Hi FP, thanks for your comments.

In answer to your comment, the failure was not catastrophic, it was an intermittent misfire, which had been reported at the service and diagnosed as "an open circuit on an ignition coil pack ". The garage (a VW dealer) "swapped the coils" and declared the problem solved. This was done under warranty, which expired 2 weeks later!

The misfire recurred about 6 weeks later.

This time the garage said that there were no error codes and carried out a compression test. This showed low compression on a cylinder. They removed the head and declared the engine wrecked.

Subsequently they have stated that the problem was “piston damage”, then they said it was "in the crank area". They have been unable or unwilling to identify the root cause of the problem. I have asked for a detailed report ion the issue which they originally agreed to produce but then refused.

The engine has been fully maintained by the dealer according to the service schedule.

I would be interested to know what the life expectancy of this engine should be.

I believe that here were some issues with reliability with this engine in Australia, but I cannot find any real evidence of this.

Any help would be appreciated.

Edited by rogerl_uk on 03/07/2013 at 09:53

The loss of compression is likely to be due to the misfire. The injector sprays fuel directly into the cylinder and will wash the oil film off the bores if there is a problem with the spray pattern or ignition. The piston will then slide up and down an unlubricated bore and irreversible damage is inevitable.

Never heard of a misfire causing this.

Way to go would be to get an independent engineers report on the cuase of the damage. It may transpire that it will not be possible to determine a cause but you would get a professional opinion. clearly this will involve you in additional cost.

If the report proves that its down to the negligence of the garage in diagnosing the issue then if you were to pursue this through the small claims court then you would probally win. however this would then involve you in addition cost to bring this action, which you would re coup if successful.