Astec123

Took the plunge, ordered the sensor, fitted it myself and car is now working fine. Just waiting for a friend with an OBD reader to reset the check engine light and ensure there's no other issues coming back. £140 saved.

It's been a fair while since I've been here and posted. My 2014 O3 diesel is now up to 80300+miles and this year has been costly with the engine needing a gasket replaced due to an oil leak. At least helpfully this fell when the pump needed sorting too but relieved me of over £1000 of my hard earned cash. Up to this year it's been routine maintaining and tyres. 2 days before Christmas the car decided to cut out under spirited acceleration on my way to work and started with the glow plug lights flashing. A colleague plugged their OBD reader to the car and the following codes were read P0236 (boost sensor), P0299 (underboost condition) and P2279 (intake air system leak). Helpfully the car had to go in today for it's 80k mile service which had been booked a week before the fault reared it's ugly head. The garage have done the diagnostic and the description they have provided is I'm reasonably handy with things so quite happy to do the replacement of the MAF sensor as it requires only basic tools, and removing of the engine cover to do. However, what's made me start to worry is about spending money on the parts and buying a part that doesn't need replacing. In an ideal world, I'd like to repair the car as cheaply as possible after Christmas rather than have the garage relieve me of another £150+ bringing the cost of repairs and servicing to the car this year to in excess of £2000. The reason I'm worried is due to the fact they have put the word 'valve', which obviously the MAF sensor isn't a valve. All the literature I've read through suggests that fault G31 is the MAF sensor and that there are no other parts that would need replacing with this code. All I would like, is to confirm that if I replace the MAF sensor with the relevant part code that it's correct and that there's not some other more complicated and involved repair that I might be missing to explain the dealers use of the word valve and the G31 result from the diagnostic. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Exhaust-Pressure-Sensor-0281006221-Bosch-04L906051B-Genuine-Quality-Replacement/233380649190?epid=11006324042&hash=item36569218e6:g:6ZgAAOSwHVhds3vs Having been driving for years and had enough bangers I am pretty confident this is the Skoda dealer way of telling me this is what's wrong with the car but they don't want to give me the exact information to go away and fix something easily myself. So they're being less transparent as sensor sounds easy to fix, valve sounds more scary and in need of specialist tools and parts. Thanks and happy new year to you all.

Lincs to Essex? Hell of a trek for the car? That said I've had reasonably good service from Spirit so far.

Interesting that it took so long, as I advised them about 3 or 4 weeks ago on my heated screen and the guy turned up and said he could get away (just) with a repair. They had at the time turned up with the screen on the day and it had only taken 2 weeks from the point of putting in the claim to the date of the repair being done. Must be down to where you live or some other ridiculous reason. I went with the repair which was great for a whole 2 days until the thing decided to go pop and get worse, I'm glad the repair cost me nothing. Now waiting for this coming week to be over and I'll have to put in a request to get the entire thing replaced. At least I won't have to worry over the sensors needing to be sorted as I was starting to worry that would be an additional issue to need to get dealt with.

I've managed to lock myself in the boot of my O3 hatchback while doing my cleaning regime not long after getting the car. Pulled the boot lid down while I sat in the boot using some glass cleaner on the glass. What followed was about 10minutes of awkward squirming about to unlock the back seats and then climb over them without knowing exactly how the seats unlock and with the parcel shelf in it's stowed position and trying not to knock the newly installed rear dashcam. Safe to say I won't be doing it that way again.

That would be me. No issues at all with a 128gb card and she's on her way towards the first service at the end of the month. I certainly can't complain for under £30. Only real issue is the time it takes to write that much music to the card from a computer but easily solved by starting it before bed and then turning it all off the next morning before work.

I love having the winter pack on my car, according to the spec sheet it cost me £300. Also does your car not come with dual zone climate control? My other half insists on the car being freezing cold all year round, but dual zone is wonderful because I can have it set to the **correct** temperature.

