if you have a 1.6 turbo diesel engine its going to be the same as in fords. Its made in the Uk.

Has anyone experianced turbo failure due to dirty oil clogging up the oil supply pipe and filter to the turbo. Thus the bearings in the turbo overheat and fail causing complete power loss.
If you don’t catch it early enough it all falls to pieces and spits turbo parts in to the engine and its a new engine please!!!!!!!!!!

Well its just failed on me. New turbo £600. plus a load of extra parts as the original parts and design are rubbish.
And if you don’t fit the extra bits the turbo’s warrently is void!! Plus god only knows how much workshop time.

I’m now advised that my car oil should be changed at half the manufacturers recommendation!! to avoid the risk of it going again.

This engine is renown for it apparently. I was going to buy a Berlingo next but I’m not now..

Anyway – does anyone have a mechanics workshop manual for the 1.6 TDCI ford engine or focus? As I’m thinking of doing the work myself on the weekend.

I’ve always changed the oil in my cars/bikes every 5k or so anyway

Makes sense to me for minimal cost

local library will have the manual.

Some manufacturers are recommending 20,000 miles between services. this is bonkers! and can result in faiures like this. Best of luck to you.

I’ve done 200k miles with ford tdci engines (1.8 and 1.6).
Never had a problem (apart from an air pipe coming detached – fixed with leatherman), and they’ve only been serviced as per the instructions (assuming I remember on time, so probably more like every 15k miles).

Please tell me this is only the 1.6 tdci… (due to pick up a focus 1.8 tdci today…)

1.8tdci is a very different engine, then again, everything has problems and breaks sometime.

I’m now advised that my car oil should be changed at half the manufacturers recommendation!! to avoid the risk of it going again.

I’m pretty sure Ford will have done a little bit of research on frequency of oil changes, after all they could be picking up the warranty bills 🙄

anything with a turbo needs regular oil changes

I’m pretty sure Ford will have done a little bit of research on frequency of oil changes, after all they could be picking up the warranty bills

Manufacturers are only interested in cars until the warranty runs out. 2-3 years, 2-3 oil changes, car should be fine whatever you do to it. After that it’s anybodys guess. If you plan on ceeping a car for a long time, change the oil more often. 🙂

Sensationalist nonsense. All engines have problems and there will always be someone to say they all do it. At work in Italy we run loads of TDCIs which have minimal servicing and maximum thrape and only had 1 with a problem which was an ECU.

Maybe that engine requires thinner oil to run in -10C conditions? or the oil hasnt been replaced with the correct oil. (for the missus car, 2 main dealers have supplied the oil 3 times in total and not once does it match the recommended grade in the book)
Have a look into the crankcase breather too, most arent service items and cause plenty of problems once blocked.

I do oil 8-10000miles usually in cars and 4000miles in bikes.

Having said that my BMW is coming upto 14000miles since the last change and still has 2 blobs left on the service indicator. After paying a premimum for the uber wagon I will believe it, and it wont be going anywhere fast with all this white stuff around.

Oh dear.
Oh dear oh dear.

Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin…

We bought a Cmax 1.6TDCi 4 years ago through the Ford Direct scheme.
Managed to miss a service, by a few thousand miles.
Turbo blew up.
Not warrntied due to oil filter being clogged up, so had to stump up £800.
BUT:
a couple of years later, the car started making funny noises. Took it to the Ford Dealer who examined it, turned out to be the injector manifold seals being worn out, which is a known issue, so the manifolds were rattling. £200 for new seals. Thankyou.
Problem was, this revealed another noise. A rattle from the top end and camshaft which were apparently worn due to the exploding turbo! The cure? £5000 for a new engine!

