All Activity

In that case, I'd rather have OEM control units than the AliExpress knock-offs

Today I started the blind spot detection project. Trying out a basic AliExpress kit for £50 rather than OEM for £500. Bumper is a pain to remove thanks to two awkwardly angled torx screws under the wheel arch which requires the car jacked up to access. First problem after that was that the OEM radar brackets I bought from eBay to make mounting the radars easier didn’t fit. Turns out I had bought hatchback ones rather than estate so they didn’t fit! A bit of fettling and the brackets that came with the kit were made to fit, mounted onto one of the studs that holds the plastic trim on. All set to the correct angle. Cables routed into the car through a couple of grommets. Bumper back on and that’s the first stage done.

Today I started the blind spot detection project. Trying out a basic AliExpress kit for £50 rather than OEM for £500. Bumper is a pain to remove thanks to two awkwardly angled torx screws under the wheel arch which requires the car jacked up to access. First problem after that was that the OEM radar brackets I bought from eBay to make mounting the radars easier didn’t fit. Turns out I had bought hatchback ones rather than estate so they didn’t fit! A bit of fettling and the brackets that came with the kit were made to fit, mounted onto one of the studs that holds the plastic trim on. All set to the correct angle. Cables routed into the car through a couple of grommets. Bumper back on and that’s the first stage done.

Or you can go "All in" With an All-in Plan you can relax in the knowledge that you'll get two services, two MOTs, two years' Roadside Assistance, plus a free Warranty (when it's over 3yo)worth £626** for £959.76 Valid for vehicles with a 2.0L engine or less and under 100,000 miles at activation. Excludes electric vehicles and vehicles with an existing Service Plan. Vehicles that have been out of a warranty (that has been provided by Skoda UK or Skoda Financial Services) for more than 30 days will have a no-claim period of 30 days at the start of their All-in Plan. Volkswagen Group provides the All-in Warranty free of charge following purchase of an All-in Plan. The All-in Warranty does not cover any vehicle already covered under any other guarantee, insurance, warranty and/or gesture of goodwill. All-in Plan validity is dependent on required payments received. Škoda Financial Services.

@ilkosl thanks, this is exactly the kind of detailed reply I was hoping for — really helpful. First, answers to your questions: Roof bars — I only removed the crossbars; the longitudinal rails are factory-fitted and still on. Good point about the end caps, I'll tape those. Panoramic roof — no. Tow bar — yes, factory tow bar, but it was retracted during all my tests. Wheels — 16", never changed (205/60 R16). Grille shutter — I had a good look and I don't think I have one. I can't see any shutter mechanism or actuator behind the lower grille, just the radiator/intercooler directly. I'll confirm via VIN/PR codes through my dealer, but visually it doesn't look like I have active shutters. If that holds, the shutter can't be our common cause, since I get the drone without it. Dealer — yes, they drove it with me. The mechanic just said "it's the tyres" by ear, nothing measured. So I swapped the complete wheel set (summer → winter) myself — drone unchanged, same 129 Hz. No TPI/bulletin result was ever mentioned. I've since sent them a written report with the frequency analysis and asked them to escalate to Škoda and check for other reported cases. Two things seem to line up across the affected cars, and I'd like to narrow them down: DSG — mine is DSG (DQ381). Is everyone with the drone on DSG? Engine power — mine is 110 kW (150 PS). Can those of you with the drone confirm your output? @Gogich thanks — your 85 kW manual with no drone is a really useful data point. If it turns out everyone affected is 110 kW + DSG + Combi and the manual/lower-power cars are clear, that's a very specific pattern to take to Škoda. The higher-output DSG version has more to cool up front (gearbox oil cooler, higher heat load), which could change the airflow/thermal picture at speed on hot days — and would fit the temperature dependence without needing the shutter theory. Mine measures a fixed 129 Hz — if anyone can record and FFT theirs, let's see if we all land on the same frequency. Please do try the recording if you can; two or three independent measurements at 129 Hz in different countries would be very hard for Škoda to dismiss.

and this

Klopt! En ik vermoed zelf van niet. Worst case doen ze een update van je MIB en overschrijven ze de boel. Dan moet je gewoon het gehele proces opnieuw doen. Het is maar een vermoeden dus als je nog garantie hebt en je wil het risico niet lopen, zou ik nog effe wachten 😄

New: Dealer or Skoda-parts.com (for around € 1100) Used: Scrap yard

Some one might correct me, but if you don't already know, it tends to be the heads of the backing plate covers that get bonded with rust to the backing plates, once that bond is broken you should find that the threads are clean and the screws can be unscrewed by hand. Stupidly I considered that the same situation should/would be the same when taking the disc dust covers off my 2011 Audi S4 - not so, some design clown made sure that one screw hole was open at the back so I snapped one screw head off - I only did that on one side!

don't understand that price two services from Skoda is £546

One of the screws isn't possible to get 'square onto' with bearing/hub in place, so a bugger to do anything with once corrosion has taken its toll on the head.

Thank you so much! Fellow Dutch speaker it seems from the vid haha. Lifesaver! Does stuff like this void warranty? Still got a year on mine so should I wait a year?

Thanks for the part numbers. You're right about back plates as mine have definitely seen better days. I was hoping to remove them to give me more access to the speed sensors but the screws were really badly corroded in and I was short on time as my wife needed the car. I'm going to order a pair of plates up and will probably end up drilling the screws out and retapping the threads.

Thanks again @Coral-C . I am looking forward to that feature for the pan-euro trips. It takes me time to learn the features of a car and for it to become part of my unconscious competence. It's at this point when I tend to enjoy the car most. The new car, excitement stage is great but frustrating at one and the same time. Unbelievably, I am still finding features in our Mercedes SLC200 which we have owned since 2017. AI helps tease these hidden features out from the car! Best wishes.

