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Soooo here we go, it’s on. that’s Day 1 done. More fun tomorrow.

A couple of old and new pictures for the air filter! I picked one up for £15 delivered on eBay last week and fitted this morning. The cars had 3 services and I'm 99% sure that the airfliter wasn't changed on any of them. Takes literally 5 minutes and for the cost, it's well worth doing 😁

Should that not be never go to anybody that cannot diagnose the fault and just changes expensive parts until they get it right.

Christ, I just went through that thread quickly, full of the typical "internet expert's BS" and why generic forums are not the place you want to be discussing car specific issues as they attract every ignorant to post their crap like you know what attracts flies... Apart from a few ones stating "it's just the turbo, replace it/repait it and move on" there's all sorts of unhlepful non-sense ranging from: "you should have researched more", "you should have bought a faster car", "I would never have tuned my car", "what does your wife think now" and even one very knowledgeable comment indeed saying "well you see it doesn't have the Golf R engine!" (this guy never seen/heard of the dozen's blown IS38's on Golf R's... ) Another, clearly unaware of the OEM turbo issues, suggested buying an OEM turbo and then getting a Racingline map as if that would provide any extra security really, funnily only a few posts below a guy with a Cupra 280 reporting that he blew his OEM IS38 without being tuned, and that the replacement OEM turbo blew also, after just 2 miles it went on the car... Some solid advice from people really into this platform/engine.

Yeah, the Rapid is a total parts bin special. But one that hangs together fairly well. While some parts are specific to the model (like the hideously expensive tailgate wiring loom I just had to replace), most are common parts. Case in point - the armrest cover. The hinges finally broke (common issue) and as its the same armrest used on several Polo and Golf iterations, no problem sourcing all manner of original and copy replacement parts.

So you tell a garage what work you want them to do because other garages have said that is what is causing the noise, the noise remains so you take the garage to court for doing as they were instructed. Glad I stopped working for customers when I did.

After loads of research on Littco turbo's, I'm no longer worried. I can't find anything negative only (even though one tuner said I would), and even Celtic Tuning have been posting about tuning them to between 1.85 and 2.0 bar. It does seem like the OEM turbo is a bit of a lottery, with issues from bearing journals, some not being as balanced as others and oil starvation (seen this a couple of times). If anyone is considering a remap on the OEM turbo, I have seen it suggested that you should get the turbo balanced before hand to be on the safe side.

Get some balance! In the 11 years I have been involved with Yeti's I have never seen that fault reported, so how the hell can it be a "known fault"?

Likewise, I oil change every 6 months, service every 12. Only doing about 6,000 a year these days so it’s OTT on the maintenance, but it’s a trivial cost & effort to keep the car in tip top condition.

Nothing at all wrong with the old one, that would have been good for another 100K. You should see what used filters used to look like before well designed intake tracts and large filter elements, thats why I laugh when I see people removing the whole shooting match and fitting a tiny so called high flow cone filter which will be black as the ace of spades in no time at all.

That joke must’ve flown right over your head

Thought you would find that thread entertaining ! I used to mod on there some years ago but hardly look at it now. Toxic place...

I have a 2014 Rapid Spaceback with a chain-driven 1.2 TSI. No issues. I believe the chain issues in that engine predate the Rapid by a good couple of years and were addressed before the first Rapids went into production.

https://store.ross-tech.com/shop/vchv2_ent/ 199 USD version will be fine. There you have also distributors list.

Ah, thats the worst thing you can do, aparently. Letting the car warm up slowly at idle creates more wear than just driving it straight away which lets the oil pressure and temperature build more quickly, protecting the engine. Honest, there's science behind it Obviously, don't thrash it.

