Hello!

So I've owned my Octavia for almost a year now and put close to 18000 miles on it in that time (a lot of motorway miles between Cumbria and Cambridge), and I've found the driving experience to be fantastic aside from pulling away quickly without the 1.5 TSI bog down/kangaroo behaviour that I've only just managed to be able to predict and compensate for.

Anyway, over the last few days I've noticed that the car has felt somewhat down on power, especially in third gear when trying to do a fast pull when joining dual carriageways / motorways, for example. It kind of feels like the car is in eco mode all the time. I'll put my foot flat to the floor in 3rd gear at 40 mph / ~ 3k rpm and there's a modest push of boost but no more from the turbo, instead of the (relatively) strong & powerful shove that I'm used to. Another example - 4th gear at 70 mph / ~ 3.5k rpm - pedal flat to floor provided nothing for 1-2 seconds then a gentle push of acceleration where I'm used to it pulling much harder than that. The performance of the car around town / up to half throttle is pretty much normal.

The car has not displayed any warnings or errors, and my Foxwell NT301 OBD2 scanner didn't find anything either. My colleague let me use his OBDeleven which brought up a fault code P17D800 - torque limitation due to clutch temperature, which makes sense on the one hand because that's exactly what I'm experiencing, but on the other hand a) I haven't exactly been doing burnouts, I try my hardest to take care of my clutch and b) my octavia is a manual gearbox and so wouldn't have a clutch temperature sensor? There were some other codes to do with the brake booster but I don't know if they're relevant or not.

Is there a possibility that, especially given the recent OTA update that my car installed by itself last week, something funky has gone on inside the ECU and falsely produced that fault code? Or have I buggered my car without even trying?

I have talked to Skoda about it but I won't be able to take it to them for investigation until next month, the car is a 2023 reg with 5 months left on the manufacture's warranty.

Many thanks!

Did you try clearing the codes to see if that helps? Sometimes with these glitches, a fault is triggered which can dictate the way the car behaves. If it is just down to a glitch though, simply clearing the code/s can bring the car back to life. If you have already cleared them and they've returned, then it's possible you need to do further investigation obviously

3 hours ago, scotthugh3s said:

Did you try clearing the codes to see if that helps? Sometimes with these glitches, a fault is triggered which can dictate the way the car behaves. If it is just down to a glitch though, simply clearing the code/s can bring the car back to life. If you have already cleared them and they've returned, then it's possible you need to do further investigation obviously

Thanks for the reply, I’m going to check again tomorrow with my colleague’s OBD 11 but I think we either tried to clear the codes and they wouldn’t clear or they came back immediately on re-scanning. I’ll get the full list of codes and share tomorrow.

I really hope this just a software glitch somewhere in the ECU. What puzzles me most is the fact that there are no warning lights or error messages on the dash when starting or driving, because I’d think - given the number of times I’ve gotten the false errors about stop start, hill assist, auto-hold etc that go away as soon as I start the car - that it would let me know about a genuine fault with the car.

Is there a chance that this is battery related also? Or maybe ABS module giving erroneous wheel speed data? Cheers.

A quick google suggests that it could be due to a faulty or clogged up EGR valve. But as with everything on modern cars, it could also be due a host of other things, sensors, wiring, software issues etc etc 😆😠

The fact that you notice the decline in power suggests to me that it could well be the EGR valve, although if the sensors or wiring relating to it are playing up the car would mimic the fault whether it existed or not. Even so it seems a safe bet to start looking around the EGR valve as the cause of your issue I'd say

Edited 28 March28 Mar by scotthugh3s

May be worth a look indeed, is the EGR valve visible/visually assessable in the engine bay on the 1.5 TSI or will it require tools? I would be very surprised if the valve were to be clogged as I do around 18000 miles a year, around 1/3 of which are sitting steady at 70/80 for 5 hours on the motorway between Cambridgeshire and Cumbria, with the rest being a reasonably distanced commute (20 miles/30 minutes) where I'm more than happy to use power and the rev range where it's safe. I don't know if driving style contributes to EGR valve clogging but I'm assuming it does, I also only use E5 (v-power) if that means anything.

I am leaning / hoping / praying towards it being an electrical gremlin with a simple fix, based on the lack of any warning lights or error messages at all, but also the car did a funny glitch in the morning on the day I realised it was down on power. I started the car and went to do my "lane assist off, stop start off" routine before driving and the virtual cockpit did a bit of a stutter (lack of a better term) and none of the buttons on the steering wheel worked. Couldn't change volume, couldn't go through the cockpit menus, voice command, arrow buttons, nothing. I drove for a minute or two and then pulled over, turned the engine off and locked the car, unlock, ignition on, engine start, all fine and buttons functional again.

This is driving me mad, but it's booked in with Skoda on the 13th of next month along with my service, so I'll see what they say. The power loss isn't to the extent where it's unsafe, it's got enough power to get around town and onto a motorway, but overtakes require a bit more thought and a downshift or two.

Now that you've mentioned the electrical glitch, for it to have happened on the same day as these problems started, you'd have to think that they're connected. I've never experienced this issue you're having, but I did encounter a host of other issues when my battery ran flat.

The main one was the airbag module, it registered a fault which I was able to clear but doing so wouldn't turn out the orange light it brought up. Turns out I needed to update the software on my airbag module, although it wasn't Skoda that told me this, they'd have charged me for a new module, thankfully I got some great advice from a fella on FB who'd encountered my issue before.

So yeah, could be software, or electrical etc etc. From my experience though, I wouldn't really trust Skoda to help you get to the bottom of it, by all accounts they're they're much more focused on taking your money by any means rather than helping you out.

How old was your battery when it started to give you those issues? I also had brake booster codes so perhaps it could be related to an ABS module or something similar.

1 hour ago, scotthugh3s said:

From my experience though, I wouldn't really trust Skoda to help you get to the bottom of it, by all accounts they're they're much more focused on taking your money by any means rather than helping you out.

I'm going to remain optimistic but I am anticipating an outcome like this, there's a VW specialist close to my work so they're my next option. Thanks!

My battery was around 3 years old when this happened, it was mostly my own fault though, I'd recently purchased OBD11 and would sit with it hooked up (ignition on) without a trickle charger time & again.

I would trust the independent VW specialist over Skoda personally. It's not just due to issue's I've faced, but if you've been a member of this forum for any time, and have seen the repeated way in which Skoda treat their customers with nothing short of contempt time & again...

Well I took it into the dealership yesterday and they "couldn't find anything wrong with it". They didn't charge me for any diagnosis, which they said they would do at the start of the day, and also didn't charge me for a door refitting that they said they had done but clearly hadn't done, so my bet is that they didn't actually do any diagnosis, or that they did and they're being dishonest with me. I'm going to continue driving it and if it gets bad again it'll be off to a specialist...