VW Golf with turbo issues - worth fixing?

aecb

mcpitman wrote: »

Have you get any further details on the fault?

What sort of whine is it? (Air escaping, mechanical whining etc)
Where does the noise appear to come from?
Does it only whine on boost, off boost, all the time?

Etc etc

Thanks for yours and others posts.

The whine sounds more like air escaping than mechanical.

The whine happens whenever I lift off after reaching around 2000 rpm or more, not for more gentle accelerating, most noticeable (and very distinctive) when I lift off to change gear to 3rd or 4th as isn't really audible above background noise at higher speeds.

Not entirely sure where it's comingfrom - doesn't make the noise if I rev in neutral so it's hard to check!

aecb

BeenThroughItAll wrote: »

Either drive it until the turbo really fails, then replace it, or find an alternative garage, would be my advice.

Thanks - this was kind of what the garage said - or at least until the sound gets a lot worse.

I can drive a car for a short period, say 50-100 miles, if the turbo blows, can't I?

AdrianC

It depends how the turbo fails. A common failure mode is for the shaft oil seals on the compressor side to fail, letting pressurised engine oil through into the induction pipework. Small problem: Diesels are throttled by restricting fuel, not air, and will happily burn engine oil.

So what you get is an engine running somewhere WAY beyond the normal peak revs, uncontrollably, unitl the source of fuel runs out. And, since the source of fuel is the engine oil...

arcon5

If its whistling it's less likely to be oil seals. Although the whistle op describes actually sounds very much like a split boost pipe.

ess0two

Boost pipe split or popped off, these cars run forever on regular and decent oil changes.