BigDog

Mmm, that's odd. Can I recommend you check the crankshaft sprocket hasn't been moving very slightly on the end of the crankshaft, wearing the keyway and it's suddenly got bigger to the extent it won't run? A colleague of mine had this trouble with his Mk III Golf tdi, the engines are probably reasonably close relatives. Even very slight play will seriously mess up the timing and of course lead to the difference between the flywheel timing mark and the camshaft + fuel pump.

I'm not sure about the ABS, could be controller but I dont' want to send you down the wrong path. Have you got the ABS warning lamp lit with the engine running and the ABS fuse in or out? If the blower is not working on any speed, check fuse then motor. The blower motor is easy to access after you remove the lower glovebox. I suggest you take out the wiring connector and run a pair of wires from the battery direct to the motor to see if it's Ok. If it runs then check the voltage at the wiring connector and investigate the switch. If it doesn't run, the whole blower motor twists out after you press a plastic latch. When you put the glove box back there is a little gear assembly you need to re-engage in the right side which makes it glide down instead of drop. For the auxiliary heating there is loads on the FAQ section.

Hello, and welcome. Are you saying you bought the car as a non-runner with these faults or they happened only after replacing the engine ECU? The ABS pump running continuously is strange because both sides of the pump electrical supply come from the ABS controller according to the wiring diagram, and I would have thought having the ignition off should stop that. Check the battery fusebox for melt-down. Just a hunch, but do you know if this car has had flood-water damage? Matt

Hi John, Have you checked / changed your pollen filter? This filter is accessed after removing the bulkhead panel under the windscreen / scuttle, 3 screws. The filter is about 50cm long and 12cm wide, located on the passenger side, behind the wiper mechanism, with a clip on one end (the in-board end). The filter will gradually fill up with dust etc. and the flow reduces. Try searching the forum for "pollen". New one is about £12. It's a bit of a struggle to change. Also if you're getting a major misting up issue then check the passenger footwell and under the seat for damp carpets. If wet, the water is probably coming from a leaking pipe joint near the passenger door A-pillar. Again, lots on this problem on the forum. If the rear washer isn;t working this indicates you probably have this problem. Really easy to fix after you take the plastic covers off the sill and A-pillar. As to setting the side vents, these do work with the screen demister on my car, you just point the up/down and side-side adjustments at the windows? There are some tiny "bleed" vents above tghe main side vents that don't seem to do much - is it these you mean? Matt

The latest drivers are here: http://www.ftdichip.com/Drivers/VCP.htm Works fine with Vista, not yet tried with 7. Sometimes you have to go into Device Manager and re-assign the COM port to get the software to talk to the interface cable. Good luck Matt

Bryan, Welcome. What age is the car and which TDI engine? Can you post a photo of the pipe that disintegrated, or describe which one, if you saw which one it is the AA man spoke of? Is the engine power back to normal after replacing the pipe, in spite of the noises? It would seem likely that the turbo was at full speed when the pipe "let go" so it would seem very likely to have bent blades on the compressor side if any more than the tiniest particles got swallowed? Bent blades would reduce the power at the very least. It would seem pretty unlikely that any bits of pipe or compressor blade spat out by the turbo which were small enough to get through the intercooler would then get stuck in the cylinders - however anything making it through the cylinders and past the exhaust side of the turbo should then encounter the cat, where metal would get stuck and plastic or rubber would probably get burnt up quickly. Anyone else want to chime in on this? Possibly my knowledge of TDI plumbing is lacking something. Is the knocking/thumping at every revolution or just on one cylinder firing? Does the engine start and idle as smoothly as it it did before the breakdown? When you say you HAD been advised about the injectors, I infer you mean BEFORE the breakdown? If so, what was the reason - i.e. what was wrong? All the best, Matt

WELL DONE! Did it start leaking a little or fail more spectacularly? I have done the job on a previous Audi 80 and MkII Golf, took all day both times, this sounds similar to the Audi but with the added complication of A/C. Matt

Did a 100 mile round trip today. No chirping, seems fixed. Matt

I'm sure blower fan for me, only happens with the heater blower on and defo (was?) coming from left front of cabin, not the right engine bay like when the tensioner pulley bounces, thanks all the same. One more thing: an old Renault I had many years ago with persistent chirping from the blower, it turned out to be a dry leaf caught in the blades. This can't happen on a car with the pollen filter in place of course. My car has a single balancing clip like the end of a hair grip around one of the blades, this was slightlt loose and I pushed it home in case it was whistling. Still not sure it's fixed.

