Just wondering, as I'm going to be doing an oil change in my Seat Inca van, which has the VAG 1.9SDI engine. I know certain engines are quite specific about the grade of oil due to sticky valve problems - is this one of them? Before someone mentions it I don't have the handbook so can't check in there. Should have asked the main dealer when I got the oil filter from there (asked for the oil but he said they don't stock oil and to go to Halfords, but forgot to bloody ask what grade it needs).
Will I be ok with the standard oil in the gold/brown bottle that's branded as suitable for most modern diesel engines?
Look at the oil filler cap, or a sticker uner the bonnet. Look for something like 505.01 or similar and an oilcan symbol. Check the oil you buy to make sure it meets the standard listed on your engine. If your Inca isn't that new then pretty much any good quality oil for diesels should be OK. It's only the PD engines and those with long/variable service intervals that need anything exotic. I have a 2001 Polo manual here that lists the following for the SDI engine:
a) 505.00 and 500.00 (both must be listed) or 505.00 and 505.01 (both listed)
er on topic sort of, involves Seat Inca/ VW Caddy van and probably want to know what sort of oil they take but where should the VIN Plate and stamped in Chassis Number be on a Seat Inca?
Long story short have interest in one that has a non body coloured landing panel, panel where bonnet latches, white van , black and going rusty unsprayed landing panel. no sign of VIN plate Just like to check. Any help very much appreciated.
You're on about the slam panel/front panel. Mine's a white van, and the front panel/slam panel is black as well. I think it's because the bit where the bumper fits on is quite exposed at parts, so it all looks uniformly black or something.
The VIN plate is somewhere at the back of the engine bay (i.e. towards the cabin) somewhere - can't exactly describe where it is, but look behind the engine and you should see it.
Out of interest where is it rusting, and what age is it?
Lot of modern cars dont have body coloured engine bay at all just finished in primer where it dosen`t show. Just wondered about it , thanks for settling that one.
Thanks , any idea where the chassis number is?
Not serious rust, maunly jsut surface, just wondered about non body coloured panels. Its a 98 R though with a few other problems, cracked windscreen, air bag warning light is permanently on, radiator that is hanging by its hoses and knackered heater controls stuck on hot..
It has what must be a shady MOT written in the last week.Air bag warning and crack in windscreen didn`t happen yesterday and should be fails.
Dont think ths one is cheap enough after adding in repairs.
Inca /Caddy looks better bet than Escort, die of rust or Astra die of unexplained major enginre malfunction usually.
Mark II (and III?) Golfs have it up near the scuttle on the left of the engine bay, looking from in front. I suppose it's a bit less likely to be smashed in an accident.
They are a reasonable choice, though I'd go for a TDI if I was doing mainly motorway work, but the SDI does the job and on my last tank I got 53mpg average, and that was all around London, getting stuck in some quite bad traffic on the M4 on occasions.
How cheap is the one you're looking at?
A Berlingo HDI may be a good bet if you can find one with a good history - there was one near me, W or X reg I think, 100k on the clock, 1 owner from new, full service history (every 6k) going for £3k - I was very tempted to flog the Inca and get that, but I decided against it.
Vauxhall Combo vans seems to be a good bet if you get one that's been regularly serviced (I mean proper regular oil changes every 5-6k, not every
12.5k as Vauxhall recommend) but they seem to hold their value extremely well so too expensive for me! I'm on about the later shape Combos, the older ones I'd run from as they seem to rust loads on at the front of the roof.
This sounds more like it :-) With diesel`s its not just economy its tank range, ever got lost in Noerthern Scotland?
Still well sub £2K, total budget dosent even make it to £2K, for 98 R plate even if things need fixed at real money, excluding airbag warning light which hope is wiring disturbed or grotty slip rings or similar cheap/simple solution if not cheap/complex solution will have to work Attraction is quiet, good starting engine that dosen`t smoke heavily, 104K on clock, service sticker for service with T belt at 86K in November last year.
