torbos fail mostly because numpty drivers jump in and floor the pedal from cold and charge to a stop and switch off when hot. i suppose the touran turbo will now go pop.
jag.
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Yes, it seems impossible to separate out basic reliability of turbo systems, from damage caused by neglect. Perhaps one tentative conclusion is that N/A engines are more tolerant of neglected servicing and/or lack of owner 'mechanical sympathy', though the shorter lube service intervals of turbos feeds directly into that, too.
Someone earlier made the comparison to Saabs and Subarus; the fact that the majority of these will have been cherished private cars must count for a great deal. Whereas I presume a much larger proportion of the Warranty Direct cars will be ex-company / lease / rental that have just entered private ownership, and so will have been less likely to have been cared for in early life.
If it /is/ true that turbos are less relaible than N/A, then coupled with HJ's news item that turbos are likely to become the norm, that's bad news for the motorist in the long term I guess. Turbos cost, what, £500? So that's greater expense at point of sale, greater lifetime repair costs, and potentially a shortened vehicle life since turbo failure would prove an uneconomic repair at an earlier age, and so greater depreciation :(
Edited by dimdip on 05/12/2009 at 20:32
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Turbos cost, what, £500?
And then a fair bit more.
I have started to wonder if the environmental rules that may appear to guide the motoring manufacturers to make more efficient cars is not them making cars more costly to repair so they can sell more new cars. For example:
- I have had a few turbo petrol cars out of choice but soon that will be the norm. Out of warranty these could be costly. Instead of a reliable ten year old 2.0 Mondeo petrol you'll have a ten year old turbo charged 1.4 turbo Mondeo.
- LED lights - how much do they cost to repair/replace
- Stop-start - again how much to replace/repair down the line?
- Regenerative braking....
- DMFs
- DPFs
- DSGs
- Hybrids
... this is for a different thread to discuss though.
Edited by rtj70 on 05/12/2009 at 21:43
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- Regenerative breaking....
>>
Is that automatic recycling? :-)
Edited by Old Navy on 05/12/2009 at 21:22
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Yes... :-) Well no of course.
Was posting at the same time as taking an old Mac iBook apart to fix a problem with the system board. Of course I meant braking.
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we bitch and whine these days, when a DMF fails at 110k miles. A turbo at 80k miles.
50 years ago, the whole car was in the breakers yard after 100k miles. It was considered normal to get a recon engine at 50k miles.
Edited by Webmaster on 06/12/2009 at 02:18
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>>Instead of a reliable ten year old 2.0 Mondeo petrol you'll have a ten year old turbo charged 1.4 turbo Mondeo.
Wake up people!
you wont have ten year old cars in ten years!
already there are cars that by 8 years are uneconomical to repair, as technology marches onwards, then the average age of cars will drop - as will the residuals.
Im really not sure where that will lead us, maybe only the rich owning cars again?
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swiss tony, that is the point I'm making too. Stop shouting! :-)
All this technology is in the interest of the manufacturer.
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Take one mole hill
create
One Mountain
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My next car will probably be turbo petrol, stop-start, regen braking, LED lights, etc. And I'll enjoy it. It might be diesel instead of petrol but if a turbo petrol does provides good mpg and low emissions I might go back to petrol.
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Im really not sure where that will lead us maybe only the rich owning cars again?
Same as recently no doubt, in debt till the pips squeak.
We'll see hard times in the next few years when mortgage rates spiral.
Going to be strange car owning times, many of us have been through hard times when we'd buy basically scrap cars and fix them up, that won't be an option with the techno wonders.
I agree with you about many present day cars not going to make 10...only carefully selected fairly simple vehicles likely to make the term imo.
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We'll see hard times in the next few years when mortgage rates spiral.
Assuming they do spiral. But that's for another thread. Don't debate here.
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So where in the reliability stakes will the new 1.4TSI engine from VW be, with its turbocharger and supercharger ?
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We are going to have to get used to small turbo engines in the medium term as manufacturers strive to maintain good performance while meet emissions and economy targets. Renault are advertising a 1.4 turbo on here, VAG has it's TSI and I hear Ford will have downsized turbos too!
As for failure my 130 TDI PD let go its turbo at 35K and it's well looked after.
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A Passat petrol (1.8T) I had new in 2000 needed a new turbo on delivery!
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Does it state the age range of the cars involved in the "statistics"? To me, a company like Warranty Direct will look after cars that are outside the manufacturer warranty period and may have gone on to independant servicing. Without knowing the exact history of those that failed, it's impossible to draw a definite conclusion - these figures are just that - figures.
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>>Does it state the age range of the cars involved in the "statistics"?
Good question.
I'd take the whole story with a pinch of salt, in the absence of more detailed information about what the data are and how they have been used. Even then, the information is necessarily way out of date.