Right, I had my blower motor out today to check out the chirping. There is a post here for someone who had the same experience: http://www.fordgalaxy.org.uk/ford/index.php?/topic/23816-front-fan-high-frequent-noise/page__hl__blower The glove box comes out reasonably easily, you have to remove the embellisher on the left then press down the plastic catch on the right to let it drop a bit further then pull the two hinge pins out where they snap into the plastic surround. After that the fan motor is behind a sound insulation moulding nearest to the door. Remove the connector by pressing the catches on either side, then there are two push-on clips holding the sound insulation moulding. Lever the two clips off then it slides back after moving parts of the loom slightly. The plastic body of the motor is then revealed. There is a small catch at the bottom. Lift this a little while rotating the whole motor body clockwise and withdraw it. Mine rotated fairly freely without any odd noises, but it slows to a stop in a second or so when spinning by hand as fast as possible. The motor itself is mounted into the plastic shell on 3 rubber wedges which you can press back in turn with a small flat blade screwdriver, then it just pulls out. The brushes and commutator looked fine and had plenty of wear left. The motor does seem to be pretty impossible to disassemble much further, everything is staked or welded, and the fan looks to be pressed on. I blew the dust off and put some WD40 on the bearings to see if they would free up at all - they didn't, so I lubricated the bearings with a drip of light oil. Reassembly is pretty easy but you need to lift the glove box damper so the gear engages with the rack on the moulding otherwise it will drop immediately you open it rather than glide down like it should. I'm not sure yet if my chirping is fixed - it was pretty intermittent and worse when going around bends. How are the rest of your niggles? Matt

Hi, I think from the description that you have an intermittent fault (high resistance) in the high current starter circuit which is causing the whole electrical system voltage to collapse when the starter solenoid is energised by turning the key to the start position. I don't think it has anything to do with the immobiliser otherwise your clock would not reset. The fault could be either in the + or - side. It is rather suspicious that the battery is new. Are you sure both battery terminals are tight and clean where they connect onto the battery posts? And are the wires that are bolted to the terminals also well connected and undamaged? If you have a multimeter then you can trace where the fault is using an assistant to operate the key. Put the multimeter in voltage measurement mode and put the red meter lead contact on the + battery post. Put the black meter lead contact on the + feed actually at the starter motor. You should measure 0V. Operate the starter and it should not read more than 1V or so. If it reads more than 1V or so then you have found where the fault is. You can do the same on the - side between the starter body and the battery - post. The battery voltage will be appearing across the high resistance, you can narrow down it by moving the measurement points, being sure to only measure across points that should be low resistance (normally well connected). It is also possible to use a test bulb instead of a multimeter. it is possible the place where the high resistance has occurred has got really hot and melted soemthing. Good luck. Let me know if you need a clearer explanation of this method. Matt

SilverBeast, you beat me to it with pics. Here are mine below. I drilled two 1.5mm holes in the corners of the moulding pocket where the splice between the choke and the brush braid wire gets tucked. These holes ended up emerging in the mould tool cavity markings (see one of the pics) and I used stiff steel wire to hold the brush springs back when re-fitting the end cap assembly. I did discover some rust starting under the rubber seal at the base of the scuttle plate thing. I will sort that out when (if?) the weather dries up. Also I re-used the coolant hose spring clips. They are not too bad to handle if you have some small vise-grips and I would be nervous tightening jubilee clips onto plastic i.e. not too tight to crack it but not too loose to leak; maybe I worry too much though. Matt http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/mattlumb/P1010268_zps79cb1e2d.jpghttp://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/mattlumb/P1010271_zps1715da61.jpghttp://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/mattlumb/P1010275_zps4d75b4c9.jpghttp://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/mattlumb/P1010276_zps6cb99a6f.jpghttp://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/mattlumb/P1010281_zps0a861460.jpghttp://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/mattlumb/P1010265_zpsae2b2588.jpg