Not a huge fan of Citroen`s since an AX D tried to kill me,oil burner indeed and come to think of it a Peugeot 106D tried brake failure on me shortly after. Peugeot dont really make a succesor to the 405 1.9D van the 406 estate is longer than a short wheel base transit. Berlingo is good shape but still trying to erase memory of C15...
Depends on the owner, florists and fruit are damp things that saw the end of a lot of Merc 208Ds and high cube van are popular with few of these styles of owner. Citroen equip levels are not so good, not that Seat give you much either. At least Astras have leccy windaes and central locking, pity about time bomb engine.
Corsa base though which was never that great a car to start with. Big end appears to be one mode of failure for VX/Isuzu 1.7TD as does seizing tensioners or someat that makes belt skip a few teeth and crown the piston with a few valves. seen 5 recently that are dead or resurrected with different engine.
The later ones have the vinyl roof hump which seems a brighter idea. At least can rob parts, seats door cards etc. from upper model Corsa`s out breakers. Trying to work out if anything out of more common UK VAG family, polo/golf/lupo would fit in Inca?
Talking of timing belts is the 1.9SDi prone to the water pump failure that affects some of the 1.9 TDi VAG units?
My Octavia with the 1.9TDi 110 horsepower job went west that way with the waterpump toothed gear breaking up at 70000 miles, fortunately the cambelt only slipped but didn't let go and it didn't kill the engine. Waterpump is now much more reliable Quinton Hazell item along with new cambelt, idlers, etc all fitted by my local independant for not too many squid.
I have to admit that I'm still very pleasantly surprised by the Rover L-Series TDI unit in my Rover 200. It's basically a heavily revised and updated version of the engine in your Maestro, with a turbocharger and electronic injection.
To compare it with, I have a Focus TDCI that I drive at work. Sure, the Focus is considerably quieter and more refined at low speed than my Rover (although the difference is barely noticeable at speed). However, the engine feels a bit weedy in comparison to the L-series, which I wasn't expecting at all. Just as an example, the TDCI is very breathless over 3000rpm, whereas the L-series is still pulling _hard_ at the redline (having been pulling hard from 1500rpm). That's a
3000rpm band of usable power, in comparison to the TDCI's 1500rpm at best. Other TD's I've tried just don't seem willing to rev, unlike the L-series.
Can't wait for Rover to common-rail it (due out next year).
I saw someone mention the L series diesel engine in Rover 200s (96 onwards) in the "what car under £2k" post, and wondered if that was just Rover's name for the PSA TD lump they used in the older 200s, or if it was an updated version of the old Perkins engine? Any idea why they used the PSA engine to start with, and just didn't use the perkins-derived engine from day one?
I haven't driven any of the TDCIs, or HDIs (or any common rail unit actually), so can't comment on them, but I know the SDI definitely *sounds* a lot weedier than the Maestro engine. Unfortunately, I haven't driven the Maestro all that much (due to me being too useless to sell the Fiesta, and then getting a newer van as most companies get put off by the sound of an F reg Maestro), but it definitely felt like it pulled a lot stronger than the SDI, and would be happier at higher speeds as well.
My A6 (140bhp 2.5TDI) is great at pulling all through the rev range. What it doesn't do though, is pull that strongly off-boost. According to the book max torque is at 1900rpm, but in reality you can't really feel the boost until around 2200rpm. Which makes it a fantastic motorway car, and brilliant for overtaking up steep hills, but crap around town. In stop-start traffic I'd actually prefer to be in a normally aspirated diesel than a turbocharged one, though maybe one with more grunt between tickover and where the boost starts would change my mind.
Try the VAG ones. Can't comment on any other than mine, but they do some great engines - the 1.9TDI PD engines (130 and 150bhp) and the V6 and V8 diesels are all supposed to be pretty good. Like I said, the only qualm I have with mine is that it's not all that great for town driving, but it's not bad at pulling away quickly if you want it to, thanks to a nifty short first gear. And it sits at 3-figure speeds in 6th gear doing 3000rpm.