Back in March when I got the Tesla I was asked if I would do a post about how it was going. Obviously events have meant I have yet to get much driving done, though we did manage to fit in a trip over to Belfast so I do have somethign on which to report. First up, having driven a Leaf for the last two years I am used to the instant torque and crazy accelaration, though the model 3 takes this to a level where I have yet to have the nerve to fully floor it. It is that powerful, mine is the base version so it only has 245 bhp. Handover was in the first week of lockdown, so it was totally touchless. I had to wait outside at a distance, they brought the car out, and then went back inside before I could approach the car and drive away (having paid the night before). Firstly, you'll have heard of issues with build quality. Right now it seems that Tesla haven't a clue about quality control and it is a lottery whether you get one that's perfect or a nightmare. In fairness most of the issues are related to the bodywork and the cars are driveable. It's not like a mechanical failure on an ICE (internal combustion engine) vehicle. Mine had:- 1) a scratch across the boot 2) a mis aligned bonnet (frunk) 3) the nose of the car hadn't had dirt removed before they painted it so it needed a new front end 4) driver's door misaligned 5) driver's door window wouldn'tclose properly 6) a rear quarter panel mis aligned 7) and it later emerged there was insufficient coolant in the battery cooling system (more of which below) These were all reported at handover - something you do via the app, and then attach photos. Tesla then allocate a repair appointment. The repair process is actually very slick though it was not great to have so much chance to witness it. Having had 10 Skodas starting with an Estelle and finishing with a 2015 Octavia I have never been accustomed to this level of defects. It was also filthy inside, covered in dust and grime from transit. I put this down to the fact that they were trying to minimise exposure to covid. The first appointment available due to COVID was 2 months later. 8 weeks passed and at the end of May they took the car in (touchless again) . They fixed the door and the window but the rest would have to await parts. More weeks, and then months, passed and since the defects were by now just cosmetic I didn't chase them. Last week, at the end of August, the car started whining and buzzing really loudly. It sounded like there were fans running and there was a lot of liquid gurgling sounds. I asked on a Tesla forum and was told off by Tesla fanboys - "all normal", "stop moaning". Basically don't question the sacred Tesla, if there's a fault I was told, the car will tell you via the screen. Except it didn't and there really was a fault. I logged it with a video. Within 12 hours an engineer phoned, they had connected to the car, run tests and established that the coolant level was very low. Seriously impressive. So a service appointment was booked, and I asked about all the other faults. "Faults? We've got no record of any faults?" Turns out they had forgotten totally. The merits of dealing with a new company that is selling cars as fast as it can make them. They then fixed everything within a week. So this week I have had my car fully repaired, everything looks like it should and they have filled the coolant to the level it shoud have had when it left the factory. So what to make of it? Well it is phenomenally efficient. EVs measure economy in miles per kWh (Tesla use Wh per mile but they just have to be different it seems). My leaf was pretty good and in the Summer would get around 4.5 miles per kWh, in the winter 3.8 was normal. So far since March I have been getting around 7 miles per kWh in the tesla. The equivalent in MPG terms is somewhere in excess of 200 MPG - Impressive. I can't comment on the supercharger network as they are few and far between in Scotand and I have been using the standrad Scottish Government chargers instead. Not all of them though because again Tesla haven't complied 100% with standards because quite a few of the older chargers simpoly do not detect that the car is connected. Driving it is different from any other car I have driven due to the large central screen, but you quickly get used to it. It's not though as good in many respects as Android Auto which I had in the leaf and the Octavia. Yiou ahve to pay £120 extra per year for data connectivity to use spotify or Tune in, no other apps are available. I used to use waze and pocket casts but those are not available to me. Elon says there's no need. Spotify is available but it si not as good as normal spotify, your music is in an entirely random order, nothing as boring as being in alphabetical order. You can of course use voice commands exceot they don't work anything like as reliably as google's version.One example, today I said "play Radio Scotland" to get the radio retuned. It played something called Hooked on a Feeling by a Swedish folk band. Don't even try asking it to navigate "command not understood". I aksed it to navigate to Drumnadrochit (ok that's a tough one but google can do it) - it thought I was trying to say something about a drunken doorkit and said it didn't understand. The excuse given to justify the 15 inch screen instead of buttons is that yuou'r esupposed to use voice commands, but in my experience they work only around 20% of the time. I can turn the heating up and down but pretty much nothing else works. ANother issue is that the sat nav is, well, pretty random. Not all the time but a heck of a lot of it. I asked it for a route from my house to my parents, around 12 miles. It suggested a 70 mile detour to the other side of Scotland. Like I say, random. When we went to Northern Ireland, the obviosu route is via the M77 and A77 - not for Tesla, It suggested a variety of B roads. Often re planning the route produces a more sensibke route but the point is if it is doing this on routes I do know how can I trust it when I am in strange territory? Answer is I can't. So i have gone back to mounting my phone in a cradle and using that as my sat nav. speaking of phones, like many people I have 2, one for work and a personal phone. In Skoda and Nissan I could connect both to bluetooth at the same time. WHichever one rang it was OK I could answer hands free. In the tech marvel that is the Tesla?? Sorry, only one connection at a time. Baffling. Speaking of Northern Ireland, that was somethign of a nightmare. We have done the trip in a leaf without issue, but the leaf uses the much older chademo charge port, rather then the eurpen standard CCS which is in the tesla. For unknown reasons Northern Ireland has only 14 rapid chargers, that's bad, but only half of them have CCS, the other half afre CCS and chademo. To make matters worse many of them are in shop car parks and these are locked shut when the shops close. In a SUnday you can only charge from 1pm to 5pm. More of a criticism of NI than Tesla but coming from Scotland where we have a very pro EV governmen and charging hubs springing up around the country it was a shock to the system. So how would I sum it up? It is an amazing car, probably the most advanced car I have ever owned, and yet lacking in every day tech like a sat nav that works or smart phone integration. Telsa want you to use their system and pay £120 per year extra for it. It is also badly let down by the abysmal quality control. Quite how they can send cars out of the factory with dirt underneath the paintwor is beyond me. Taking 5 months to fix it? Well it was cosmetic so didn't stop me using the car but it is hardly ideal. I had been due to buy a VW ID3 but they messed me around no end and couldn't guarantee I would get a car so I jumped ship. Now that the ID3 is arriving I am feelign a touch of regret. The model 3 is bigger than I really need and the VW would probably be a better fit with my needs. And yet 0-60 in 5 seconds is fun when you have a BMW M3 trying to ride your back bumper. Bottom line though is that with the SKoda Enyaq coming in December and more models likely in 2021 they are going to face a lot more competition. Even now cars like the e niro have a 7 year warranty and on a 50 kW charger it wil actually charge faster than the Tesla (don't tell the fanboys but this is true I have seen it with my own eyes).. Actually that last part may change on my car now that Tesla have actually filled it with the collant fluid it should have had from day 1, as I understand it that is used to both warm and cool the battery to keep it at the optimum charnign temperature. SO it's a mixed bag, it is impressive, and frustrating. I'm in a £40k+ car where I have to use my phone to navigate and a bluetooth headset to ensure I can answer both phones. I had to wait 5 months to get the car in a state which it would have been had there been a proper PDI carried out. But the way you can ghet a diagnosis remotely from a Tesla engineer is very impressive. But competition is growing and Tesla won't have it all their own way for long. Polestar 2 is starting to arrive in numbers and VW will be delivering at scale by the end of 2020. Would I buy another one? On balance, probably not. PS I forgot to add, not only does Spotify cost you an extra £120 a year, the car comes with no spare wheel, no tyre repair kit and you're advised to take out separate recovery as Tesla recovery will only recover you within 50 miles of a Tesla service centre (there's none on Norhtern Ireland and only one in Scotland (ie 33% of the UK land mass)