I just did the job - many thanks to all for the previous posts. I took some pics and will try to attach them after reducing the file size to something manageable. You can hopefully see I drilled some 1.5mm holes in the plastic end to hold the brush springs back and allow re-assembly, rather than use the water+freezer method or stripping the rotor assembly out like previous posters have suggested. About the brushes: I believe it is important to use brushes from a 12V motor, rather than a 240V high speed motor like a angle grinder. The mix of carbon to other stuff makes the resistance lower for the low voltage motors. Carbon brushes are very soft. Do not clamp them hard in a vice or they will crumble. I used spare brushes for a Valeo heater motor and cut them to length using a hacksaw blade. I did not use abrasive paper for fear of introducing abrasive particles and instead clamped a barstard file in the vice, being careful to hold the brushes flat. Use a wire brush to clean the dust out of the file a few times. Also note that the motor body sleeve should not be clamped too hard in a vice as there are brittle permanent magnets inside it. I measured the old brush width and height at 4.7mm square using a Vernier caliper. The inner diameter of the body is 37.7mm and the commutator is 12.7mm so there is 12.5mm radius for each brush, but you do need clearance to prevent shorting to the steel sleeve body, including the little hooks on the ends of the brush springs. I reckon the wear ridge at the bottom of the commutator was less than 0.5mm. I did not clean the commutator with anything abrasive - it looked OK and from experience of trouble with these things on larger motors I reckon there is a danger of introducing scratches and increasing wear of the new brushes. There is an electrical noise filter consisting of 2 tiny chokes and a blue capacitor mounted on this assembly. The old brush braids were spot-welded to the ends of the choke windings so I cut off the old brushes leaving about 3mm of the old braid to solder the new brush braid to. I had worried that the new brush braid was much thicker but this didn't seem to be a problem, experimenting with the springs ability to overcome the extra stiffness, all seemed fine. I used a good squirt of WD40 to clean all the crud out of both parts of the motor then shook it dry-ish. I put a tiny dab of lithium grease in the phosphor bronze bearing prior to re-assembly. It worked first time. I nearly did a burn-in test by running the pump with the impeller end in a bowl of water but decided not to bother. I know the brush profile did not match the commutator perfectly. One last point - when reducing the the size of the brushes it really helps to have a Vernier or dial caliper - not only can you measure the size accurately but you can check the sides are parallel by swinging the brush in the jaws to check which end is bigger and needs reducing a tad more. Now to find out how to link to pics - it seems I can't just attachand upload them so will check the FAQ on that point. More later. Matt

Chris, I've got a 53 plate Alhambra tdi 115 manual with 155k miles on the clock and some of the same probs: 1. "Induction" roar. Mine has been loud from inside not out, almost tappety on acceleration from 119k miles when I bought it. But its not tappets since as soon as you take your foot off it's quiet. I've also refitted everything on the air box, ducting and no change. I suspect something is leaking on the exhaust side of things but have never managed to trace it despite feeling everywhere for hot gases and looking for sooty marks. Also I'm missing the undertray, I am wondering if there is something happening with sound reflected off the road, long shot. Also I wondered if my car is lacking some sound insulation from the pedal area. Certainly my old Audi 80 tdi made this noise with the 4" of sound insulation removed from the passenger side footwell area when it had to be taken out to dry off (long story). My Alhambra has next to no sound insulation in or above the pedal area. I might try something there if I had the time and could think of a way of preventing it slipping and jamming the brake (could be nasty). There have been so many other things to worry about fixing I doubt I'll ever get around to it though. 2. Chirp Same with me. I have to take the scuttle / plenum plate out to fix the aux. heater pump so I'll take a look at the blower motor bushes / bearings and let you know, they might be dry. Sometimes phospor bronze bearings will seize to the shaft and then spin in their spring-steel mountings: hopefully over the Christmas / NY break. 3. Centre cubby - whenever this has happened it has been something like a pen or sat nav was jamming it and deforming the lid a little, pulling the catch out of line. 4. No clicks on mine, but stops rotating at either end. Neither headlamp motor works so not a problem for me, and aim seems OK to pass MOT. Oddly my older, similar mileage Arosa with similar parts has never failed. 5. Mine needs about half this amount of topping up between oil changes. Is it leaking at all? Mine doesn't, yet. Also intermittent lumpyness/stalling on idle has always been MAF for me. It also causes snatching and kangarooing on very light acceleration. Take it out (break the pins off the 2 anti-tamper screws so you can wenge something in and turn them) and give a good squirt with carburettor cleaner, you shouldn't need to dis-assemble or touch the fragile element. I got my front tyres done the other day and the mechanic showed me the 10mm front-back movement on the nearside wheel which he found when torquing up the bolts. So now there's a ball-joint job getting added to the Christmas break to-do list. So, the investigation of the roar gets put off again... Matt