Call me cynical, but I reckon putting common-rail technology in that engine would mean that the fuel is at much higher pressure than before, meaning that the low down torque (I'm talking below boost here) suffers, just in the way that turbodiesel engines in general are a lot more gutless off-boost than n/a diesels, due to the different compression ratio (required due to the extra pressure the turbo puts the fuel under).
I might be talking rubbish here (which probably wouldn't surprise many people), but that's my theory.
I'm not sure to be honest. My theory is that since Rover were sharing the R65 gearbox with Peugeot, and the 1.4 diesel unit as found in the Metro, that there was some sort of supply agreement on favourable terms. Additionally, the L-series had not yet been developed by the launch of the
89-96 200 - I think that Rover were planning to drop the Perkins unit completely. I have doubts as to whether it would actually fit in the engine bay too, as it is substantially larger than the Perkins Prima engine due to the additional soundproofing (The engine is a VERY tight fit in my 1999
200).
With the launch of the 600, Rover needed a diesel engine that had more poke than the Peugeot unit in the 200/400, so dusted off the blueprints for the Prima. The Prima was based on the MGB/Montego O-Series engine. Rover looked at how this was done so that they could make a diesel version of their 2.0 T-series engine (as found in this group's many 620Tis). The result of this was the L-series DI engine. It was offered in 2 states of tune - 86bhp and
105bhp. The 600 had only the higher-powered engine, whereas the newer
200/400 models were available with both engines. The engine was also used by Honda in the Accord and Civic. In a lightweight 200, the 105bhp model is pretty rapid!
I will admit that the L-series is pretty pants off-boost, but over 1500rpm it seems to pull remarkably well. It's given me a few hairy moments though trying to use 2nd gear while driving slowly to join a fast-moving roundabout - fuuuuuuuck I'm not going anywhere....................... ahhhhh that's better!
Never driven a VAG one, but I've been a passenger in a Volvo V70 that had the same engine as yours, and it seemed pretty sweet. Reluctant to drive the
1.9 in a Golf/Passat though - I'd hate it to turn me into the sort of tosser who seem to drive these :-)
Wish mine had a 6th cog though - on a recent trip down the autobahn in mine, I was hitting the rev limiter in 5th on the level :-(
I suspect that you're probably right in a way. I don't think that it would make it any more gutless off boost, but it would be so improved on-boost that it would make the off-boost seem worse IYSWIM. Perhaps a variable-geometry turbo would solve this though, or maybe I'm just talking crap.
The message from "Andy Tucker" contains these words:
So's the Prima. My TD Monty's painfully slow away from lights until you wind up the turbo - then it scoots along nicely. What it's /really/ good at is long fast runs on the motorway.
Turbodiesels - who'd 'ave 'em? Give me a nice big V8 or V12 (or W12 or V16) any day.
Hold on. Real. World. Fuel. Prices. Might keep the TDI.
I wonder what speed I'd have to be doing to hit the rev limiter in 5th in mine, let alone top? Well, the red line's at somewhere between 4500 and
5000rpm, so to be doing 4500 in top, I'd have to be doing 150mph, so a bit less for 5th gear. Don't think it'd make it as the book top speed is around
130mph. Still, one day, on a German autobahn........
What would be good is an engine that could dynamically adjust its compression ratio (don't ask me how the f*ck that would work!), so the compression is as per a normally aspirated engine off boost, and then it gradually gets lower as the boost increases. This would, I think, give better response off-boost, and make it a lot more driveable around town, but prevent the engine from continually blowing head gaskets when on full boost. Bear in mind this comes from a position of 95% guesswork, 5% knowledge, but it's a crazy idea that could maybe work.
Every bloody time I come up with a really good idea that could potentially make me obscenely rich, some bastard comes along several years before me with the same damn idea.
Still, money isn't everything. It sure takes the sting out of being poor though.
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