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For over 25 years now emissions standards have required that a vehicle should be able to cover a minimum of 100000 kms without any maintenance and still remain within the permitted emissions values. So yes, long life oils, long life sparkplugs & long life filters. Clearly the earlier you change the engine oil & filter the better it is for the engine, the earlier that spark plugs & air filters are changed make a measurable bit not significant difference, & then of course there are the engines that eat the plugs much sooner than that. Air filters have a much larger surface area than they used to. As someone who keeps an obsessive eye on fuel consumption and spends money wisely on my own servicing but not wastefully I have several times taken air filters well beyond 60K miles with zero ill effects, they do get removed and shaken out and blown through in the reverse direction at low pressure, I replace them when they look degraded or start to deteriorate or if the fuel economy fell but that has yet to happen. On my MK1 Octavia the diesel filter did over 225k miles mainly because everytime I bought one it turned out to be the wrong diameter or the unions were slightly different, I cut the old one open and it would have gone on to a million miles by the look of it, there is a very good filter on the fuel sender/pick up unit which would block long before the huge underbonnet one would & that never had any build up on it. Leave diesel in the tank too long or use fuel from a jerrycan that has been standing too long and it will have turned waxy, I now date my jerrycans and always filter the fuel before putting it in the tank.

That does seem a bit odd? I've heard of long life sparkplugs, etc. but never long life air filters? I drive down a lot of country lanes too work and when I used to service my golf every 12 months I would be pulling out dead insects, twigs, leaves and the filter was normally pretty discolored by this point. Might look at the condition of my current one as like you said, not expensive too replace with an OEM one.

Looks much better in black Tim.

I've also noticed as well, that the Vega wheels look almost exactly the same as the ones on the new Audi RSQ3, just a difference size and painted black. https://www.netcarshow.com/audi/2020-rs_q3_uk-version/1280x960/wallpaper_0f.htm

I can't believe it but here is another one. Currently for sale on the vRS FB page.

if ur referring to the chrome bit next to the foglights - yes its very easy to remove and clip back in. u simply pull off the side grille cover, then u can unclip or clip the chrome bit out/in. i separated the chrome bit so i could plasti-dip it black.

A couple from the lovely Peak District.

Yeah I did read they are supposed to be stretch bolts but don't plan on replacing. Will keep an eye on them though 😊

That's great thanks so it looks like they are only 20nm and 90degrees doesn't seem like a lot 😁

I think that you should go to the dealership and address the problem. It's not something normal!

Thank you again Wino,you have put a lot of time into helping me. Suprised but I will instead have a look from underneath, plus using your photo as reference ,hopefully tomorrow when I give her an oil change.

Just reported it :-) Let's see in a year if it changes. I won't hold my breath though. Its not just my one example that is the problem its all sorts of places you would expect to see on the map at a higher zoom level. If you pick a place you know well in the UK and zoom out to around 1:50000 type of zoom level then loads of places are missing. some other totally random examples: Oswestry, Crewe, Runcorn, Cowley, Thame, Maidenhead just to name a few.

Any damp patches on the carpets? What condition is the battery in?

Sounds about right for a main dealer... There are some good ones out there, but by Christ, there are a lot of bad ones also! I stopped taking my golf too VW after they lost my locking wheel nut, I was there for about 3 hours arguing with them that it was in the car when I arrived in the car. I also argued the fact that they took the wheels off to check my brake pads and discs condition (too which the service Manager agreed with. After repeatedly asking them to check the workshop and feeling just a little irate by this point, the service Manager goes into the workshop, re-appears 5 minutes later (with a swagger in his step) with my locking wheel nut! Literally drops it in my hand and walks off without a word of apology. The problem is at re-sale time everyone wants a service history and one from a main dealer at that! I kept all my receipts, used OEM servicing parts, the best oil I could get and my 90,000 mile MK5 golf ran like a dream. Still when I sold it all I got where messages saying "FSH bruv?". I eventually sold it for a few hundred less than it was worth. I don't intend too keep my VRS for longer than about 3 years and my next 2 services are paid for already as part of the sale, so will keep the history up even though I feel I'm being mugged off.

I think there was a set of DRLs that was an option to fit there. I have seen one before fitted to a german Oct mk2 in that place, as well as the fogs and they looked factory.