Spanny-Daniel, Welcome to the group, Merry Christmas and thanks for the "inside advice". Still no repeat of my problem of creep / drag. Hopefully I'll get the chance to take off the T-piece bleeder valve and check/clean/renew it between Christmas and NY. Do you know the function of the valve in the T-piece bleeder and how one might test it? Afterward I'll bleed it as best I can - Elsawin has instructions I can paste here if anyone needs them. Do you have an explanation for the clutch pedal moving on its own? Cheers, Matt

sidcos, bizarrely, the problem "fixed" itself overnight i.e. I can now select 1st and reverse without waiting 5-10 seconds with the pedal held down. Drove the car to work this morning (36m, mostly fast A roads) no problem. But of course, it is going to come back, probably next time I get in a traffic jam. I haven't bled the hydraulics yet. The only thing I did after it seemed to fix itself was pumped the clutch up and down (full range of pedal movement, holding at the bottom a few seconds and releasing quickly at the top) 100 times. (I had been wondering if the driven plate was sliding properly on the gearbox input shaft splines, if it was sticking then I thought that might cause drag and difficulty selecting 1st and reverse). By the way, the reason that reverse is impossible to select is that on our cars, reverse has (at least partial) synchromesh, which normally prevents the gears crunching if you try to select reverse while moving, however with clutch drag then the same sychromesh stops reverse being selected. Without reverse sychromesh and a dragging clutch we would get nasty grinding noises instead when trying to select reverse. I still can't really see a good reason how the clutch pedal can move on its own, though I haven't looked yet for how these dual mass flywheels (DFMs) work. Maybe there is the possibility of the pressure plate moving in and out, pushing the driven plate back against the slave cylinder. If the driven plate is sticking a little on the gearbox input shaft splines, and the gearbox input shaft has at least some endfloat, and slides from one end of that endfloat to the other end when coming on and off the power, maybe (bit of a long shot here) that explains it. Can anyone with knowledge of how the DMF is constructed confirm whether or not this is a possiblity?

sidcos, I recall the garage got a dealer part and fitted it, but it seems you can get pattern parts, Febi Bilstein do one so I guess any of the parts guys should be able to get it: http://www.teiledirekt.de/product_info.php...1499729/refID/2 There is some sort of decription and photo here in German, you can click the union jack for an amusing/frustrating translation: http://www.sgaf.de/node/101841#comment-286963 Comment #1 links to more photos. So, now my main problem of gear selection has gone away - but the pedal movement is just the same, WTF is going on? The wife doesn't want to use the car, so I am swapping cars with her (probably safer in case it slips I can recognise that and not burn the lining). If I take it to a garage they are going to want to change the clutch and slave and maybe master and DMF for good measure, and from experience here that's not going to fix it. On the sgaf website I have found a hint that the problems could be crankshaft bearing axial wear (!!!) but I don't really believe that; see comment #2 here: http://tinyurl.com/yc3jt8a NB: Kurbelwellenlageraxialspiel = crankshaft bearing axial movement A mate of mine told me his concentric slave piston fell out inside the bell housing and it happened twice then he got rid of the car....on a Sharan tdi AUY '52... Any more thoughts gratefully received.

Update: glad I'm not the only one with a clutch pedal moving on its own. I measured the engine roll movement by getting the wife to engage 1st then reverse and try to pull away with the handbrake on. The front-back movement at the engine oil filler is less than 10mm total i.e. < +5mm for forward and < -5mm for reverse. I think that's OK? There's no clonk, except the very very slight one you naturally get from the final drive when changing from pulling to pushing? This morning (-4degC in St Albans) the problem has almost disappeared. I found that some 'nana hadn't tightened the brake fluid cap fully, so did so, but had to disconnect the low level warning sensor to do it, as it was stiff in the cap. Thought I'd check to see if that provoked a warning lamp on the dash (engine running) - it didn't! I guess it must be a normally open float switch or I've got another fault...anyway plenty of not-so-nice-looking fluid...(bit grey, need to change). The flexi hose is underneath the ABS distributor, you can see one end of it if you peer between the coolant tank and the fuel filter. Looks like quite a few things will have to come off to gain access, but at least I won't need to lie in the slush for too long - mostly top access. I'll need to bleed the clutch hydraulics if I take the pipe off to blow through it, but - I have one of those Gunson Easybleed things which I suppose qualifies as a pressure bleeder. From Elsawin you are meant to bleed at 2bar (30psi?) which is a bit high for Easybleed. Also I can''t see how air comes out of the slave cylinder as the bleed nipple is on a union upstream (just where it enters the bellhousing)? :lol: No wonder it is difficult to bleed? What genius designed this part? Sidcos, this clonk(?) when you come off the power could be a number of things. On mine it was the lower gearbox mounting support arm last year which cured that - no.21 in the diagram which you should be able to see once you have 5 posts. I had a garage do that and they took a long while to suss it out, had to put the gearbox under load while on a lift and watch the movement. Also the anti-roll bar bushes and the drop-links can give clonks but more likely to be heard over speed bumps than when on/off the power.

