Driving to work this morning and strange noise came from the car and it lost power followed by pumping out loads of white smoke – turns out the Turbo in my car has gone and needs replacing.

On top of that the catalytic convertor may also need changing…

…so I'm stuck with a bill for either £1700 for just the Turbo or £2200 for the Turbo and the cat!!!! I could swear for an hour just thinking about this!!!

So my question is – what are my options other than selling the car as I know I can't bloody afford that much.

B

Have a look around for second hand/reconned turbo's and fit it yourself.

£1700 for a turbo !!!!

WTF ?,some one's having you in the net.
shop around
what car is it ?

PS. are you sure you haven't just blown the intercooler pipe off (very similar symptoms)

Its an Audi A4 1.9TDI 130BHP (2003).

As he said, could just be the turbo hose.

Mind you having said that a mate just shelled out £1200 for a cat on a Volvo D5, and that was after shopping around a bit!

You could buy a garrett stage 2 for that money, does seem steep.

Car + Age + milage would help if want constructive replies.
Take it apart yourself and fit new seals. You need to scribe the through shaft and turbines so it stays in balance, apart from that , and being carefull with the amount of torque you put through the sockets in getting the blower off the manifold, its not a huge job.

B

It's a pretty common motor across the whole VAG range, so you could do well by ringing round a few breakers to see if they've had any accident damaged vehicles in with the same engine with the turbo in good nick.

Or get phoning some of the companies on this google search to see what price they could do you a turbo for…

I'm guessing, but are the prices you've quoted above from a main dealer?

fil it wiv duk fethers

LOL, you'd get a second hand engine for less !

try here-
clicky

start from £550.
best to phone them with reg no. and chassis no.

SLIGHTLY more palatable…

If you need someone reasonably priced to fit it too, I know a man who generally can at a highly favourable rate (not me I might add)…

I'd certainly use a site like parts gateway to see if any breakers have got a turbo (which they probably do). Never fitted a turbo myself but probably not that tricky.
My Golf had the turbo replaced under warranty before I got it – I remember being told the price was something like the one you've been quoted.

100k miles on the dot!

You could get a price for a recon turbo cuz that price could be for a brand spanker. There are a few vw breakers on the web,i think all the 130pd had the same blower.vw/audi/skoda and seat.The oil in the cat will soon burn out just make sure theres no one behind ya.

if you do it your self.make sure you do an oil/filter change too,apart from that it's easy.
any half decent mechanic will do it for £100ish.

Last August I blew the turbo on my Seat Ibiza, took it off myself & took it to local garage to see if it was repairable, it wasn't (impeller had rubbed on the inside of the housing after the bearings failed) so I got the garage to recover the car to thier workshop & fit a new one – the bill was £670 all in (same engine as yours)
Also the MOT test doesn't test the exhaust gases to check the cat is working so unless you're that fussed, I wouldn't bother.

LOL @ Duk fethers!

Yep – main dealer or I should say approved repairer – same same but different.

Snaps – interesting. That's more like it!

Think I'm gonna go down the route of a reconditioned unit. Anything I should look out for?

B

Nearly half the labour charge on mine was for removing & cleaning all the intercooler pipe work & manifolds as it was dripping in oil & needs to be cleaned out before restarting the engine after fitting the new turbo.
I think the turbo on its own was about £260+vat

I have a 2005 Seat ibiza FR TDI 130 and i blew my turbo about a year or so back. The propellor shaft snapped. I went down the route of getting a reconditioned one from one of the many websites on google. I paid about £650ish i think for everything all in.

They sent me a reconditioned turbo that looked like new, once this was fitted and i had the old one of the company sent a courier to come and collect the old one.

Snaps- same with mine, it took ages for them to remove all the pipe work and Intercooler to make sure they got all the little bits of shattered propellers out.

i had to replace the turbo on my (petrol) Saab a couple of years ago.
used a recon turbo, there was a rebate for sending the old knackered tubo back to them for fitting new internals (usual problem – bearing went causing impeller to disintergrate)

make sure all the intake pipes are throughly cleaned – if your turbo has done the same thing then the intake pipes/intercooler will be full of little flakes of metal and oil that you certainly dont want reaching your engine.

I fixed the saab my self, but i dont know how easy the audi is to do yourself.

Its an Audi A4 1.9TDI 130BHP (2003).

FFS- there will be thousands of Cats and turbos sat on Scrapyard shelves!

Search Ebay for starters. I source all my parts from Scrappers/Ebay. **** main dealers or dodgy indies. One part of note- I had a driveshaft replaced for £160 all in compared to £980 that Subaru wanted.

Ps. Also shop around – phone ten garages for their best quote to fit. Be polite, nice but bullish. That way they wont dare do the 'extras/it cost more to do than we thought mate'.

