My current car is a 54 plate 1.9TDI Octavia with 27k miles on it but I also have a Skoda Fabia 1.9TDI (same engine) and before these I had a Peugeot 306TDI. Each car has been slow to warm up to engine operating temperature. In the cold weather we have had recently, at 6am in the morning, my car can take 14 miles (40 to 50mph, no town driving) before it reaches engine operating temperature. I know that if a thermostat is stuck open it can cause this effect but surely this can't happen on all the diesel cars I have had? A friend says his diesel car is warmed up after only 3 miles so am I unlucky to have had 3 cars all of which are slow to warm up? I know diesel engines are more thermally efficient than petrol and release less heat to the water cooling system but I would have thought the engine designers would have factored this into the design parameters so that warm-up was optimised for increased efficiency.

Is this something I have to live with, can it be fixed or is there nothing to fix?

Any ideas anyone?

I'd say there is nothing to fix. Sounds pretty normal to me.

I had a faulty thermostat in a petrol BMW once, and in the winter it didn't warm up to the normal operating temperature, not even close. At five degrees (celsius) it wouldn't warm up even when driving at 80mph.

If you would have a faulty thermostat on a diesel, I'd guess that the temperature needle wouldn't even move.

edit: And there is way to test this BTW. On higher gears, the RPM is lower so water is circulating slower through the radiator. On the BMW I had I could get the water temp to rise if I drove on a high gear and floored it at a low RPM. As soon as I changed to lower gear, the temperature dropped again as water was circulating faster. Flooring it on lower gears didn't raise the temperature as much.

But that being said, it was a petrol car and it still wouldn't reach the normal temp except in the summer when standing in traffic. As I think about it, I used to have a '65 Mustang Fastback with a faulty thermostat too. It had a petrol V8 and it would only get warm in the summer, and in the traffic

Yours is working fine.

My 1.9TDi is pretty much the same.

8 mile drive to work is all down hill and flat with little town driving - temp gauge barely gets half way to normal in the morning - mpg on trip is 60-70mpg

Coming home is a different story - reaches normal by around half way home - mpg on trip 45-55 mpg. The mpg difference is clearly being turned into heat!

Warm-up time depends on how hard the engine has to work.

Just wear a hat, scarf and gloves in winter and enjoy the extra time between fill-ups

Have a look here:

http://briskoda.net/forums/octavia-ii/1-9-tdi-dsg-normal-running-temp/96942/

Our Vrs Fabia is quicker to warm up than the Octavia 1.9 TDi. The Octavia takes ages, unless you can boot it on the motorway. If all you are doing is pootling around town, then quite often it can never warm up when the weather is really cold.