2016 1.4 TDi - Jerky 1st Gear

[skymera]

Hi all,

I bought my 1.4 TDi new in March 2016 and have covered almost 20,000 miles... but the one thing I cannot master is pulling away smoothly in 1st gear.

I've driven plenty of courtesy cars over the past 18 months and had no issues. No previous car I've had has given me this much trouble pulling away. I never test drove the 1.4 TDi and haven't driven another so I have nothing to compare to.

So I'll describe it as best I can...

I pull away in 1st and the car picks up speed smoothly to around 11mph. At this point there seems to be a flat spot or something and feels reluctant to pick up speed. If I give it a tiny bit more gas the car suddenly lurches away and I quickly need to change to 2nd.

The ways I've worked around this is to either pull away unbelievably gently or change to 2nd gear as soon as I hit 10-11mph (But this causes the revs to be very low in 2nd!) or ride the clutch through 1st entirely before changing to 2nd.

I've been driving for 8 years and this doesn't seem normal

Anyone else with the 90PS 1.4 TDi care to comment?

[gaza1994]

I have the 1.4 petrol and 1st - 2nd is never really smooth either...

Either both cars are similar or there both f***ked ha!

[iichel]

Well if they're both f****d, then they are also similar

[skymera]

The car has done it since I drove it off the forecourt brand new.

It's due the second service so Ill have VW take a look then

[jammydodger]

I have the 1.4 TDI SEL too and mine did this... the only way I got around it was to slip the clutch slightly, turns out at around 30K miles when I brought it up I was told they needed to replace the Dual Mass Flywheel to a Single Mass Flywheel. Apparently they're replacing this on all Polo diesels that come in complaining as my sister who runs the SE 75PS TDI variant also had the same done recently at 23K.

I'm at 55K now and its been fine since

[skymera]

Oh, excellent! That might explain it. I'll give my local VW dealer a call.