Removing and putting back this small grill is easy, but equally easy to fit incorrectly, with your small alignment issue as the result. There are some tabs that need to line up correctly with the middle grill. If these tabs are slightly misaligned the grill does fit but then sticks out by a few millimeters. Taking the grill out again and bending the tabs a bit further out and ensuring alignment when fitting it again should resolve it. For me it was a bit easier as I had the front bumper completely off to see what the alignment problem was. Unfortunately I didn’t take detailed pictures.

Fake exhaust trim wrapped

mines on 40,000 already. Only had the car 18 odd months from new!

Funnily enough that part was missing when I went to look at the car. Unfortunately cant help with the install as the dealer sourced one and installed it, but it does look like it just pushes in. That's also good to know @JR RS is i've been wondering about changing it to black too. Yours looks great. Am wanting to do the grill too, but might just swap that out for a Sportline one. Might be easier.

It would seem unlikely that Skoda could patent such a basic system as this. In effect a coupling that indicates green when fastened and red when unfastened. Like every ISOfix baby seat for the last 10yr. I've not honestly ever heard of anyone who has said, "I am unable to tell if I have fastened my seatbelt properly". Plenty find it hard to do or can't be bothered but needing a light to tell you it's in properly? A light you can't see without looking in a very awkward place?

The only easy one to add is the middle rear headrest - by finding a backrest for sale with the headrest in. Theres no way of retro fitting it as the parts are no longer available from Skoda. I found a complete (but dirty) interior for sale for not much money, with the extra rear headrest, bought the lot, chucked the rest of the interior away as it was worthless and have the backrest to be valeted and fitted in my yellow one. The complete list of factory options for the Mk1 VRS are as follows - Note not all options were available from launch 1.) Metallic Paint ( Silver or Black) 2.) Electric Tilt and Slide Sunroof 3.) Xenon headlights (with headlamp washers in front bumper) 4.) Cruise Control 5.) ESP (Electronic stability programme) instead of ASR (Anti slip regulation - normal traction control) 6.) Passenger airbag deactivation switch 7.) Heated Front seats 8.) 6 disc CD changer (under passenger seat) 9.) Third rear headrest (middle) 10) Front Side seat airbags 11.) Sat Nav (came with Maxidot clock set and 6 cd changer and different Aerial base) 12.) Full factory leather (with red piping round rear of front seats) - these are the same as vRS SE seats but un-numbered and with the red piping instead of blue - Note these still had the normal black cloth trimmed door panels. This was a fairly late addition to the Fabia options list - probably 06 onwards. Now this is where I need Ross to confirm - the rear "sundym" tinted glass was never available as a factory option on the Mk1 - if you see a Mk1 with it, it's been retro fitted Dealer fit options were . 1.) Seat Surgeons full leather interior - this usually included the door cars and could be in a number of colour options 2.) Mudflaps - Front only. The dealer would refuse to cut the rear bumper to fit normal fabia rears 3.) Boot liner 4.) Headlight protectors 5.) Rear boot storage bags 6.) Under parcel shelf storage bag 7.) Roof bars There are prob things I've forgotton from my time selling these cars new - it was a long time ago now!!!

Replace the filter first. Most likely its clogged. edit: and full of evaporation and sweat of previous owners, yuck.

Check the brake fluid level.

I think Max tried to start in 1st gear because he was just spinning the rear tyres on the grid going nowhere when Lewis probably used his experience with his excellent engineer Bono to start in 2nd gear reduced wheel spin to a minimum and got a great start gaining 3 places by the first corner and then running wide and losing 2 places later on the lap but not panicking for his only real mistake of the race. Compare Bottas in the same car as the winner and he had a complete nightmare and Toto will not want him in the 2nd car beyond 2021.

You can do but the issue is when people start formatting the SD standard map card (not the high) in anything other than Fat32, doesn't work. Or a 32 gb SD card to upload to the high. Reports of running out of space due to the indexing. Skoda German Community Board. The easy answer is to stick to Fat32 as the take away else you get long threads of people having issues.

good idea, let us know how you get on

Not worth bothering with IMO. Missus got 6 months free when she bought her Octavia last year, I used the app for about 5 mins then never used it again. The only bit I thought might be useful is the map showing where you have parked your car but in the year and a half since we got the car we have never forgotten where it is

