1.6TDi glow plug and EGR warning lights

[gray1978]

Hi All

First time poster, after 4 years of happy driving my little Ibiza is starting to give me a few problems. Here's the sequence of events...

August time: EGR warning light came on during a long trip, put it down to some dirty fuel and sure enough after re-filling the light went off and stayed off.

Few weeks ago: Went in for a 60,000 mile service, all fine although advised that cambelt was due. Given the conflicting info re changing cambelts on the 1.6 TDi (anything from 4 years to 100,000 miles) I figured I'd get it done, car is coming up to 6 years old now (10 plate). No problems or warning lights after the service.

Last week: got the cambelt done... car running sweet as! However, few days later the glow plug warning light started flashing, quick google and I ruled out the brake light issue. The light doesn't come on straight away, it only comes on after about 20 minutes or not at all. The vast majority of my journeys are 30-40 minutes on fast dual carriageways (70mph). After a few days of this, the EGR light has now come back on and is staying on. So I have the EGR light on constantly and the glow plug light flashing after 20 minutes or so.

The car is running absolutely fine so I'm guessing it's going to be a sensor problem based on what I've read elsewhere on the forum. All the work has been done by a local Bosch service centre as I fell out with the dealer over a dodgy electric window!

Any help or advice much appreciated. It's booked in at the Bosch place on Monday morning for them to do a diagnostic, would you risk any long trips over the weekend, I'm thinking about a trip from Coventry to Liverpool to see family? As I said, the car seems to be running fine.

Thanks

 

[propane94]

Have a read of these, it may help.

http://www.seatcupra.net/forums/showthread.php?t=263734
http://www.seatcupra.net/forums/showthread.php?t=386405

It sounds like your EGR valve may need replacing to me, or it could just be a sensor. When the glow plug light comes on, does the car change in the way it drives, slower to rev, judders etc??

 

[gray1978]

Thanks for the response. One of my favourite saying is 'every day's a school day', and today has certainly been an education!

So as I see it, VW have designed an engine which only works if driven in a certain way and if you don't drive it in that way there's a chance it will break and cost in the region of £1000 to fix. This is madness. I work in software engineering, if I designed a system which broke if it wasn't used in a certain way, say it has to have more than 2000 transactions per hour or else it falls over, I would be out of a job fairly quickly. To be fair to VW I understand that this has been done due to EU regulations around emissions, which in turn has made life more complicated and expensive for us the consumers. A bit like the 'energy saving' lightbulb scam but on a much grander and expensive scale.

Anyway, based on what I've read (thanks again for the links) I'm guessing there's a problem with my regens. My daily commute is 18 miles each way, with a good 13 or 14 miles on dual carriageway. It's often busy which means I'm averaging between 60 and 70mph which means I'm ticking along just under 2000rpm in 5th. Perhaps not quite enough to do a proper passive regen. I have noticed sometimes that the car will idle at just over 1000rpm and 'judder' a little bit, I now know this is it doing an active regen.

I've taken the long route home tonight and have done a good 45 minutes on the motorway, either doing 60mph in 4th or 75mph in 5th to keep the revs in the 2000 to 2500 range. Now, the DPF light is still on, BUT the flashing glow plug (engine management) light hasn't come on. What does this mean?! Surely fewer warning lights is a good thing!? The car is still running fine, no loss of power. I'll check the oil in the morning.

The car is booked in to the Bosch place on Monday morning and I think I'm going to use the other car as much as poss between now and then to be on the safe side. Although I'm tempted to take it on another long run to work on Friday morning. Fingers crossed it just needs a proper regen or at worst a sensor replacing. I've just spent £700 on a service, cambelt and two new tyres and can certainly do without any more expense right on top of Xmas. The great irony is that the HP on the car was finally paid up at the start of September. Typical.

A few other questions if I may. Could this be anything to do with the cambelt change, or just a coincidence? In terms of fuel, I've always filled up at Tesco but have recently started going to Morissons, could it be dirty fuel from Morissions causing the problem? I've read a few comments from people saying they only fill up with BP, Shell, etc... Finally I'm guessing I'm royally screwed from a warranty point of view? 6 years old, non-dealer services? It has only done 59,750 miles so just under the 60k.

Finally, what about the VW cheat issue? I've read that the 1.6 engines also need the injectors changed as part of the recall, could this be related to the DPF issues? Sounds fishy to me?!

Thanks again for the advice. My next car will probably be a petrol TSi (like our Octavia).

 

[hilly81]

Thanks for the response. One of my favourite saying is 'every day's a school day', and today has certainly been an education!

So as I see it, VW have designed an engine which only works if driven in a certain way and if you don't drive it in that way there's a chance it will break and cost in the region of £1000 to fix. This is madness. I work in software engineering, if I designed a system which broke if it wasn't used in a certain way, say it has to have more than 2000 transactions per hour or else it falls over, I would be out of a job fairly quickly. To be fair to VW I understand that this has been done due to EU regulations around emissions, which in turn has made life more complicated and expensive for us the consumers. A bit like the 'energy saving' lightbulb scam but on a much grander and expensive scale.

Anyway, based on what I've read (thanks again for the links) I'm guessing there's a problem with my regens. My daily commute is 18 miles each way, with a good 13 or 14 miles on dual carriageway. It's often busy which means I'm averaging between 60 and 70mph which means I'm ticking along just under 2000rpm in 5th. Perhaps not quite enough to do a proper passive regen. I have noticed sometimes that the car will idle at just over 1000rpm and 'judder' a little bit, I now know this is it doing an active regen.

I've taken the long route home tonight and have done a good 45 minutes on the motorway, either doing 60mph in 4th or 75mph in 5th to keep the revs in the 2000 to 2500 range. Now, the DPF light is still on, BUT the flashing glow plug (engine management) light hasn't come on. What does this mean?! Surely fewer warning lights is a good thing!? The car is still running fine, no loss of power. I'll check the oil in the morning.