The chassis is a mix of low tech Golf & Polo bits. Its not very confidence inspiring in standard form to be honest, you can feel it lurching in bumpy bends taken at speed and the body can be felt twisting. The ride gets bad reviews, but the motoring media tarred it with that brush at the 2012 launch and never bothered to revise their opinion. The steering on early cars was poor too, but both suspension and steering were redesigned in late 2013. My 2014 and 2018 spec cars both came on factory 17s and both rode acceptably, although its very tyre dependent. The ride is widely regarded as better on 16s or even 15s but they do look a little small.

From new, my Superb 11 came without chrome door trim. I added OE chrome trim to the doors and it came fitted with double sided strong glue tape. No rivets were used or required.

The Rapid is exceedingly backward, or low tech, in fact, being a parts bin job mostly based on Golf Mk 4 (Replaced in Europe in 2003). I don't think it was ever really aimed at Western Europe, but at developing markets, much like PSA's crummy C-Elysee / 301, but if bought cheap its perfectly adequate transport for 4. My 2 brand new ones cost a total of 25k which I think is amazing value.

The 1.2 TSI/ 105 is the nicest 4 cylinder I have ever driven. Period. Smooth, more powerful than its 105PS rating (independent dyno tests of stock cars showing 116 -120PS can be viewed around the internet) That said its almost impossible to hit the EU mpg figures for the 105 even driving like a nun. The 86PS version is more torquey and more economic in the real world. Down side. The turbo actuator seized at 26000 miles resulting in a replaced turbo. This is not a one off. My 1.0 TSI has this year had the same failure at 15000 miles. Diesels? Newer versions of the 1,6 are much more refined these days but the 2013 Rapid TDI I drove sounded like a concrete mixer. In comparison the 1.4 TDI sounds like a broken concrete mixer. After driving a silky smooth 1.2 TSI I could never have bought an oil burner with its lack of refinement, worse ride/handling/tyre wear etc. But the 1.6 TDI is ultimately the most tuneable engine in the range I think, if thats what you want. I think the diesel injector horror stories on here have all been about the Indian market Rapid, a different car altogether.

Legal battle over a 5 year old car bought second hand 18months ago. Good luck with that one.