Thanks for that. A bit to rich for my blood even on a car of similar value, especially given that it's a PCP deal and I'll make my mind up about keeping the car in 18-24months. I think I'd rather deal with the day to day grime and imperfections and spend the £500 towards the deposit for my next car.

You should post pics of the finished product as not being able to see it is surely the point as avoids these hideous things. Not that I've ever seen one in the UK seems to be a European/North American thing. I would also add I'd love to know the cost of this sort of thing on a comparable car to my own. I've seen them advertised just never been convinced it was worth it but if the price is right.....

Surely it would be better to take it back to the dealer and get them to sort it out as the car should still be in warranty. While I'm sure you're happy to take the car to pieces to fix it yourself at least this way they wont be able to turn around and say that you broke something later on. I'd be happy to retrofit stuff in my car but things that might risk my warranty is a step to far considering the costs involved.

Personally I considered the Columbus on my O3 but the advantages of a larger screen I found pointless, I will be driving it and not watching it like I do for a TV. I'd love to get the upgrade that you get in the latest gen version of the Amundsent but I wouldn't see a point paying any more to get it. Otherwise most of the features are either redundant in my opinion and here's my reasoning; - Ripping CDs - I do this at home and it's much quicker with multiple CD drives and fast computers to do the encoding. Even a low end computer could do it faster than the Columbus would manage it. Plus you'd have to sit about in the car waiting to get it done which would take an age. - Storing tons of music - IIRC £30 got me a 128gb SD card so I have more storage than you can shake a stick at in my car. I also added a 32gb sandisk ultra fit for £15 so I've got about 150gb of storage space on mine and I could upgrade those for more if I needed it so plenty of space to put files. - Slightly improved mapping - I honestly would be hard pressed to see it as £800 of improvement as the stock one is more than suitable. If it was me I'd save your money, keep the 2nd gen Amundsen and spend the money instead on another more desirable option. If you're going with buying cash or to own the vehicle I'd consider things that tick boxes on buyers 'I want' lists as when people look on autotrader etc they don't see upgraded Columbus sat nav, they just see sat nav but they do tick the boxes for GPS/sat nav and heated seats type equipment.

Might be interested in the paint to take out the stone chip that arrived on my bonnet and just above my windscreen where it kindly decided to make a second visit to my paintwork. Do you know if this is the same code for the o2 and the o3? I'm only down the road in Braintree.

I've got a 2.0TDI elegance. I love it to bits. Part of me wishes I went for the 1.4TSI but other times I quite like the torque and response of it in comparison to the diesel model. I got the heated seats, heated windscreen and washer nozzles. I honestly love the getting in the car straight away, no scraping the glass when all the other saps at work are cleaning their screens in the cold. If you're going for the seats you might want to give consideration to the screen too. When I got the car I debated the Elegance and SE models up and felt that the extra toys on the Elegance were worth it. If you plan to do any long journeys the cruise control makes it much more enjoyable so I'd weigh up what you're going to use the car for and if the extras you'd gain will be of benefit. If I was you I'd go take a test drive and disable the front sensors if they are added, then try a bit of front in parking to see how you find the car. I found front visibility to be much better than many other cars so I tend to feel that it was worth not adding the option for the front sensors. Cabin noise I find to be very good in the Hatch that I have compared to a host of other cars I've tried. I'll say you'd be mad not to pick the Elegance for the extra toys over the SE.

http://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp-country/en_au/media/fuel-news/long-term-storage-diesel.pdf Just be sure to use it up from time to time to avoid it going bad and being a waste of money.

I've not found a way either. Only thing I've seen has been the option to use the steering wheel control to turn the volume down when the announcements come on but then she still reduces the radio volume, it's less annoying than the voice when you're on bits of a journey you know the route but the only way to kill her is to shut her up in the settings which is a pain when you want her back. As to voice controls, I've tried them but it's not something I'd use day to day. I'd be quicker doing it manually with stopping the car and getting back up to speed rather than losing concentration on the road trying to get it to pick where I want to go.