Used car turbo failure

jamiewakeham

Hi all

I've just bought a used car from a dealer. I travelled quite a long way to get it as it was a relatively rare spec. To get there and back costs me most of a day and £120 in fuel and/or train tickets.

The dealer told me he warranted the car for 30 days, and also gave me an AA warranty that ran for six months. This has a claim limit of £500.

Very quickly, the engine warning light's been coming on. I popped into my tame local garage, who plugged it into their diagnostics computer. It turns out there's a mechanical failure in the turbo. It's going to need a complete replacement turbo at £700 plus about £250 labour.

If I use the AA warranty, I'm going to end up with a ~£450 bill, but it'll be in a local garage with a courtesy car. I'm aware that SoGA (regardless of the dealer's '30 day warranty') would allow me to take it back to him and insist on a replacement - but that would cost me transport there and back twcie and two lost days of work. Plus there's an apparently significant risk that the turbo will fail en route.

Am I going to get anywhere in going via the AA warranty and then charging the balance to the trader? Is the law supportive of this sort of mixed approach? I'm tempted to write to him and point out that if I bring it back to him, he's going to have to buy a £700 part, and if he gives me, say, £400, I will consider myself fairly done by.

Any advice?

Cheers
Jamie

burlington6

Shop around for a better price on the turbo. Most common cars cost less than that but it's hard to say with the details you've given. You can't drive the car back and expect the dealer to fix the faults that could happen if the turbo failed en route

Ransoman

What Make, Model and year is the car? Exactly what faults have you noticed.

If it is just a warning light then I highly doubt you need a new turbo. mechanics these days seem to plug in a computer and replace whatever component flags the fault. The fault code could be a symptom of something completely unrelated.

If you don't have any performance issues and no funny noises then I think it is more likely that a vacume pipe has failed or the actuator has seized.

Ask the Mechanic exactly what part of the turbo has failed. If it is the bearing then the turbo would sound rough, if it is the oil seals then you would have blue smoke. If it is the vanes then the turbo would have already failed and the damage has been done. If he can't tell you or just says "It is the turbo" then get a 2nd opinion. Turbo's are quite simple really and I think most of them are replaced when they are still perfectly servicable.

jamiewakeham

Thanks for the reply. It's a Skoda Yeti 1.2TSi - cost me a little less than £10k with 18,000 on the clock. I've absolutely no idea what a new turbo should cost; a few minutes on google has taught me that for this particular problem, you should exepct to have to replace the entire unit.

I wouldn't have thought my garage was significantly overcharging me for the parts - they've been good in the past.

One thought I've had - is the dealer actually entitled to insist that I let him do the replacement, or will the SoGA protect me if I have someone else do it? If so, the reasonable solution is to invoke the AA warranty and then simply bill the dealer for the overspend..?

Edit in response to Ransoman: it's a mechanical failure in the charge pressure control actuator. Threads on this seem to suggest this is a complete replacement job.

Ransoman

I am quite surprised it is a petrol skoda, especially at that mileage.

Very little info about the failure on the net but it seems quite a few 1.2 TSI cars in the whole of the VAGroup have sufferd from this (and total engine failures too). I wonder if Skoda would contribute to the repair?

jamiewakeham

It does look like a few 1.2TSi have had this failure, doesn't it? I've yet to see anyone say they've got anything from Skoda to cover it (apart from those covered under manufacturer's warranty, of course).

Ransoman

Different car - Same engine:
http://www.tigerstyle.co.uk/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=56&t=53961

Is that the same error code you had?

jamiewakeham

Exactly so.

Do you have any idea if £700 is about the right price for the replacement? I have no idea of how to find out, short of ringing some VW or Skoda garages.

Ransoman

£700 sounds about right for a brand new turbo and is what I would expect to pay. I know when I was looking at prices for a 1.9 VW TDI turbo they were coming in at over £1k.

On most turbos the actuator is a removable unit and this tends to fail more often. Can you get the garage to replace that part instead? from the error code that is the part i would be looking at. (I don't know enough about this engine/turbo to say for certain if this is the case but i know it is on th 1.9 tdi).

Shaolin_Monkey

I don't know a great deal about current turbo types (variable nozzle turbo's etc.) but on an older turbocharged car I had with a conventional wastegate actuator, it was certainly possible to replace the actuator without having to replace the turbo. It was a bolt on job that could be done in half an hour. In fact it was a common performance upgrade (on the car I had) to install a slightly stiffer actuator to increase the boost pressure.

It might be worth speaking to a turbo specialist like Turbo Dynamics to see whether the part in question is replaceable without having to junk the whole turbo. Of course this is dependent on the turbo itself being OK and it just being a fault with the actuator, as your post seems to indicate.

Apart from that all I can suggest is having a look through the Which guide to complaining to a car dealer. They have some template letters etc. http://www.which.co.uk/consumer-rights/action/how-to-complain-about-a-second-hand-car-to-a-dealer

Hoof_Hearted

I think the first thing to do is to talk to the dealer you bought it from. He may well be willing to have the car trailered back to him for repair.