Yes, mine chatters a bit in neutral. You would have to strip the gearbox to fit a new one. The gearbox oil level plug is 17mm hex. I used the head of a bolt to undo mine as didn't have a 17mm hex tool. Level plug location...

Curious, what are these “strange, backward priorities” that you think UK car buyers have that differ so much from other markets?

Back in 2014 my Toledo was £11499 new but pre reg. So only 10 miles on the clock, fully loaded, sat nav, climate, even a proper spare wheel, full mats set, cargo net etc. The only thing it lacks are heated seats but with cloth fabric not really a big deal. I've had all amounts of stuff in the rear, seats down its acts as an estate more or less, massive space. Tried to sell it around 2 years ago, no takers it would have been a good buy, keeping it for now, only 26k on the clock.

Thanks for all the info / advice. Starting the sat nav update at the start of a journey would be nice but I've not been & will not be going anywhere for a long enough trip anytime soon Best I have manged recently is a couple of trips for click & collect groceries & today a flue jab at the health centre neither of which are more than 5 miles away. Hey ho its done now so I guess I have no excuse not to start the decorating. Oh look the Rugby has just started so I can postpone the painting I love procrastination.......

I can say my 1.2 Tsi (105) runs sweetly. Regular oil changes, bit OTT here I change at around 5-6k miles, that's all I do per annum. Agree the Rapid , for me it's the Toledo flavour, ticks all the boxes. Into 6 year ownership now, I've looked at many cars/mini SUV types and can't really find anything that could be better to change to for bangs for bucks like this one. Couple that with cheap for me insurance, running costs and £30 VED what's not to like.

So that was around 14 mph. On a e-bike outside i do between 12-15 MPH, and on a push bike 8 mph average. That has me with a max heart beat in around 117-127 and an average below 90.

That is about a TSI. The TDI's get Long Life oil even if on fixed servicing. VW 504 00 / 507 00. So that is 5w 30 III (Full Synthetic & Long Life). VW507 00 being the spec.

Final instalment finished my personal challenge on day 13 with my target of 320km reached in 14 hours 12 minutes. Didn’t intend to break any records just bored watching TV and needed something to do. Back to work soon Thank God.

^^^ Which is why you ask the fitter to put the tyres to the pressure you want after they have the tyres on the beads and balanced. Then you check they did as asked and reset the TPMS. Never trust your life to people you do not know and that do not love and cherish you.

It's possible the pressures are higher. When ever I've ever had new tyres fitted they have always massively over inflated them!

OBDEleven, cheaper and with user friendly interface https://obdeleven.com/en/products-page https://obdeleven.com/en/faqs/ i have first edition device with pro license and operate it from Galaxy Note 10+ trough Bluetooth

I use wiperblades.co.uk for all my wiper blade needs, have done so for every car I've owned for the past 10 years or so. Very good prices and quick delivery

an extra inch can mean all the difference

Nice car! Where did you get those chrome rear mirror covers?

There is no reason for there to be any difference in reliability of a 1.2 TSI no mater the power output from 2012 on. Just be sure of good air filter, plugs and oil, and no need for 5w 30 FS Long Life Oil (VW504 00) if you want to use 5w 40 FS and service on fixed servicing. VW502 00

I would be very interested if you could post the exact make and size of both sets. A 16% improvement in mpg seems a lot. I will try and discover their rolling resistance. Were the tyre pressures changed?

Maybe you need to look again and which might have issues. As for regular chain maintenance, no idea where that idea comes from. Just do not get a 1.2 TSI euro 5 engine car from before VW revised / updsted /upgraded the chain tensioner by 2012, or get one that got the upgrade if a 2010-2012 car. You know about TDI,s do maybe avoid Euro 5,s that got the VW fix. Or look for ones that had that rolled back and a remap.

I'd just got into the car so cranked it up! It's cold and windy down here in Cornwall!

Here is an Engineering Explained video explaining the reasoning behind it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKALgXDwou4&t=122s

Many thanks to Weasley. Had been having similar issues with my Octy and was glad to have this guide. Took about 10 minutes. We now seem to be on revision F for the actuator!

Could it be one of these? I think it could be a clip to hold the door seal ... or maybe a cable clip?

A proper MPV.....

cabin and air filters are as cheap as chips and take about 5 mins to change so since car went out of warranty I change my own cabin filter every year, air filter every two years.

Added 4 chrom door lock caps. No logo, simple, sober, efficient...

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)

We're back after 3 long months off the road! Car fully assessed - no damage to the chassis or any of the suspension, etc. The project continues - here's to the next 10 years 😎