Yes, lane following works and I leave it on. It's not full self-steering - you get about 30 seconds before it tells you to take over steering and automatically disengages. But I do find it useful for those busy moments in dense traffic when you could easily get distracted and drift out of lane. I believe you can have it in stick-shaker mode, where the wheel just vibrates if you are going to leave the lane, but I have it in full lane-following mode. In both cases, there's no intervention if you are indicating to change lane (unless it detects a car in the blind spot). There are mixed reports about it. Some like it, some switch it off. It's more aggressive and twitchy than the old Mk3 but I've seen similar reports from other brands' newer cars. On some urban roads, the wheel will jerk a little from time to time for no apparent reason. And it's not entirely happy if you adjust position within a lane to avoid a pothole or manhole cover. But on motorways and trunk roads, it is very good indeed. Overall, I prefer to leave it on - even around town for normal driving. It's not quite as smooth as the old Mk3's system, but it's perfectly adequate. I think you will find it useful, especially on your long trans-Europe runs.

Evolution13, thanks for your very detailed response - I will shop around for a better and more appropriate service.

Many thanks. I'll try this weekend.

Thank you @Coral-C , much appreciated. That's very clear and seems to represent the sensible middle ground of technology serving the driver, rather than the other way around. One additional question, if I may: are you able to retain the lane centre function so that you don't need to constantly microcorrect the car as the motorway curves slightly etc? Or do you switch this off? I am kind of hoping this is a useful aid as it's not one I have had before on the Velar.

Very much Skoda's fault for allowing the parent company to provide them with some total guff IT while VW & Audi has the crap sorted out much sooner. All to do with VW Group taking Software Development in-house.

You can drive spirited or like a driving god and have no jerkiness. but here the subject is just moving off in D or S. For some S suits as the rpm is sitting higher at idle. For crawling in traffic S can sometimes be the option to use as engine / dsg dependent it might not hunt between 1st and 2nd with a bit of pickup in speed from moving off to stopping again.

I've spotted a thread on Facebook that pointed me towards using a Patch/Firmware (MST2_EU_SK_PQ_P0255T 5FPQSW255) update, found on MIB-helper, for the issue regarding the 00:00 (06:28 intermittently displayed) time display (when MFD time displays normally) for the MIB (standard) Bolero/Amundsen Infotainment system (relating to my 2015 plate Yeti). I can confirm this has fixed the problem (I suspect any later Firmware version will do the same but ver. P0253T is the latest official version on the MIB-helper page).

It works exactly that way (or should I say, it doesn't work). The cruise control would have switched to 60mph and the car would start to slow, requiring a manual override of the cruise setting to keep it at 70. Going down to 60 from 70 is an annoyance, but when it decides you should suddenly be doing 20mph instead it can be a real challenge. Autonomous cruise control was one of the first driver-aid features that I turned off. At the same time, I turned off the map-based 'road layout' speed control. That slows you down as you approach junctions, corners, roundabouts, etc. where the speed limit is going to be too fast for the manoeuvre. It does work, but it is vastly overcautious. It starts to slow you down a long way from the bend AND slows you down much, much, more than you really need. I'm happier manually slowing when I need to and re-engaging cruise control afterwards. In flowing traffic, the car in front slowing will normally do that job for you anyway. So I am left with the Adaptive Cruise Control working pretty much in the same way as my Mk3 did - which suits me just fine. I manually set the speed according to the real speed limit and conditions, and then let it take care of itself. The preferred gap setting on the stalk is great for adjusting the distance between you and the car in front, and seems to be calibrated in seconds (although that is just my suspicion without any documentation to support it) - each extra step on the adjuster adds another 1 second to the gap. Really useful, for example, for dynamically increasing your survival gap in heavy rain or icy conditions. The only downside of the cruise control compared to the Mk3 (in my opinion) is that it takes quite an assertive flick on the stalk to change in 5mph steps; a gentle tap only changes by 1mph. The Mk3 stalk had the gentle tap for 5mph and separate actions for 1mph fine-tuning. With adaptive cruise control you don't need to be fiddling with 1mph tweaks in order to match other traffic; it is normally 5mph changes to align with a new speed limit. Six months in with the new car and I'm still training my muscle-memory to be more firm when adjusting the speed setting. Like many of the driver aids in the Mk4, you'll find that the full predictive cruise control doesn't work as well as you would want it to. It's not all Skoda's fault - the state of the art just isn't there for the autonomous systems to understand what is really going on in the outside world. Defaulting to 'better safe than sorry' is a valid strategy, but it does mean the car will fight you when it doesn't need to. Imagine the world's most nervous back seat driver as your co-pilot and you'll get the idea. Perhaps AI will get it fixed in the future - at which point the Superb's driver aids will be spectacular - but we might have to wait for the Mk5 for that.

Increased revs are also a sign that it is recharging the battery from a low level. Normal idle revs return when the battery reaches the correct voltage. What you experienced is what you see If the battery is getting a bit tired and the car is only used for short runs. That in turn is not good for the battery. Check the voltage 1) before starting, 2) just after starting when running at fast idle and 3) after a long run to confirm battery health. Your can confirm if yours has had the dreaded emmisions upgrade by means of a small sticker near the spare wheel or by looking to see if it has an "air straightener" in the inlet air path. If so, you will experience more regens as noted above.

https://youtu.be/FoQA1dTqvRg?is=Lo_wHGVGoHSF6Ydh

Video Link doesn't seem to work. Could u re-upload? The whole smartlink activation situation feels like such a scam wherr I live. 400+ to activate it... Id love to find a way to make it work myself