I started asking questions about the original work that we’d paid £800 for. Why wasn’t all the crud removed? they claimed they’d done as best as they could until I discovered they should have changed the oil 3 times as part of the turbo replacment. But they’d only billed us for 1 lot and 1 filter.
6 months and lots of snotty letters from my solicitor (also my father-in-law which helped) and threats of court action, the Ford dealer gave us a new car! Well, a same age, same condition, but the 2.0TDCi instead.

the 1.6 is known to fail in this way, even the Ford service manager told me so. A friend blew up 3 turbos, but luckily got them all done on warranty.
I’ve got a copy of the Ford ETIS cd-rom, which Ford WILL NOT give to anyone (I bought it from ebay) Email me and I’ll send you a copy.

Well known in the trade as a useless engine. 1.6 ONLY though. The 1.8 is an old Ford design and not a Ford/PSA joint venture and is completely different.

Get the Haynes manual (4807). Money well spent.
Hth
Marko

Good to see that Skoda Octavia 1.9TDi are not featuring in this, !! 🙂 as per mfr service schedule I`m having the engine oil changed every
20 000 miles and all seems fine with it (94k on clock now). Found my previous Ford 1.9 TDCi a real pain though, more time in garage than on road it felt (ECU failure and flywheel break up, all under warranty thankfully)

My 3 year old VW Caddy 1.9 Tdi had turbo failure and the resulting injector, camshaft etc damage so it’s not just limited to Fords, but as stated above, any car with a turbo – including VAG units.

Can this be avoided by an inline filter or somesuch?

The good thing about ford diesel engines…………..

The crank fits in the bottom fo a pinto 2.0 to make a 2.3 🙂

[shakes fist at Masda for ruining ford engines as kit car powerplants by actualy designing new stuff not evolving the old ones like they had done since the kent first appeared]

yep, you do get issues with all engines (and all things really) but the 1.6 tdci is picking up all sorts of issues…

Just don’t buy a Subaru. Sensors alone are circa £450 each fitted.

Then theres the two exhaust pipes where the MOT/main dealer wanted 1k.

Any boggo car would have been £200.

Nice.

The Ford 2.0 TDCI isn’t immune either…. Mine now has just over 50k on it from new and in the past 10k it’s had clutch, DMF, EGR and alternator. We’re not heavy on cars and have never had any of these parts replaced on any of our previous cars one or two taken to 150k.

IIRC the 1.6 also has the DPF at 75k and ~£700 to look forward to as well. The DPF was an option on my 2.0, luckily not one we took up!

Ah. A DPF.

Say no more.

DPF cars really can not do short journeys.

My Mazda 6 2.0TD went the same way. New turbo was £2000, then the big end bearings failed and required a new engine £6000 only three weeks later. Lease company baulked at this and the vehicle was “taken out of the fleet” – a fitting end after four years of treatment at the hands of my kids 😆

The biggest thing to extend the life of a turbo on any car is to leave the engine to idle for a few minutes when you stop to allow the turbo to cool down before turning the ignition off. I used to have a Tuned Saab T16 Aero. Still going strong after 285k miles on original engine and turbo. Simples!

funny thing, inbred456, the user manual on my Frod Focus specifically says not to do that. wierd eh? Probably Ford maximising their profits.

my mechanic warned me off the 1.6 berlingo for this reason ….and i got laughed at

glad i bought the non turbo now !

i had a focus tdci 2.0 for over a year and had no probs with turbo or power loss!!

Looks like an oil change pretty sharpish on my 1.6 110 hdi pug as its not been done for two years 😳

transit connect think its a 1.8tdci just droped my turbo 2days after a 60000 service,yesterday a college after his 300000 service last week droped his turbo company car so not a worry. was only saying to the garage before mine failed that the services are getting silly at 15000 when walking around the workshop the amount of stripped down newish motors is an eye opener

Its been said before but anyone with a turbo ought to pay special attention to letting the engine (ie oil) warm up before giving it beans, let the turbo cool down somewhat by driving the last mile or so gently and changing the oil regularly. Turbos spin damn fast and get damn hot (those are technical expressions btw).

You were looking at the best part of £3k to replace the turbos on my old Audi S4. I looked after those babies rather carefully!