Go to this site – these guys will help out.

http://www.vwaudiforum.co.uk/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=24

All the best OP 🙁

Cheers for the comments – been a bit of a painful day really. Been wanting a new bike for ages and decided I can't afford it, plus we really need a family holiday this year so we were going to splash out on that but then this comes along so we're not the happiest today 🙁

Hora – think that's the nicest you've ever been to me 🙂

GSF car parts.com
Ive had a couple of cat's from them, both were just under £100
I can't see turbo's in the catalogue but they are audi/bmw specialists so i'm sure they will point you the right way,& they have branches all over the place

I'd seriously consider doing it yourself. The prices you've been quoted are ridiculous. Try Turbo Technics for a replace & return turbo, which I reckon should come in under £500 for what is in effect a new turbo.
A turbo swap isn't that much trouble, just time consuming – took me and a mate 8 hours to do a turbo, cat and intercooler on an MR2 last year, and they have NO room for working in the engine bay. Probably aim for 6 hours on an Audi. I'd make sure you have a bolt/stud extractor cos they're more likely than not stuck into either the turbo or the exhaust manifold. Probably get a new set of studs as well, just in case some get REALLY mangled when they're being extracted. Lots of WD40 on the cat bolts/nuts the night before you do the work too.

Coming round to the idea of changing it myself but only doing the Turbo – as there seems to be some thought in letting the oil burn itself off.

I bought a replacement (exchange) turbo from these guys £320 delivered.
turboactive

Long story… My GF fell off her bike and smashed her head/helmet and busted her arm up pretty bal. We called my dad to pick us up as we were miles away from our car. On the way back from picking us up my dad hit a rock which smashed a hole in the sump and all the oil drained from the car. Which meant a busted turbo at best.

We had been given loads of quotes for over £1500. He ended up ringing a turbo specialist and got a recon turbo (they sent a courier to get the shot one) it cost him £400 for the turbo & £200 for the fitting.

It was a 2004 golf GT TDI BTW

Long story short…. no way it would cost over 1k to get sorted.

I replaced the turbo on my old car. Took a day, the worst part was that the bolts attaching it to the exhaust manifold were really hard to get to. Turbo was £120. No intercooler to clean out but that would be easy enough.

Even if you bought a recon turbo, it'd be what £300, then even a whole day of your local garage's time would only be another £350.

Hora – think that's the nicest you've ever been to me

I don't like seeing this sort of PITA happen- cars are **** moneypits at times aren't they. I got rid of my beloved Forester in the end as I wondering what was going to go wrong next. 🙁

the turbo went on my petrol saab.. cost £700 to replace at a saab independant specialist.. shop around! Most garages will do that sort of work

The turbo went on our VW last year! Got a local garage to do it the options were recon turbo £600 or a non-branded turbo £700 went for the non-branded option when the garage gets it it is a stamped VW genuine part! Don't think the labour was to bad either TBH.

One mechanic turned the job down because the turbo is away at the back and the job is best done with the car on a hydraulic lift thing!

Hope this helps feeling your pain.

Cheers – pain is pleasure apparently but not sure I believe that!!!

Spoke to a mate of mine who knows his Audis and is a shit hot mechanic (unfortunately lives miles away from me) he says it isn't a difficult turbo to change of all the turbos out there so I'm thinking recon Turbo (£350) and labour (£300) and I'll make a saving over Audi.

He also recommended washing the cat out with degreaser to remove most of the oil and let the rest burn off so sounds like a winner.

Just a quick note.Usually a blown turbo smokes "blue" not white.White is usually a sign of water ingress into the engine.Possibly headgasket or somethink like that.

Chech that it is the turbo that has given up and not the EGR. Exhaust Gas Recirc valve. Might be worth speaking to Turbo Technics they recon turbos etc. http://www.turbotechnics.com/

I believe its the Turbo as the local Audi garage has inspected it and advised on the fault.

Left a message for TurboTechnics to call me.

B

When my turbo blew it was thick white – but it could be a variety of colours. If the turbo is just not working then the smoke will be black (unburnt fuel, not enough air being blown in); if the internals have failed then oil could be making its way into the intake in which case it'll be burning and coming out blue; if oil is ending up in the hot exhaust gasses then it'll come out white. In reality you'll probably get a combination of all three.

Just a quick note.Usually a blown turbo smokes "blue" not white.White is usually a sign of water ingress into the engine.

As molgrips says, white is usually when you have blown the exhaust-side seals and it's not so much burning as evapourating through the exhaust system. That was the way my old turbo went on my petrol engine. Eventually (After months of light smoke and heavy smoke when idling for a while) it started screaching as the compressor started to nibble at the inducer walls – not good!
But the turbos are cheap, easy to find and usually quite easy to replace – I'd personally leave the CAT, check it still performs OK for the time being and see if it passes at MOT time, if not change it then.