The car is booked in to the Bosch place on Monday morning and I think I'm going to use the other car as much as poss between now and then to be on the safe side. Although I'm tempted to take it on another long run to work on Friday morning. Fingers crossed it just needs a proper regen or at worst a sensor replacing. I've just spent £700 on a service, cambelt and two new tyres and can certainly do without any more expense right on top of Xmas. The great irony is that the HP on the car was finally paid up at the start of September. Typical.

A few other questions if I may. Could this be anything to do with the cambelt change, or just a coincidence? In terms of fuel, I've always filled up at Tesco but have recently started going to Morissons, could it be dirty fuel from Morissions causing the problem? I've read a few comments from people saying they only fill up with BP, Shell, etc... Finally I'm guessing I'm royally screwed from a warranty point of view? 6 years old, non-dealer services? It has only done 59,750 miles so just under the 60k.

Finally, what about the VW cheat issue? I've read that the 1.6 engines also need the injectors changed as part of the recall, could this be related to the DPF issues? Sounds fishy to me?!

Thanks again for the advice. My next car will probably be a petrol TSi (like our Octavia).

I may be wrong so stand to be corrected but I believe if the DPF is over a certain %age full, say 90% then no matter how hard you try you will not be able to get it to regen. It will be a plug in laptop job.

 

[propane94]

It could be the DPF, however I would expect the DPF light to come on if this was a problem. It is known with the EGR valve to wear over time and clog up, and the only resolutions are to replace or blank it.

Looking through what you have said, is the DPF light or EGR one that is on, it seemed to change part way though, or is it both and the glow plugs are intermittent??

If the DPF light is on you will not feel a loss of power until the DPF reaches a certain saturation percentage, 75% (at this point I would not drive it except to the garage). It is at this point the EGR will be deactivated, possibly causing this error too on your dash.

To answer your questions, I cannot see how a cambelt change would effect this. Fuel will play some part in it, good fuel will allow you to go further between regens and result in a cleaner burn, however must cars run almost the same on both, good fuel mostly helps with deposits in the engine. As for the warranty, I think you can kiss that goodbye, although your under the mileage, your car is twice the age and with no service history, they will say no. That being said, depending on the problem, you may be able to get some good will.

 

[gray1978]

Hi thanks again. I've checked again and the light which is on is the 'Emission Control System' (the one which looks like an engine) and not the DPF light which I think is separate. So possibly not the DPF. The Emission Control System light is still on but no sign of the flashing engine management light.

I'm erring on the side of caution, didn't take the Ibiza to work on Friday and am trying to use it as little as possible over the weekend (although the missus drove it to the pub on Friday lunchtime!). If it's not the DPF what else could it be? EGR valve? Lambda sensor? How much would I be looking at to fix either of these?

Dreading the garage on Monday!

 

[propane94]

Best bet is to wait and see what the garage say, it could be one of many things but I do suspect the EGR valve.
The price depends on the garage really.

 

[gray1978]

The garage have just rang to say that it's the airflow metre, £150 all in. I've looked the part up on eBay and it's coming in at roughly £30 to £40 so given how bad it could have been I'm alright with that. They're getting the parts in and doing the job this afternoon which is also handy.

Can anyone tell me what this part does and what can cause it to go wrong?

Hopefully this is the end of it but I have learned quite a lot over the last few days about the pitfalls of diesel engines. I'll be more mindful of the need to give the car a good run regularly to do the passive regen and I've also decided to give the supermarket fuel a miss from now on. There's no getting away from the fact that diesel is a dirty fuel and it seems that the solution to the EU regulations is simply to keep as much crap as possible inside the engine instead of in the air! In the long-term this means that there is lot that can go wrong and it's generally not cheap to fix. I might even give the premium stuff a go.

Given that I've spent nearly £1000 on the car in the last month or so I'm planning to keep hold of it for a couple of years yet. However when I do replace it I'll seriously consider going petrol. Our other car is a 1.4 TSi Octavia, which so far has been a cracking little engine. Like the look of the Ibiza FR with the same engine!

 

[MJ]

Have the garage not shared any fault codes?

EGR valves are a common issue on this engine and usually fail without any symptoms other than the engine and coil light coming on.

sometimes the car will fail to start or under perform but they will always flag a fault code.

 

[gray1978]

Not got the fault codes yet but I'll ask them when I go and pick it up later today (sods law they ordered the wrong part so it's taken an extra day).

Are most garages happy to give you the codes? When I dropped it off I started waffling about DPFs and EGR valves and the guy just rolled his eyes and said they'd look into it. Garages must get fed up of people googling their problems and coming in with their own ideas about what's wrong. Bit like doctors I suspect!

 

[MJ]

Sometimes the people who have been fixing these types of issue for quite some time post the likely cause and can give an accurate diagnosis through the description of the fault alone...

 

[gray1978]

Didn't get the fault codes unfortunately, by the time I picked it up the garage was closing and the manager was having problems with his broadband and was a bit distracted (the broadband problems didn't however impact on his ability to take my debit card payment, funny that!).

Anyway, the fault lights have gone off, time will tell if they reappear!

 

[erreesse]

Hi all of you,

My daughter has also a 1.6TDi (90PS). A few months ago no power anymore (max 55mph) all kinds of error lights (EGR DPF). The solution was: DPF and EGR out. Clean the EGR and put in "straight" position, bore DPF out and weld a tube in it so for MOT the look is ok. Second thing to do: at the SW the error lights and EGR had to be deactivated, even these actions bring you about 10hp. While SW-mod ask the price for power upgrade.

Bye,
Erreesse