1.8 tdci turbo blew up 3 months outside warranty taking out the cat. £1600 job although managed to get some money back from Ford. The car had only done about 30,000 miles. Piss poor.

Not sure I’ll buy another Diesel.

parents had this with a 1.9 (i think) tdci earlier this year.

heard a couple of horror stories about people with 3 turbos in a year from a couple of people!!

As an Ex Ford salesman, wouldn’t put any of my own money near a Ford diesel!!

Spanking new Golf 2.0tdi here. Just over 1k up and it’s saying “17,500 until your next service…” which is something of a novelty given the Mondeo I just got rid of rarely got over 11k between services (12.5k interval) due to oil quality degradation.

SWMBO is not being allowed to run it in – lots of warming up (it has an oil temp gauge – yay) and cooling down should help it in the long run.

My dad had a 1.6 Berlingo and had quite a few problems – biggest was with the dealer’s attitude.

My 90,000 1.6 TDCi Focus Estate has blown three turbos since August, all due to an undiagnosed problem.

It’s been towed 3 times in that period, and been into the garage 5 times in total since August 5th. This is despite it never missing a service.

I’ve now had to chuck it and have a petrol Skoda.

Shame, it drove well, was comfortable and was a decent size. But I’m NEVER buying another Ford.

Shame, it drove well, was comfortable and was a decent size. But I’m NEVER buying another Ford.

Funnily, I was deciding between a Toyota or a Focus. I test drove a Focus and the main dealer insisted Fords policy is only to offer 3months warranty max. Nice huh?

Then I remembered the mantra Fix or Repair Daily. Maybe thats why Ford main dealers wont offer anything over 3months on 3yrs+ Ford cars………

But hora you won’t keep it long enough to run out of warranty.

If my Forester had a warranty it would have never have gone 🙁

As ever, there’s some total carp talked on this site.

Sure, the 1.6 Ford TDI is not a great unit, but neither is it made of cheese. Sad to hear that some people are having bad times, but “3 turbos since August” sounds to me like it’s a garage problem rather than anything else. There’s no engine on earth, not even a TVR one, that wears out as quickly as that.

My last ten cars have all been diesels. I never buy new, always buy high-mileage and have never, not once, had an engine problem with any of them. The cars include Audi, Mercedes, BMW, Ford x 2, Citroen x 2, Land Rover x 2, Volvo, Volkswagen….sure, there have been other problems, but I’ve not had a single engine-related issue. These are all high-mileage cars as well (the current fleet of Passat, XC90 and Discovery 3 have 400k miles between them), and have only ever been serviced when indicated by the car. They have the right grade of oil, I check the levels regularly, but other than that I don’t do anything special with them. I certainly don’t change the oil every 5000 miles, have special cooling down procedures or anything like that, though I never rag a car from cold.

Most unreliable cars in my experience? Saab 9-5 (petrol – turbo blew), Mitsubishi Shogun (my brother’s car – diesel – turbo blew), Ford Mondeo (petrol non-turbo – poor running from new – injection system never worked properly and spent week after week in the garage). Thing is, I know these are pretty reliable cars overall, just that personal misfortune can lead you to believe that the issues you face are endemic to the model or manufacturer.

Having put two old XUD PSA diesel engines to 120k & 130K and then had another one that was a pile of shite by 40K there is a lot to how a car has been kept & driven.

First two engines were both ex repmobiles, I got one car with 79K on the clock after 3 years and took it to 130k with only regular oil changes and a precautionary change in cam belt. Last engine was an ex motability vehicle with 11k on the clock after 3 years and it was a bag of shite. Two things I concluded were:
1) The XUD in a Rover was made out of cheese
2) Rep cars get driven properly & they’d been run in instead of being pootled around with a stone cold engine.

MAFL – probably something in what you say. My cars all tend to be ex-company cars which have picked up 80k or so in 3 years and have been properly & fully serviced. As the majority of miles will have been on motorways the clutches are always in good condition, the brakes relatively unused, and the interiors are also great as they’ve typically had just one person in them.