Wonder if anyone can help? I Picked up my Skoda approved used 06 Octavia 1.9tdi On March the !st . When i first started the car I noticed that I had to feather the throttle to get it started ( but thought nothing more of this). After a week working away from home I couldn't wait to get home to try out my new car. I decided to drive to my nearest dealer (Winchester) to pick up a boot liner. When I went to re-start the car after about 5 mins the car would not start - it would turn over but not fire up, worst of all it sounded really bad (the phrase a bag of spanners springs to mind) St Cross Skoda very helpful ( even though they had not sold me the car) got a mechanic to listen to it - He thought it sounded as though part of the turbo had been suked into the engine. They contacted the dealership from whom I bought the car and they sent a recovery lorry to pick the car up. Gave them a call the next day and they said the car had started up fine but that they would take the car out for a run and see if the fault re-occurred. After 4 days with the car they seemed to think that the problem was that the throttle body was sticking closed when starting from hot and that it was acting more like a vacuum pump than an engine ( oil seeping from the filler cap seemed to point to the fact that the the crankcase was pressurising when starting). They took the throttle body off and cleaned it and that seemed to cure the problem. When I collected the car it started first time without feathering the throttle so I thought the problem was cured.

Two weeks on though and this fault seems to be occurring again ( non-starting from hot about one time in every five ) If you wait a couple of minutes and fight on through the horrendous starting noise it will eventually start.

Has anyone else had this problem with their car? I will be asking the dealer ship to have another look at the car and see if they fix it.

The main reason we bought the car was the rock solid reliability, I really love the car but the starting problem is a real downer!

Hope someone can help!

Neil

We have a 1.9 elegance estate, and you should never need to touch the throttle when starting, ever. There is definitely something very wrong with your car.

Many thanks for comment, the car is now booked in for another investigation!

As Organist said - don't touch the throttle. Definitely sounds like a problem specific to your car. Give the garage a chance to sort the problem - not always easy on an intermittent fault.

I've had a couple of failed starts but that's probably because most time I don't bother to wait for the glow plug light to go out.