bowldilocks, my tdi just chewed its turbo!

[slidejules]

What a night - left nottingham at 1.30 this morning after a gig with my band, towing the trailer home, cruise control at 55mph, and at 4am suddenly it makes a wooshy noise as if I'd just driven over a large sheet of paper, and then no boost! No turbo whistle at all from the engine, god awful screeching noise as I get over 2000rpm, oodles and oodles of horrible black smoke out of the back. Damn! Looks like I've just popped my turbo-breakage cherry! One RAC call later, it's ten to ten and I've just got home to London... what a night...

I can sense it's going to be horribly horribly expensive to fix too. Double damn.

[sharkrider]

may just have been a pipe blowing off

[Tech1e]

may just have been a pipe blowing off

You tend to get a turbo whistle even with a pipe off.

Still can only hope

[slidejules]

Wow - in the cold light of day and after a short well earned sleep, went outside to have a look at the engine bay... turns out it *was* an inlet pipe come loose, drivers side right at the front of the engine bay. The pipe comes down from the engine, turns and goes into some kind of unit via a very short piece of rubber hosing. For some reason the rubber hosing had completely come loose of the pipe on one side. This obviously had two effects - bypassing the turbo hence no whistle (well, if it was there it was very quiet!), and pushing the pipe back against one of the belts at the front of the engine bay, which has worn a nice groove into the pipe (hence the screechy noise) although thankfully not worn through entirely. At least it's not a new turbo and at least it can be made driveable easily enough. Just struggled to reattach the pipe though, no joy (the clip is really tough!) so time for another RAC call. Bingo!