For example - suppose you are considering a 2 or 3 year old CRV 2 or 3 turbo diesel.
Look at the reliability index on WD. You'll find that Honda is the second most reliable manufacturer in their list, after Suzuki.
According to the index, Honda is about twice as reliable as Ford and four times as reliable as Saab, Mercedes and Audi, and about three times as reliable as the average. Actually, what it seems to mean is that WD has had a half, quarter or third the cost of claims per policy on Hondas - read into that what you will.
So far, so good - a factor of 2, 3 or 4 is significant and manufacturer rankings don't usually change overnight.
The model analysis pretty well bears out the manufacturer level index, which if anything puts Honda in an even better light - the poorer figures are coming from the older versions of the various models (though not necessarily older cars when on risk - just older data), the later ranges are better.
So Honda has in the past been a manufacturer of relatively more reliable vehicles - of that I would be reasonably sure. It's difficult to go much beyond that IMO.
Because - the last CRV version in the results published is the 97-02 model, the CRV I. In fact the most recent Hondas included are the 99-03 Accords. The CRVs in the analysis were all manufactured 7 or more years ago. They were on average nearly 6 years old during the time on risk. Honda did not even manufacture any diesel engines at the time, turbo or otherwise. It is now on its second generation diesel and the first generation has yet to influence the WD index.
Getting back to the point debated above - whether turbo engines are more than twice as likely to fail. I would be sceptical of the relevance of that to anyone buying a 2-4 year old car now. If Honda are anything to go by, the data underlying the analysis mainly relate to cars between 7 and 10 years old. Since then, turbo diesels have become a much bigger part of the fleet, and some of the early well known epidemic problems with certain makes have been more or less overcome. On the other hand, DPFs have become ubiquitous, a factor which may also be largely absent in the experience behind the results.
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I have owned three petrol turbo cars(Escort RS Turbo, Cosworth Escort Turbo and Renault GT2 Turbo). Did 90,000 miles(each) in two of them and 12,000 in the Cosworth(had to sell to buy my first house!.)Never had a engine failure with any of them.
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I have a 152,000 mile turbo petrol (with variable cam timing, drive by wire, canbus and all manner of other "horrors"), which is as reliable as the tides. A properly designed, cooled and lubricated turbocharger installation is nothing to worry about with modern oils and of course correct and timely servicing. With regard to my particular car, there are 250,000 mile examples still running perfectly happily on their original turbos.
I remember when 60,000 miles was a good life for a turbocharger, and when a friend got 100,000 out of the blower on his RS Turbo, the mechanics at the Ford garage who were tasked with the work were all citing it as some kind of miracle. That wasn't that long ago either.
Of course there are manufacturers (Renault, VW and others) who have had serious design flaws with the turbocharger installations on some of their engines at some point in time, which have resulted in an escalated number of failures. I wonder if these contribute to the higher statistics in this report?
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As a VW owner I would be interested to know what design flaw you refer to, is it the variable vane technology ?
I had one replaced under warranty because the vanes sooted up and would stick causing overboost and limpmode, but I think it was replaced rather then fixed because that is the way with big dealers these days and of course the manufacturer pays .
If it happened again, I would clean it because I would be paying this time.
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I was actually thinking of the oil starvation problems affecting the earlier 1.8T petrol engines (which were known for blowing turbos), but yes the VNT system can be troublesome on the PD engines.
I have a VW PD and I love it, but I am told by someone who spends 5 days a week working on VWs and Audis that a sticking VNT mechanism, (along with MAF failure) is something I can almost expect if I keep it a long time. It can be fixed, and it's not the end of the world, as you say, but it is a very common problem. I guess it would count as a turbo failure for warranty purposes given that the dealer will just bolt a new unit on rather than clean out the (otherwise perfectly serviceable) old one.
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I agree that the WD figures are (in my opinion) just that - I wrote to them recently concerning this subject, and they agreed that their "Reliability Index" is subjective, as many cars are not included as the sample is too small (they said that a disclaimer states this on their website) - my own car, a Mazda 3 (which by all accounts is one the most reliable in its class), is one of those missed off.
One of my points to them (which they didn't seem to contend) was that the figures don't include details of previous repairs/replacements of defective parts (whether under the manufacturer's warranty or not) BEFORE taking up WD's product - as such, some cars which actually aren't that reliable may have a whole swathe of relatively new parts, meaning that they may have a lifespan advantage over the more reliable cars which have original equivalents. I wonder what affect this may have on the results of any survey.
I find it amazing that (in my opinion) such reports/surveys seem to be so readily reported as "facts" on third-party websites (see MSN as an example) when such large sampling errors exist. My understanding from what WD told me, was that their figures are based only on the number and cost of warranty claims, and therefore the reason why their customers took out the warranties were not factored into their calculations (amongst other things, e.g. customer profiles).
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