I'll check those Sepulchrave, ta. I'm pretty sure the bottom most support arm thingy (roll restrictor? no.21 in the attached) got replaced last spring, not recently getting clonks etc.. Is the gearbox mount you're talking about no.1? Maybe I'm being thick, but can't quite see how movement in the engine / gearbox mountings translates to movement in the clutch pedal but I'm prepared to give the things a damn good levering to check. What's the best way to check? Maybe apply handbrake (hard), watch engine movement with bonnet open while wife tries to pull away in 1st then reverse? How much movement is too much, and where? We've got 4" snow in St Albans this morning - above test likely impossible without wheelspin, LOL. Cheers, Matt

Hey Sidcos, Yesterday my 53 Alhambra tdi 115bhp (AUY engine) with 132k miles started giving similar symptoms: Wife said had probs engaging 1st and reverse also smelling like a train. After I test drove I found that clutch was dragging but if you leave the pedal down 5 seconds its normal. Once on the move gear changes are normal. Although I didn't provoke it into clutch slippage, (the opposite problem to dragging usually, which would explain the smell) I am guessing this has got to be to do with the hydraulics. Normally if there is air in clutch or brake hydraulics then pumping helps. In this case it helps if you give it time - like there's a blockage somewhere causing a delay in the fluid moving. I am wondering if the flexible hose is breaking up inside, causing the blockage. Sidcos, might be worth checking that, I'm planning to. Anyone had a hose go that way? The pedal is always quick to rise back up, but there is something I noticed over a year ago which I never investigated and which has suddenly got worse. Bit tricky to explain but here goes: You are driving along, happen to be resting your foot lightly on the clutch (not that I ride the clutch), accelerating gently. Coming off the accelerator, you get engine braking, but the clutch pedal instantly kicks up about half inch, back on the gas, it sinks the same amount, this is repeatable. That has me totally stumped. Anyone got any ideas before i go and lie under it in a nice comforting snowstorm tomorrow morning :lol: ? Many thanks

Many thanks, will give it go. :) Matt

I've got the same problem - fans stayed on and drained the battery. What would cause this - I know there's a fan controller but don't know where it sits. Greentangerine - not sure what car you've got but I've just fixed this on my 2003 Alhambra TDI fitted with aircon - the battery went flat several times due to a relay sticking sometimes. The relay in question (radiator fan control relay) is located on a bracket under/behind the fuse carrier which sits over the battery. A new relay is

I have a 2003 Alhambra Tdi 115 with AUY engine done 132k miles. I've got a whistle on the over-run, but you only notice under particular driving conditions: Take it up to >4krpm in 3rd or 4th and take your foot off the accelerator. There is a whistle like a v-belt squealing only quieter and it does not change pitch as the engine slows, and maintains down to under 2.5krpm. It is repeatable. I hadn't noticed this before, but to be honest my driving style is to change up pretty early so maybe I wouldn't have noticed it before anyhow. Sometimes it will still hesistate very slightly very briefly on light load still. Any ideas - from reading a few threads I am thinking that maybe the vanes are getting sticking on the turbo or there is an air leak somewhere. Power seems fine most of the time but I often suspect its down maybe 10 or 15% - i.e. nothing alarming, like having a car full of poeple instead of empty. I replaced MAF in the summer with OE Bosch part due to issues with occasional stumbling on idle, bucking and snatching at light load, black smoke on flooring it and stalling taking up drive, which cured all those issues. Also I did pull a 17965 fault code from it once recently using VAG-COM (17965/P1557/005463 - Charge Pressure Control: Positive Deviation) see here: http://wiki.ross-tech.com/index.php/17965/P1557/005463 however since I've not notice any limp-modes I am assuming this hasn't recurred (will check) and the orignal one must have occured since the MAF change (last previous scan) and without the wife noticing (?!). The car has always had quite a loud in-take roar on the drivers side, when accelerating which niether of my other 2 TDIs have/had (Arosa 1.4 AMF and Audi 80 1.9 Z1). Haven't bothered to investigate that too much (yet) as it has never changed and is not too obtrusive but any ideas would be gratefully received on that too. All the best, Matt

Got up early, cleaned MAF with carb cleaner, reassembled, took it for a spin - and it is completely fixed! No more stumbling, hesitation, stalling, or kangaroo behaviour in slow moving traffic. Many thanks for the guidance. All the best, :rolleyes: Matt

Hello Steven, I have the exact same symptoms with my 2003 Alhambra TDI 115 PD with AUY engine at 130,000 miles. The only difference is that sometimes when idling it will misfire, a single stumble and then recover, usually with a chuff of smoke out of the exhaust. I will try cleaning the MAF like you suggest. All the best, Matt