Stuart's Volkswagen Golf Mk 5/V Forum

Hi Stuart

Read with interest your ownership of the Mk 5 Golf. Just wondered if you could help me. On my 2005 1.9TDI I get a slight but very noticeable police siren noise on acceleration, esp at low speeds, up to about 2000 revs. Consensus seems to be that the turbo is shot tho' its been doing it for two years since I bought it.

Does yours make this noise or anything similar?

Regards

Peter

Hi Peter,

Within the last few months my car has started doing the exact same thing! It
does appear to have been mentioned on the internet forums quite a bit with
some people saying the turbo has had it and others saying their car had
always done it from new.

I'm not too worried. My car has now done over 117,000 miles so if the turbo
has a fault, I don't think it owes me anything. That said, I don't find the
noise too annoying and I certainly haven't noticed any reduction in
performance and so I'm happy to live with it for now.

Let me know how you get on,
Stuart

Hi Stuart

Well, as you say, there is a lot of controversy about this issue. I sent Crasher a pm on the issue and he is firmly of the view that the noise is a precursor to failure. In other posts he says he has seen a lot of these turbos fail.

My local dealer - Smith Knight Fay in Hyde - are pretty trustworthy on the whole so I took the car to them yesterday. The Service Manager came out with me. The noise was there (fortunately!) in the usual places - ie gentle acceleration and deceleration - I would say up to around 2000 rpm. He gunned the car hard in second and third and the noise is completely absent. We cruised up a bit of dual carriageway and it was absent then as well.

He went on to say that this noise was common on many TDI Passats and some Golfs and there was a mod to the exhaust costing £600 that reduced the noise - not worth it he said.

So it is a very confusing picture. I am no engineer but it kind of makes sense that a fan rotating at speeds in excess of 100,000 rpm would make some noise!

He told me not to worry and carry on driving. The time to really worry was when the noise was present under all conditions. Even then, he said, turbos could fail without any warning signs. I have seen quite a few clips on You Tube of cars making the siren noise at all speeds.

So, a confusing picture all in all but there is certainly no agreement amongst the experts that the siren noise is necessarily fatal.

Regards

Peter

Hi Peter,

Thanks for the update.

I’m really not worried. I don’t think my car does this much and it’s certainly not distracting. If the turbo was on its way out I’m sure I’d notice a difference in performance. That said, nothing lasts forever.

If I find out any more I’ll let you know,
Stuart