Hi,

 

Our 2008 1.4 Skoda Fabia with BXW engine broke down on the road. I towed the car home, but now I would need some suggestions about the fault.

 

First I will tell some background about the car and then what actually happened. At least  for a couple of years, a relatively mild tapping noise has been coming from the engine. I thought the sound was coming from hydraulic valve lifters and a service guy in a local Skoda dealer supposed the same. He thought it was not very serious and would not require any further actions. The intensity of the sound increased with RPMs and it often nearly disappeared when the engine had warmed up. The car has been on LongLife service plan and actually before the last service the noise was quite intense but significantly reduced after the oil change.

 

About half a year and only a few thousand kilometers after the oil change  (The car is the third car in  our family and has been in the use of our offspring), the intensity of the noise has increased at least back to the level before the service and the sound could now be heard also when the engine was warm. I changed the oil and the filter, but could not observe any improvement. A couple of week after that, when accelerating at the speed of 40 km/h or something like that, the engine suddenly stopped making some clatter. I thought it was a timing belt (I have heard about premature timing belt breaking at least in our relatively harsh wintry conditions), but the timing belt actually seems to be in good shape. I have not yet opened the cam cover and not sure if I am going to do it myself since I have not proper premises for that, maybe not enough know-how and I am quite busy with my work. The only fault code is P0328 - Knock Sensor 1 Circ. High Input.

 

I found this video now and the tone of the sound the engine had been making was exactly (although maybe not so intense as in the video).

 

 

In the comment section, they talk about piston slap (knock) and cam follower, but do you have any knowledge or suggestion which could be the most probable reason? 

 

Sorryo for my English, hope you understood, I am not a native speaker.

 

 

Edited 1 July, 20187 yr by sfl
Typo in the engine code

Hello and welcome to this forum!

 

Sorry to hear about your BXW engine issues, your English is good so don't worry about that!

 

That older BBY engine is really making a lot of noise, my wife ran a BBY engined Polo for 13 years and 105K miles without these noises. My daughter runs a late 2009 Ibiza with the BXW engine and it is now at over 50K miles and has none of these noises, though it does sound rougher than the BBY maybe due to the lack of an engine cover/air filter like the older BBY engine had.

 

So, back to your engine, sorry, but luckily so far I have not needed to work out what was going wrong to make these engines make that type of noise, I'd guess that it needs opening up to find out what has gone wrong, so no simple easy way round that. I'm not sure if these engines start to suffer from oil pump wear etc.

 

Edit:- one comment though, but not very appropriate at this point in time is, Longlife Servicing can shorten engine's life in my opinion, if you do sort this engine out, at its age it would be more appropriate to service it every year if annual mileage is below 15Kms.

Edited 1 July, 20187 yr by rum4mo

Thanks for your reply. This seems to be a nice forum, I have never before written anything here but sometimes read discussions in Superb III area .

 

Unfortunately, it seems to be very difficult to find information about the BXW engine on the internet, probably it is not the most desirable engine for the car hobbyists and enthusiastists writing on the forums . There are some posts about the sound but no one seems to really know the reason for that.

 

One option, which starts to sound more and more tempting is to sell the broken car to someone as it is and order a new car. The Fabia was a very good car for the price when it worked

and probably the buyer will make a great money with the car, but we actually have not possibility to use very much time for the repairs and there is always a possibility, although I personally believe the probability to be quite small, that the cylinders have been damaged which I think basically means tha the whole engine should be replaced.

Edited 1 July, 20187 yr by sfl

What happened, did the engine seize? 

That's actually a good question, everything happens so quickly. I think during acceleration all the power was suddenly lost and the engine started to make clanking noise. The wheels did not lock so probably the engine did not seize. The driver changed the gear immediately to neutral and the RPMs went to zero.

 

I actually have not tried to rotate the engine. But it should be quite safe tobrotate the engine by hand, should it? What is the correct way to do it? Can I just jack up one wheel and try to rotate it on a fith gear or should I rotate the engine from the crankshaft bolt?

I'd guess that the reason why there is not much available about these engines failing is because most of them have not failed yet - maybe I'm wrong though.

 

I would remove the spark plugs and slowly turn the engine over by using a ring wrench on the crank pulley.

Check the cambelt first

On ‎01‎/‎07‎/‎2018 at 21:56, xman said:

Check the cambelt first

 

Hum, a very good point, I've forgotten but it might just be a few spring clips that can be prised open with a screwdriver - might be some pipes in the way, but even if you get the cover to move slightly you can shine a light down into the space and see if anything looks bad.

Well that knocking on the video sounds like a spun bearing / bent con rod. A lifter wouldn't make that much noise! Check the cam belt like everyone else said but also might be worth getting a garage to remove to sump and get them to check your con rod bearings / con rods for excessive play / bending! 

 

I'm only saying that because the video you posted is quite severe. 

Thanks a lot for your contribution. The car has been sold now for a guy who said he is going to replace the engine, so unfortunately the reason for engine failure remains as a mystery.

 

I tried to rotate the engine but it seemed to be stuck. The cambelt was in good condition.