I don't have personal experience with these cars but from what I have heard the 1.9 is the more reliable engine being more of the old school. A lot of problems with modern diesels seem to be down to the increased power and longer oil change intervals. I'm sure more frequent oil changes would prolong engine life.

Hopefully someone who has had experience with both engines will be along shortly.

The 1.9 100bhp in my SKoda Superb 1 seems to propel it aloong a lot better than you would imaging for a small engine in a huge car. Economy has always been good (late 40s to 50 mpg) and I don't hang about. I managed to drop it to 46mpg in France but was fully laden and cruising at 130kph - according to my satnav.

I don't think the 1.9 was ever fitted with a dpf and the lower power ones (100-105) usually seems to be fitted with the more reliable 5 speed box.

I have the 2.0 TDi PD 140 engine in an Octavia and after having tried the 1.9 105 version I much prefer the 2.0.

There's a lot of different variants of the VAG 2.0 TDi engine and a lot confusion concerning the differences between them as a result. The 2.0 PD 140 BKD engine in the Golf is not bad reliabilty wise and actually very similar to the 1.9 PD in many ways, the main difference being that the 2.0 is 16 valve whereas the 1.9 is 8 valve.

I'm probably starting to sound like a broken record on this but .....The well known oil pump problems suffered by the 2.0 PD Passat and larger Audis do not affect the smaller VAG diesels with 2 litre PD engines, including the Golf. The most likely reason for this is the lack of balance shaft on the Golf engines. Its the balance shaft on some 2.0 PD engines that kills the oil pump drive. The Golf 2.0 engine escaped this problem as it has no balance shaft.

The one problem that does crop up with the 2.0 BKD quite often is turbo problems. I would be very careful of any that make a "police siren" noise when revved as it can be an early sign of turbo failure. Otherwise the engine itself is very tough.

Edited by nick74 on 04/09/2011 at 18:06