Hi

Last week my 2002 Octavia 4x4 became a 2x4. I noticed this while driving up a steep icy lane in Yorkshire last week when the front wheels started spinning and the orange dash light flickered on while the ESP cut in to keep me moving. Otherwise there’s no warning light on. Recently, I’d noticed a creaking sound when turning the car at low speed e.g. at a T junction but that seems to have gone now, so I don’t know if the two things are connected.

The car’s done 76k miles and has been serviced from new and at the correct intervals with main Skoda dealers throughout and I’d be most grateful for any help/ comment/ feedback especially around:

1/ what could have caused this?

2/ shouldn’t a warning light be constantly on to warn there’s a transmission problem?

3/ is this a known/ common problem with Octavia 4x4s?

4/ is it safe for me to continue driving the car now? (it feels normal otherwise)

5/ will it be expensive to fix or should I just get used to having a front wheel drive car!

Many thanks

:(

has the fuse for the haldex coupling blown or been removed??

The 4x4 is only 2 wheel drive until the front wheels lose traction, so it should be safe to carry on driving. First port of call should be the ECU that controls the haldex.

I found the standard Haldex very slow, a lot of the time the traction control cuts in before the 4x4 so the two ways forward are to run with the ESP off, if you feel you need 4x4 or an upgraded Haldex unit with better response time.

This really needs a diagnostics check.

Where abouts in the country are you? There may be a Briskodian local to you that is happy to run a scan for you in return for beer tokens!

Thanks Tom, I've booked in at a Skoda dealer for next week (needs a service anyway)

I've just been checking my car service records and notice the Haldex oil & filter have only been changed once (in 76k miles). Could this be linked to my loss of 4x4? If so is it the Skoda garage's responsibility to change the oil and filter or is it an 'optional' service item customers have to request?

If this is an expensive item to fix I'm thinking there may be some 'denials' coming my way!

Cheers everyone.

Update on "4x4 is now 2x4"

Car has now been serviced at main Skoda dealer who have:

- run all diagnostic tests on Haldex: no issues found

- test driven the car: they say car is behaving normally

But it isn't - on wet roads the front wheels will spin accelerating out of junctions (tyres are good) and traction control cuts in but have to ease off throttle to stop spin. This never happened before the problem first appeared 2 weeks ago.

They say they've done all the tests they can (but these are only on the electronics + a test drive) so how can I get "proof". Do I need to go to a "rolling road" test centre and would this give a printout confirming no drive is going to the rear wheels?

Any help gratefully received.

Thanks

its the Haldex ecu 99%.get one of the upgraded units and and you will have a more fun car....

I think you mean 4x2 rather than 2x4.

You can't have a 2 wheel vehicle with four driven wheels e.g three axle lorries are either 6x2, 6x4 or occasionally 6x6.

I think you mean 4x2 rather than 2x4.

You can't have a 2 wheel vehicle with four driven wheels e.g three axle lorries are either 6x2, 6x4 or occasionally 6x6.

Either way...we know what he means !

Sounds to me like the Haldex unit too.

I'd agree that the issue unit is the Haldex, but the thread title is rather "two of my wheels fell off!"

Almost certainly the Haldex ECU, it's fairly common but people don't usually notice.

As for servicing the haldex oil should be replaced every 20k and the haldex oil and filter every 40k. This isn't optional it's part of the service schedule for the 4x4. If it hasn't been carried out and you've been paying a main dealer to service it then kick up a stink.

can you set this up to be rear wheel drive only?

Yeah; just remove the front driveshafts.

Yeah; just remove the front driveshafts.

thats what i was thinking!

Could be different !

thats what i was thinking!

Em, I was semi-joking.

The serious answer is that, whilst removing the front shafts would force the car into RWD, the basic suspension geometry is set for FWD (one of the reasons why quattro system doesn't handle better than Audi FWD), you'd increase transmission losses, and I'm not sure how long the Haldex would live permanently with at minimum 130bhp or 160lbft peak power and torque, when its normal maximum short term (standard car) loads are peak 90bhp or 140lbft, if that makes sense.

Em, I was semi-joking.

i wasn't got me allen key set out and everything!!!! c'mon!! :rofl:

the haldex will die if you take the front drive shafts out!

I know its not the same, but tuned vauxhall 4x4 cars (with haldex) kill the haldex unit all the time!

plus the rear diff is not usually man enough to cope with all that power all of the time.

