My petrol sounds like a diesel...

mowog

mowog

Member
Hi all,

Hoping for some advice. Just bought my first A2, and it was cheap for a reason, but I intend to fix it...

The most pressing engine issue is that my 1.4 petrol sounds very much like a diesel at tickover. Most of my car-fiddling has involved much older cars, so I think I know what detonation sounds like, and I'm pretty certain this is it. It does seem to go away at higher revs, but I'm keen not to drive it until I've figured out what is going on for fear of blowing a hole in a piston!

The car had a replacement engine about 18 months ago. The receipt is kosher and the work done sounds thorough, so I don't think this can be anything too serious. My suspicion is a sensor issue causing the engine to run too lean or have very poor timing at tickover.

Has anyone else ever experienced this?

There is an engine warning light on, and I will hook up to the OBD when I can, but my usual bluetooth dongle isn't working so I need to do some research and get something compatible.
 
Whilst the 1.4 is generally a quiet engine, a lot of them can suffer with piston slap which is not necessarily linked to mileage covered. There are 2 1.4 engine codes AUA and BBY, the latter and indeed later engine suffering from it more than the AUA. They can commonly use a bit of oil as well as a result of this.

As for a scanner, i've been breaking A2's for over 5 years now and have never neaded more than my Maxiscan Vag405 can offer.
 
Ah, thanks for the tip re the scanner - I'll look that up.

I don't think this is piston slap - that sounds quite different, and tends to be less apparent at tickover, I find.This really does sound exactly like a diesel at tickover, as if the fuel is pre-detonating. BTW, it's an AUA engine.
 
Our AUA is noisy at tickover when cold, improves as it warms up. 88k on the odo.
I put it down to the engine being all aluminium and acoustically less well damped than an iron block.
 
Have you considered the clutch release bearing?
Mine is the same from cold, once I have pushed the clutch the noise disappears


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
I had not considered that. I will check tomorrow and see if pressing the clutch has any effect.
 
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