2.0TSI Catastrophic engine failure, owners be aware.

[Lucas_R]

It's certainly not a 1hr job to change the tensioner. I can't recall the labour charge, but you're looking at roughly $1000 all up for the tensioner and new cover.

Yeah, extremely weak form from VW Australia. I won't be buying another VW due to the lack of corporate integrity they've demonstrated over the past few years.

I agree - it takes some time to change the tensioner. Mine cost $950 for parts and labour (and my brother was working at the dealership at the time so that was somewhat "mates rates") and then they broke the dipstick tube (plastic) so that cost me another $180 approx. It was around $500 for the parts, so basically the same price for labour.

You can however check what tensioner you have quite quickly. If you remove the drivers side front wheel, there is a rubber/plastic plug on the side of the timing cover case that you can pop off to check the style tensioner your car has. My GTI was a 2010 so quite early in the Mk6 production so i checked the tensioner before replacing it even though i already knew it was the troublesome one.

[Transporter]

The dealers usually and often will want you to agree that they’ll bill you for up to 5 hours diagnostic time(refundable if they accept the claim under the warranty).

Here is how you can do it in 30minutes or less.

Remove ignition coils and spark plugs.
Use horoscope (Inspection camera)
Stick it in every cylinder and check the valves
Use 24mm socket to slowly rotate the engine, often you can feel that engine rotates too easy (it’s a bad sign-no compression). Using borescope, check if the valves move while you turning the crankshaft – you will see the pistons going up or down. Bring the piston up to or as close to TDC as possible (if you feel the strong resistance while turning, stop rotating) and see whether the valves are closing or not. If the valves are fully/almost open and making contact with piston(s), the valves are bent and the cylinder head has to come off for repairs before you can replace the timing chain tensioner, chain, chain guides and the sprockets too.
Whole inspection took me 30 minutes with plenty of picture taking,

As you can see from the video, all the inlet valves were open, even when pistons were moved up while rotating the crankshaft.





Of course you can do compression test if the engine rotate freely (to confirm the engine is mechanically sound). If not, don’t force it, you don’t want to cause more damage to the engine

The bottom line is,
no one should ask you to pay for 5 hours time when the diagnosing fault takes 30 minutes.
You only need to know that there is 1 valve bent and the rest of the repair process is the same, since it’s cheaper to fit a brand new cylinder head than replace the valves, guides and the rest that’s broken. ...and as for the pistons and the cylinder bores? The borescope gives very good insight what conditions pistons and cylinders are.

[Transporter]

Now the car is for wrecking

RS Octavia2 147TSI DSG

[angry_kermit]

tops effort on the quick diagnosis, whilst not proficient enough to know how ti fix it I reckon I could have a stab at this if the issue arose.

[Transporter]

tops effort on the quick diagnosis, whilst not proficient enough to know how ti fix it I reckon I could have a stab at this if the issue arose.

We can’t find the secondhand good engine for the right price and to repair the damage could be very expensive. The car was already replaced with the new one. So, it’s either for wrecking or for sale if the replacement engine crops out somewhere.

[Spinifex]

This is pretty concerning, as my car is a 2016 Mk3 RS Octavia (CHHB), and over the last 5000km or so (it's just gone 57000km), it's had the startup rattling, like rattly old tappets or a loose chain.
The car has been running faultlessly, and is just excessively noisy.
I'm not sure if it's only at idle/low revs, as the exhaust/road noise is too loud to hear any rattling while actually driving.

Took it in for diagnosis and Skoda said "we need to start stripping your timing gear off, as we don't know what's causing this weird noise" :O

So the car is with them now and I'm waiting to hear the results.

It will be VERY interesting if it turns out that Skoda are still using the dodgy Mk2 tensioner, on a mid-Mk3 models.

[Transporter]

...and once out of warranty don’t hold your breath for any goodwill warranty, since it appears to me that the Skoda Australia absolutely doesn’t care about the reputation, I guess if you have no reputation to uphold it’s easy, just ignore the problems, since there aren’t any big numbers of Skoda cars on the road. The Adelaide dealer is very difficult to talk to and they are really rude people.

No one from our family will ever buy Skoda again and I cannot even recommend them to any of my customers.

[tigger73]

I’m surprised you hadn’t done the preventative maintenance on Themis one and changed the timing chain tensioner. Did this car have the upgraded part?


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[Transporter]

I’m surprised you hadn’t done the preventative maintenance on Themis one and changed the timing chain tensioner. Did this car have the upgraded part?


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The plan was never to keep the Octavia that long and it was almost traded in at the beginning of January.

No, it didn’t have the updated tensioner. Since there were already 4 revisions of the same tensioner and how do you know that there won’t be the fifth one needed? Besides, the tensioner is only half of the problem since the chain and the sprockets wear out too in this engine, which is one of the reasons why the tensioners fail. To do it right, you have to replace the the lot and the guides too, which costs more than $1000 probably just in parts.

[woofy]

This is pretty concerning, as my car is a 2016 Mk3 RS Octavia (CHHB), and over the last 5000km or so (it's just gone 57000km), it's had the startup rattling, like rattly old tappets or a loose chain.
The car has been running faultlessly, and is just excessively noisy.
I'm not sure if it's only at idle/low revs, as the exhaust/road noise is too loud to hear any rattling while actually driving.

Took it in for diagnosis and Skoda said "we need to start stripping your timing gear off, as we don't know what's causing this weird noise" :O

So the car is with them now and I'm waiting to hear the results.

It will be VERY interesting if it turns out that Skoda are still using the dodgy Mk2 tensioner, on a mid-Mk3 models.

Totally different engine in the MK3 and no other reports at all. This MK2.5 engine was reknowned for this, I've never heard of it ever for the Mk3 engines.