I've been quiet for a while now, waiting to have a conclusion to share before I posted again.

First of all, thankyou to everyone who offered advice and gave up time trying to help. One reason I've stuck with the car for so long is because of the support and fantastic advice on here. Any niggles - which have been few - have been sorted because of the wealth of info on here. If it wasn't for the advice on Briskoda, I'd have been looking at an engine rebuild and not the replacement turbo I ended with in the end. The garage I normally use said I was being fussy and there wasn't an issue. Their advice was to wait until something went wrong and then maybe they'd sort it.... :no:

Anyway, in the end I needed a new turbo which I got direct from Skoda, along with all the coolant, oil gaskets etc. The dealership nearest to me in Pickering did everything for just under seven hundred pounds. They even delivered it for free. I know I could have got things cheaper if I'd shopped around a bit longer, but the timescale suited and the parts were delivered within two days.

The turbo was then fitted by a colleague's son in his spare time in the evenings. This might sound a bit iffy, but he's a mechanic, a car geek like a lot of us and cares about what he does. He charged me two hundred and fifty pounds labour for everything and so far, touch wood, it's all good now.

I had a run over to RS Tuning today to have things checked out and all seems well. Paul compared maps from before and today and there is a difference. He reckons this could be the actuator affecting boost, but he's happy with the graph, the boost and says I should be fine from now on. Here's the new graph.

So the ending seems to be a happy one, the car feels good again and I've learned a lot from the experience in terms of turbos, fault diagnosis and who to listen to about cars. If any of you hear a police siren, but there is no police car, don't keep driving like I did, get things checked out asap.

Cheers,

Andrew.

Edited 3 June, 201016 yr by skinnyman

Happy ending then, I think I recall you posting about your turbo probs a couple of months ago, looking at photos of my engine when it wad out the car.

The labour charge you paid seems fair and equivalent to what you'd pay a good independent garage. The job of fitting a turbo is fairly straight forward, it's just the lack of space when in situ that makes the job long winded and therefore costly!

nice one mate

You might want to edit your name and reg plate out of the images

You might want to edit your name and reg plate out of the images

glad you finally sorted it... you kept the old turbo?

turbo will prob be exchange unit

The original is currently in bits after being returned from Turbo Technics. In theory it should have been an exchange, but the dealership cut me some slack and say I can let them have it when the mechanic has rebuilt it. I'm trying to get some photos of the old turbo to show you all, but haven't had a chance to get the garage to do so. I haven't seen it myself yet, I'm only going on what I've been told.