My car has decided this last year to literally fall to pieces. So I had her serpentine belt and alternator replaced as the alternator shaft fell off going down a dual carriageway. I've had her front offside CV and internal boot replaced her back bushes due to excessive play preventing tracking to be done. She's leaking coolant. Her rear washer won't work and there's no leak but pump can be heard. I've had to replace both rear abs sensors along with all discs and pads this year. The passenger door won't shut without being slammed... But

 

She's making a plethora of sounds and things that give me concern, main symptoms are over revving in 2nd she's at 3k rpm for 25mph in second gear with an automatic gear box on her diesel TDI bkd2 engine. At idle she chitters randomly. She's jerking between 2nd and 3rd gear. And a wobble if I accelerate at 50mph from a low speed like 20 (as FFS Oxford council think 20 should be in every town n village).

 

I'm worried because when the rear bushes were done the guy left my car without attaching the drive shaft properly so when I took for tracking she shook all the way there and back. I was terrified and the @#£@ rinsed me for a second call out as he waited till it suited him to fit the inside boot that was leaking. I'm terrified that the garage will replace the rad when it's not required as the leak is occasional indicating that they need to check better for where the leak is if any as I suspect it's the lid not pressuring. And these revs have me really worried 😫

 

I've tried sports mode, override kicked in dropped me back to 2nd when I tried putting it into 3rd. I'm confused because I'm looking around for solutions and guessing maybe it's the injection hose, maybe it's the flywheel idk 😐

 

Any insight? Disabled, single and mechanicly minded female.

So interesting thing happened the tcs light that's been on continuously with abs waiting for our garage appointment, suddenly flashed and went off leaving me terrified as rpm skyrocketed and wouldn't let me knock it up a gear. Terrified I tried the sports mode hoping it would trigger it to change gear. It hit 5k revs so I knocked it back into drive. Started to panic and pray hard that she would just last one more trip as we have garage on Friday. Suddenly she snapped out of it and put the tcs light back on. Relieved I got to my destination unscathed but really worried 😫 my cars telling me she's sick. But do I ask the garage to check the dmf and injector pipe orrr is this just a mistake due to the abs sensor needing replacement on the other side less than a week after the nearside one ... Am I chasing an electric ghost? I'm pretty sure either way my rad is not leaking as two weeks have passed and it's not dropped level making me doubt garage insisting on replacing it.....

Given that these cars (and all other modern vehicles) are comples and substantially computer controlled the most effective route to a diagnosis is via a scan, something your garage will most likely do first.  You could buy a cheap scanner (anything from 15-50 squid) but - realistically - unless you have some knowledge of what you would be looking at such a choice would be more likely to confuse and alarm than to help.

 

Thanks for the reply they did a scan recently to find the abs issue nothing else came up so they fixed it then the other abs sensor went so another scan showed it's the sensor on the other side....

@AMiles MKII Octavias suffered from corroded wheel hub sensor rings,  which illuminated ABS and TCS warning lights on the dashboard clocks. Did they replace the hubs?  I  am not sure why this would be the reason for an alarming/uncontrollable surge in RPM. Good luck with getting it safely to the garage tomorrow. 

Thank you red boy yes they replaced the one that needed it at the time and replaced all discs and pads.