Hi, My Octavia Electric Window switches were faulty. There was no back lighting on any of the switches, the passenger side did not have down or one shot down and the driver side up was intermittent. The rear windows were fine for up down and one shot function. The rear window child lock did not operate, but it had back lighting. I decided to open it up to see if it could be repaired. Getting it apart is quite tricky as the latches that hold the unit together are very tight. I used some butter knives inserted along the sides to release the latches, but there is a risk of damaging the latches permanently. Once you have released all the latches on one side, you can move to the other latches and hopefully, this will allow the switch unit to pop apart. Once open, the corrosion was evident. Some of the "lead through" holes in the PCB were corroded and therefore open circuit. In the picture above, the large copper areas are directly under the back lighting LED for each switch, and each area had a lead through, which was open circuit. In total, there were 7 lead through connections for the back lighting which were open circuit. I also found 4 bad lead through connections for the passenger switch functions which needed new wires fitting. In order to fix the connection, I drilled a 0.7mm hole though through the PCB next to each back light LED, so that the hole would connect the copper tracks on both sides of the PCB. I then inserted a single strand of 0.1mm copper wire (a single strand from a flexible cable) in the hole and soldered it on each side of the PC to re-make a new lead through. You have to ensure that the wires are kept a s close to the LED's as possible, as they could interfere with the tactile switch frame that sits on the PCB. This was a difficult job and I am not proud of the quality, but it serves its purpose. The rear window OFF button uses conductive rubber pads to bridge two copper tracks. This function was restored by cleaning the PCB with a fibreglass pencil and cleaning the conductive rubber with some isopropyl alcohol (tape head cleaner fluid or vodka at a push!). The layout of the connections to the connector are: Pin 1 - Rear Windows Lock Off (command to ECU) Pin 2 - Rear Windows Lock ON (Orange LED) Pin 3 - 12V for Backlighting for all switches (Green LED's) Pin 4 - Ground (0V) Pin 5 - Front Left Window Pin 6 - Front Right Window Pin 7 - Rear Right Window Pin 8 - Rear Left Window Pin 9 - Not used Pin 10 - Not used The four functions of each switch (UP, one shot UP, DOWN & One shot DOWN) are determined by the resistors on the PCB. When a particular resistance is measured by the ECU between the relevant pin for that window and ground, the ECU performs that function. For example, when you press the right front button fully forward, you get One Shot DOWN function, this is because the switch will connect a particular resistor between Pin 6 (Front Right) and Ground. The ECU interprets the resistance and translates this to the required function. I didn't measure what the different resistance were for the four functions per switch. All windows perform their correct functions and all back lights now work. Hope this makes sense Russ

Hi Forgot to add the picture of using the butter knives to separate the grey switch carrier from the main body. The fit is very tight, and you need to get three knives in each side, if you have that many knives! the pink lines indicate the holes in the body where you can just see the five retaining lugs per side, two at each end and one in the middle. Russ

Yeah that looks sick! That’s the exact part I’m looking to just clip back in as it’s a bit out right now and was just nervous incase I broke it by using force to push it back in place, if you can see the picture below that side is a small bit out of place this is the part I would be trying to click back in

I can answer you the question too, because I did a lot of retrofits on my car too and last weekend I use the last free position in my fusebox Unfortunately I don't have exact photo of the fusebox. And about the glove compartment, I needed to remove it a lot of times and it still OK.

The F1 drivers book of excuses must be getting a bit thin... especially for those on the front row. Both RBR and Racing Point have announced that problems with the front wing caused their grid-leading drivers to be completely rubbish on Sunday. I can understand RP trying to soften the blow with the bosses boy Lance - because he must be gutted at throwing away his big chance, but Verstappen's tone talking about his wing seemed to be blaming the team for losing the race...a race that I feel he should have dominated from the front row. I bet Marko still thinks he's got the best driver in F1 mind you, despite this weeks glaring evidence to the contrary.

Finance example here from Simpsons Skoda for the Hatch petrol DSG. includes £2k contribution from Skoda, a £2,500 customer deposit and a little more discount on top going by the listed “cash price”, all translates to £349 a month for a base car, with an £11,600 GFV over 4 years.

Yeah keep the heavily upgraded octy for now until you can get a superb 4x4 280 or 272 you know you want one!

It's LF7A, sometimes also described as steel grey

I hate to turn the knife after it's been stuck in but the smell has probably built up due to the lack of use!

Re changing and flushing out the existing coolant in the VAG engines, I've just seen a video pf a very simple way to do this, and its something that I'm going to try myself. Run engine until it's hot. Then remove the header tank return pipe from the tank, and connect it to a long piece of plastic tubing ( 4-5 ft or 1 metre ) place the other end into a suitable container. (20-25 Litres) Start engine, and as the old fluid is being pumped out, replace it with either new coolant, or ordinary water if you want to do a full flush. While this is going on, have the heater controls switched to maximum heat and fan settings.

