next time I need to clean the turbo. I always found using the top of an air duster can to be pretty handy. The flexi-hose I have fits over the nozzle pretty well, one zip tie and its good to go!

 

image.png.fcf5da386a9c54cbe35c9c5db99c7f7c.png

( Just take the straw out ;) )

 

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Thanks, Volf!! I seriously can't believe how much energy and time we all expend on this whole sticky vane issue! It's criminal. Surely there has to be a better alternative than a) spending a fortune on having the turbo cleaned/replaced or b) getting under your car twice a year for this crap job? Facing customers with either high maintenance bills or hours of grubby DIY work would suggest a design fault. 

Thanks for the tip about the air duster top!

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  • 2 years later...

I had my very over coddled Skoda Fabia TDI with a VNT turbo for ten years and drive it like my great, great granny. It does forty miles four times a week down a 60 mph max A road and nothing else. 2000 revs all the way, mostly behind big trucks and rarely more than 2500. So come sixty thousand miles, I get the over boost problem and limp mode overtaking a truck on a hill at sixty miles an hour. Found my way to this excellent thread and looked at what is involved. At seventy, I am less inclined to crawl under the car and burrow into the exhaust manifold than I used to be, so instead, I read the experiences of the contributors and thought about whether I could free the vanes up by the Italian Tune Up Method.

 

So, I drove it to the red line and held it just under,  in second and third on the said A road for about twenty miles. I did this a couple of times and it gradually started to improve. I could still get it into limp mode, but it was happening under more sustained hammering. Then I hit on the idea of blasting it from a roundabout up a long hill in third and pumping the throttle on and off at about 70 up hill. Full throttle and off, full throttle and off. The reasoning here is I was trying to work that vane actuator mechanism and to make the vanes change back and forth to clear the carbon obstruction. The hill is a couple of miles long. After a bit of this treatment, I am pleased to say that I can't get it to go into limp mode anymore.

 

I am giving it the beans up that hill every trip these days and will keep doing it. You have to be cruel to be kind sometimes.

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  • 2 months later...

Hi Alex,

 

Well, the answer is yes and no to whether I have any issues.

 

Certainly cured the limp mode thing. I can't get it to go back into limp mode no matter how hard I hammer it, but I did have an issue with one of those speed camera vans while I was doing my hard throttle on, hard throttle off working of the vanes about a  month ago. I was caught for a speed awareness course doing 68 on a single carriage way road. Cost me ninety quid!

 

The mechanical problem is certainly cured though. I'm not claiming my approach will solve every case, but it certainly saved mine and it was a bad case, because if I ever floored the pedal for more than about two seconds, it would go right into limp mode even at 55/60 miles an hour and it was happening every time. Not now. Once I got that vane moving a bit, I just floored it and then off, floored it and off, floored it and off, and it got better and better until I have no issues at all, apart from spotting that sly fellow in the camera van parked in lay byes and on verges. 

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