Its not a propper 4x4 system. Imagine it as a fwd car with the rwd part tacked on as an afterthought!

Gents

Thanks for the comments and apologies re "2x4" (it would be worth making a modest detour to witness such a conveyance in action).

Just to update you I am pleased to report that the car is now a 4x4 again but only after getting stuck in a measly 4-5" of lying snow on a very gentle hill (conditions that a functioning Haldex would have handled with no drama) on Friday 11 January at 6.00pm at the top of the Cotswolds near - don't laugh - "Snowshill", and suffering the indignity of having to be pushed out of the way by a Septic & his family driving a Range Rover (because I was blocking their stately progress back home to their country estate with, no doubt, log fires roaring in their Tudor chimneys - but they were gents and I am very grateful). They helped me turn around and I then had the prospect of having to retrace my journey for several miles in a blizzard with, by now, probably more than 6 inches of snow on the lane (and with snow falling fast) in order to get back below the “snow line” (that little bit of extra height in those parts had caused the temperature to drop just 1 degree below freezing turning, what for most people that day had been very heavy rain, into a significant local snowfall).

The only reason I escaped was because of the ESP and traction control. It works. It’s not as good as 4WD but without it I’d have skidded off the road. But it was nailbiting stuff (or would have been if I’d not had to have both hands firmly clamped to the steering wheel in my grim determination just to keep the car moving). My right foot was pressed hard to the floor all the way in third gear, the car speed sometimes dropping as low as 15 mph, and there was no wheel spin but engine revs were very low (I didn’t dare risk changing gear and losing momentum/ changing the dynamics). And the car was steerable, but had there been even a modest hill on the return the car would have stopped – no question. I did momentarily switch off the ESP “just to see what happens” (it’s a male thing) and the car immediately began to veer to the ditch so it was promptly switched back on and then left well alone! Twenty minutes later I had escaped the white hell (it seemed an eternity).

So you can imagine the drift of my little “chat” with the dealer on the Monday. This time the owner believed me, the car was worked on that very week and they found …. a cracked connector that links the ECU to the Haldex. It had gone green. Water had got in. And the ECU had indeed failed. The dealer said on the phone that it was likely that the failed/ cracked/ green connector had caused a short which caused the ECU failure. So I had to pay for a new one – £600 + VAT. The dealer made no labour charge, which was fair enough, and he was genuinely embarrassed that he’d dismissed my earlier insistence that there was a problem. But they/ Skoda’s diagnostic procedures should have been able to diagnose this problem immediately and I should not have had to go through months of hassle getting them/ Skoda to accept there was a problem.

And why did the connector crack? Is it poor design or cheap manufacture? Is it in a vulnerable location under the car? Can it cope with driving through floodwater/ is it fit for purpose to stop water ingress from driving through the sort of floodwater we all now have to get used to driving through these days?

Dunno. Skoda refused to make any contribution because the dealer had waived labour costs and said “whilst our suppliers make every effort to ensure that the electrical components are manufactured to the very highest standards, we cannot guarantee that components will never require replacement. It is for this reason that all ŠkodaAuto vehicles are provided with a comprehensive warranty, which offers assurance that any manufacturing defect will be rectified at no cost.” Well that’s a comfort. Pity Skoda don’t offer a 7 year warranty – well if KIA can why not? – or the option for owners to extend their warranty.

Hope you’ve learned something or even had a tincture of enjoyment from reading about someone else’s grief. But it could be worse – I could be a squaddie in Afghanistan with inadequate equipment to give me a reasonable chance of making it back to Blighty alive, or a Northern Rock shareholder …

Cheers all

BillH

So this was a new Haldex ECU i presume ?

£600 + Vat is scary :eek:

So they charged you £200 more an uprated unit (which is manufactured by haldex) costs and let you off with the half an hour labour it would take to install. Very generous of them. :rubchin:

I was thinking that Eddy !

I know Awesome do a unit for the R32 etc..and thats only £499

"So this was a new Haldex ECU i presume ?"

"So they charged you £200 more an uprated unit (which is manufactured by haldex) costs and let you off with the half an hour labour it would take to install."

Yes and Yes. I'm considering sending my email correspondence to a motoring journo' to see if they agree I've been poorly treated and, if so, what they recommend. Also manufacturers often "reconsider" when the media start sniffing around.