Arh.... Take a look here...https://www.skoda.co.uk/owners/skoda-connect

If you've got something that does what you need and isn't costing you anything beyond running and servicing costs then absolutely agree, keep it going and save toward something, as you say, totally different.

So I have now changed the wheels and tyres from 225/40r18 (7.5") to 225/50r17 I got an excellent deal on the 17" wheels from a 2020 Octavia buyer 17x7" for AU$200 (EURO140-ish) and went up from the recommended 215/50 This was my last throw of the dice. First impression is "OMG!!!! HOW BLOODY GOOD!!!!": I am yet to do some Australian coarse chip freeway running, but on a couple of local roads the difference is incredible. I should have started with this change. It is soaking up the road imperfections with a soft bump, rather than a hard knock. And the while there is still a rumble on the coarse chip it seems much more muted. Only a true Highway run on the coarse stuff will show the worst. I'm very, very happy. The sound mat will also be helping no doubt, so no regret in the time and effort spent.

I have one of the first generation (white) Pro versions. Best value is to buy the basic version for £40 and activate the Pro package through the app for approx £25, works out cheaper than buying a ready activated Pro version. The newer generation (black) can be used with Ios rather than just Android and will in future be compatible with other brands (think BMW is coming soon) whereas the first gen will only ever work with VW group. I've used it to activate a few nice features on my Superb as well as scan for faults and clear fault codes, overall found it a decent easy to use product.

I attached the part numbers needed above in my original post. Radio screen - 6V0919604B Radio Control - 5Q0035842B

Having the PPF applied. No badge on the car as I was waiting from one from SuperSkoda

Water pump failed on mine on it's 4th birthday. 112k on the clock, so had monies worth out of it!!

Hello. For the DRL LED "stripes" located inside of the headlight with bixenon, afs, it's a big problem because ,if you see in pictures, it's not a led stripes, it's a Osram modul with 3 Cree led's, it's very, very hard to find to buy, i don't find him, and for the change him, you need the open the headlight's, i talk about glass, and dismount almost all components inside him...for that,in case of led burning, not computer drl issue, it's recomandet to change the entire headlights...of course, if you are a good tehnician, can you repair him , if you have the Osram cree led modul...see the pictures....

Don’t buy one on eBay unless you are certain it is a genuine one as more than likely it’ll be a clone and you get no support on the forum! gendan U.K. sell the official VCDS leads starting at £225 delivered (I recently got one there) or you could look at something like Carista Bluetooth dongle which is around £30 and works via a phone app. if you get one of the latter you get a months free “pro” (£35 a year ish) and if you send them a diagnostic dump they will give you a months beta access which currently has the hill hold functionality (I also have this and used it to enable on my wife’s 2016 Fabia 1.2). It does depend on having the correct version of abs module I believe (I found this on my last superb mk2 when I discovered I could enable the same feature on that which then led to doing the Fabia as well)

Basically when you make up your mind whether Skoda uk are right (5 years) or sometime a long way in the future (official Skoda Workshop manual).

Mine is also 5 and next March will be 6 years old. I overheard a discussion at My local Skoda dealers that they price matched where they could. I got a quote from another local garage for the belt and politely requested Skoda dealer to price match. The local garage quoted for both belt and water pump which the Skoda dealer after much puffing about labour costs begrudgingly agreed to match it. In went my car for the work to be done. I then went to collect my car and carefully checked the invoice and the price was matched as promised. I then asked why was no water pump listed, you have matched the price but not the work as my car does not need a pump (As in Dave's post above) So I was being invoiced for parts and work that was not carried out and in any case was not needed. I asked how much to supply and fit the pump and as they had done neither, to knock that cost off my invoice, they were not happy and reported that two separate jobs were more expensive (which I fully understood, but just wanted them to squirm a bit longer) In the end we mutually agreed on a total price. I learnt a lot from my Dad, He marked anything he knew was to be replaced or serviced so he could check the job had been according to spec and if any job was not done properly there was trouble! So, I got the job done by Skoda Dealer but at a local garage price.

If you stick with your diesel as @VRS_White_Hatch suggested moving to petrol as such low milage. At least get the dealer to change the service regime from flexible to fixed when you get your oil changed. But definitely stick with an annual oil change from that point on irrespective of miles travelled.

For such low annual mileage, annual changes will be better for the engine and turbo as if you do lots of short journey the oil may not always get fully hot enough to burn off water vapour.