Mk6 Golf and EGR valve issues

jp_1

So the dealership thinks that the problem is a blocked/full DPF and that it needs a forced regeneration - that just sounds like revving the engine hard to me. I am being charged £250 for diagnostics, software update and the forced regen. Is this reasonable in your experience?

I did say I thought it was an EGR issue to which he agreed was something that crossed is mind, but that the DPF was blocked/full they had to do the forced regen. Is this correct?

Appreciate your help MSEe'rs

joenalex

Hi,
I've had the same issue with our 2010 mk6 golf, we bought the car from our local vw garage in 2012 and after 2 weeks it broke down and was towed back to the garage they said it was the egr valve and it was replaced under warranty, now for the past 3 months the engine management light has been on and off so took to local garage and the error code was faulty egr valve.
So back to vw they called today and said it needs new egr valve so the first thing I ask is how much and the kind chap says nothing we will replace free of charge...
Now I'm not sure if this is a new policy from vw or its because its the second time its happened!

Noodle52

I had this problem 2 days ago. Coil light on and 'workshop' message. Limped in safe mode on M25 to Waltham Abbey and found a small local garage Lancaster Motors, who not only dropped everything to have a look, but booked me into a local hotel and took me there while they sorted my car (Mk 6 2009 GT TDI 140). They collected me at 10.30 the next day with the job all done. Replaced the EGR valve, plus 2.5 hrs labour. Total charge £420

Okay I didn't have choices as I was 80 miles from home. But these guys were brilliant. They had a full day, but still prioritised my car and problem, and bent over backwards. So glad they didn't just give me the local VW dealer's address so I could be ripped off. They even made me tea while they dignosed the car, and collected me from the hotel at 10.30 the following morning, having fixed the car. My faith in local garages and awesome service, is totally restored.

Car back to normal and driving like a dream. I so love my GTD. Awesome and fast car.

BeenThroughItAll

Noodle52 wrote: »

I had this problem 2 days ago. Coil light on and 'workshop' message. Limped in safe mode on M25 to Waltham Abbey and found a small local garage Lancaster Motors, who not only dropped everything to have a look, but booked me into a local hotel and took me there while they sorted my car (Mk 6 2009 GT TDI 140). They collected me at 10.30 the next day with the job all done. Replaced the EGR valve, plus 2.5 hrs labour. Total charge £420

Okay I didn't have choices as I was 80 miles from home. But these guys were brilliant. They had a full day, but still prioritised my car and problem, and bent over backwards. So glad they didn't just give me the local VW dealer's address so I could be ripped off. They even made me tea while they dignosed the car, and collected me from the hotel at 10.30 the following morning, having fixed the car. My faith in local garages and awesome service, is totally restored.

Car back to normal and driving like a dream. I so love my GTD. Awesome and fast car.

There's only two possible explanations I can come up with here.


You work for the garage and this is an advert.


You're an 18-30 blonde female with a "Page 3" body.

Noodle52

BeenThroughItAll wrote: »

There's only two possible explanations I can come up with here.


You work for the garage and this is an advert.


You're an 18-30 blonde female with a "Page 3" body.

Oh that has made my day. I wish. No, I am a 62 year old grey haired bloke of no particular merit. No, I do not work for the garage in the post. I am genuinely impressed with what they did for me and why not give them a quick promo? They saved me a bunch of money, and made a bad situation tolerable.

(by the way, if you know any 18-30 page 3 blondes, send them my way. )

teresa43

Well, the dealer offered us a derisory trade-in for our Golf, and still claimed the problem lay with the throttle control module which was now fixed.

Took car home, and three days later same old, same old.

The AA man removed the EGR pipe, blanked off the plate with a nut and bolt and two washers, and we now have a car, albeit with an engine management light on because the car has realised something is not quite right.

Am trying to get the selling dealer to replace EGR valve. But in the meantime, if I got a proper blanking off plate, and had the EGR mapped out of the ECU, will there be any increased risk of the DPF getting damaged?

I know that this sort of behaviour could lead to an MOT failure, but really, nobody will ever know.

iceman8724

Hi

Same problem here! Lights came on 2 days ago and went into limp mode. Borrowed a fault code reader from a friend and got the error p0403 which is the egr valve.

Luckily I read up about it across several forums so I was armed with all the info I need. Rang vw uk who confirmed that the norm is for them to cover 100% of the part cost and 50% of the labour. However they wouldn't guarantee this over the phone and said I would need the diagnostics ran at a vw dealership first.

Rang listers vw in coventry who wanted £120 for diagnostics! Then rang johnsons vw who said they charge £57 for diagnostics. They could also get the whole job done next Thursday whereas listers would be a 3 week wait if I wanted a courtesy car as well. The garage have advised that they will need around 5.5 hours labour time to complete the work but have booked it in over 2 days in case of any problems.
As a comparison I got a price of a local independent who quoted £740 all in. Would rather go to vw as hopefully with the goodwill gesture from uk it will be a lot less.

