Blown Turbo

Snap. Think mine just went this morning driving to work..I was just poterring about and thummp! big loss of power. big plumes of smoke had to pull in and get rescue.

I had my timing belts changed last week, car was running perfect till this point. It sounds like there has been some shoddy work done on the car and things were not put back properly. Luckily this happened fairly close to the garage that carried out the work, and they offered me a car straight away.

PDaddy said:

Snap. Think mine just went this morning driving to work..I was just poterring about and thummp! big loss of power. big plumes of smoke had to pull in and get rescue.

I had my timing belts changed last week, car was running perfect till this point. It sounds like there has been some shoddy work done on the car and things were not put back properly. Luckily this happened fairly close to the garage that carried out the work, and they offered me a car straight away.

Click to expand...

That might just be a hose popped off, likely as they would probably have been removed to gain access to the timing belt.

Thanks mate

Any ideas what the technical names for the hoses are so I can do some research. Just so I have a bit of knowledge when I need to ring the garage tomorrow. The sales reps were there so didnt get a chance to speak to the mechanic.

From reading FR+TDI's issue I remember now that there was very little smoke at the time of the pop, until I went to stop and then there was a puff of smoke out the back. There was an inconsistent rumble from the engine, and when the rescue guy revved it a bit there was a good bit of smoke out the back.

I'm sort of worried about the cost, having just had the belts done recently and would like to push all of this back to the garage if possible. The last time this garage serviced the car 5 days later the emissions light came up, it took them 5 months to source the flapper motor to fix, and that cost me 150 euros with SEAT paying only half total cost.

Now im also suspicious that they might have just disconnected the sensor for the emissions light as that didnt come on at all.

Also and sorry for the panic ridden post but could this hose poping off cause any damage to the engine.

It's the air inlet hoses that run from the output of the turbo to the engine. Aka boost hoses or boost pipes.

They push together in a plug/socket fashion and are then secured by sliding a springy metal horseshoe-shaped clip over the joint, but it's easy for these joints not to be secured properly - and it's quite common for sections of the hose to be removed to give more room to work on the cambelt etc.
If not properly refitted, then they can pop apart under pressure when the turbo is boosting, and this is often accompanied by an audible "pop".
When this happens, the air being pushed through by the turbo just goes out the resulting hole instead of to the engine - but the ECU still sends the same amount of fuel to the engine, resulting in excessive black smoke and a big power loss.
You will usually hear a loud hiss or blowing sound when trying to accelerate if the pipes have popped apart.

Shouldn't do any damage to the engine. The hose on my Ibiza popped apart once (common Ibiza fault) and I got all the above problems, but no warning light.

By the way, I had problems with my hoses after a cambelt was changed - and that was work done by a main dealer....

Hopefully your right then, will find out tomorrow. Hope someone gets a bolloxing.

Have a read of this, might give an indication of how common the problem is
Same type of pipes/clips used on most VAG models...

http://www.seatcupra.net/forums/showthread.php?t=183298

Cheers for that link and all the help, I collected the car from the dealers after they "fixed it" and 10 miles down the road it went again. Went bananas with them, but now have it back again but dont trust it yet to put the foot down.