lieutenantgeorge

Thanks for this thread. Just adding my distraught voice to the growing chorus of disharmony. My wife and I really stretched ourselves to buy a second hand Golf 1.6TDI Blue Motion in May. It's an early 2011 model with 60 k miles. We had a baby on the way and wanted a good, safe, reliable and efficient car. Been mostly delighted with it until yesterday when the coil symbol (Engine Management) warning light came on and it went into limp mode. Got the RAC who diagnosed the EGR valve. Rang Altrincham VW dealer who quoted me ... wait for it ... £1100 plus VAT. I actually wanted to cry. With a new baby we just can't afford anything like that. It'll mean sacrificing something major in our year and I feel particularly riled with VW as I persuaded my wife to stretch ourselves because these cars are suppose to be so good. I'm fuming. A local garage have quoted me £400 but only as a ball park and I don't think they realise how many hours' labour it needs.
To be fair the Altrincham VW dealership were very honest - they DID say this is a common fault that they see very often and that modern cars are being recalled. He advised me to ring VW Customer Care but they said I would be very unlikely to get any good will because it was not bought from a dealer and had been previously serviced by an approved fleet service provider but not an official VW garage so apparently 'it has never been on the VW system'. I am pleased to have found this forum and will see how much it costs to diagnose in Altrincham but just don't know whether it's better to just go local. What do people advise? Should I persevere and take on VW or just hope the local guys can do a good job for much less.
By the way - I work for the BBC and have worked on Rip Off Britain. I will see what I can do with that and with Watchdog.

thedude_

thedude_ wrote: »

Hi, thanks everyone for posting. Thought I would add my experience on here.

2010 Golf 2.0 TDI 44k miles. I bought it at 35k miles from Car Giant with one previous owner (fleet car) but it has always been maintained by VW service centre.

I have been getting the flashing glow plug/engine management light come on and off for a year now. It only seemed to come on after a long motorway journey i.e. going to gatwick airport and back to nw london. The light would come on and I would loose power. I could still drive and the car would still very slowly get to 70mph but with hardly any power.
When I get home and turn it off the next day it was always fine.
When I took it in to VW for an MOT last year (April) I did tell them about it and they ran a diagnostic but they couldn't see any errors.

The issue has become a lot of more frequent and it happened last Monday on the M25 on my way to south london about 45 minutes into the journey. This has never happened that quickly as it always took a lot longer to kick in. Next day it came back after a 20 minute journey. Later that day drove all the way back from south london to nw london via the city and the car was fine no issues. I took it VW on Wednesday and they said there were two options 1)Software Update £120, or 2) EGR Cooler approx £1,000. Did the software update and the next day the glow plug came back with a loss of power 1 hr into the journey on M25.

I guess I am going to have to bite the bullet and take it in tomorrow. VW Collindale have said if the fault returns then it will require re testing to confirm it is the EGR cooler.

I will update you all with what happens. If it is the EGR cooler then at least I have this thread to help with getting the costs down.

Update:

VW confirmed it was the EGR cooler and also said it looked like the inlet manifold needed cleaning as the seals had a lot of soot/sustance around them. They quoted £913.00 for EGR Cooler and £1,117.80 for both. I told them about the forums and owners of mark 6 diesel golfs who have all had this issue and that there was obviously a design issue here. He spoke to someone there and called back the next day saying they could offer free parts and reduced labour. I decided to speak to vw customer care who took a week to get back to me and said they couldn't do anything after speaking with the service centre. Also, they mentioned that they can't rely on on line blogs/forums as they can only use facts. They did imply if I has bought my car from vw they could have maybe done something more.

I got the ERG cooler replaced and the inlet manifold cleaned for £663.00. They also advised me to use the premium diesel and said that I shouldn't only be doing short journeys as this is what causes this issue. I should do a couple of long journeys a month to warm the car and parts up sufficiently that they can burn off the excess soot etc

Solution seems to be don't buy a diesel unless you will be doing long distance driving several times a month. I won't be buying diesel again.

tomekent

Background: VW Golf SE 2009 1.6 tdi, 35k miles, bought 3 months ago privately (for about £8k). My first nice car

So my car's been running sluggish for the past couple of weeks. Stuttering in bottom end of 3rd/4th gear. Just over a week ago the coil light flashed on and then never returned. I took it to an independent garage, told them the problem and left it with them. They plugged it in and found no fault codes at all, nothing. They said it could be a whole range of things and they didn't want to just throw my money at it. So, if it was to happen again, bring it in and hope their's a code. (They didn't charge at anything and were very helpful)

So I spent the following week trying to 'internet diagnose' the problem - ranging from possible fuel filters to the DPF. Took it for a long drive at high revs to possibly clear it out.

Then last night it properly broke down (limp mode I guess), pulled over, called the AA.

AA man came out and decided it was the EGR valve (as he'd seen it countless times). He 'blanked' off the valve and it started straight away. Was enough to get me home and hopefully to the garage next week.

So I rang up my independent dealer and he said just take it to the main VW dealer as they may offer good will etc.

I rang up the main dealer and explained the situation: suspected EGR valve replacement. Got a quote for £510 labour (5hrs) + roughly £500 parts. I went on to ask them about goodwill payments etc based on it being a common problem. They said to book it in for a diagnostic (which I have) @ £102. They'll send a report off to VW to see if they'll help towards the parts/labour.

Now I know this report is based on factors such as service history, milage, age etc. So hopefully my car will be ok. I bought it privately 3 months ago, but the previous owners bought it from, and got it serviced at, the same garage I'm taking it to. So hopefully that works in my favour.

From what I can tell, based on my phonecalls with the VW garage, my independent and VW customer care, the goodwill payment on their side is usually just for the part. Any money off the labour is most likely fronted by the garage itself. So if you're a regular it might help.

Its booked in for next thursday so we'll see what happens and I'll keep you updated.