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10:57pm: Unannounced QM site inspection reveals need for much improvement around housekeeping: Although external glazing appears satisfactory: Gaz

It is gone, All sorted. Money is in my account. Thanks mate

Sorry for the delay in replying, but.... I've now done 1,500 miles in the Octavia - the classic mix of town, country and motorway. Plusses: The driver's area is plenty big enough for a six-foot me and there's been no complaints from my wife or 89 year old mother about accessing or legroom in the front passenger seat. The boot may lack the Narnian dimensions of a Superb but it was plenty big enough for our holiday baggage. The ride is firmer and a lot easier over speed humps. The 2 litre diesel is about 15-20% more economical than the equivalent Superb. It's £100 a month cheaper to lease. Long distance driving is just as easy, or as similar as makes no matter. Parking and city driving are a lot less stressful both for my co-pilot (she doesn't drive) and I. I feel like I'm in control of the car rather than the other way round. Minuses: A couple of things aren't as big as I'm used to - central console, rear view mirror, that sort of thing. One or two bits of finish (especially the door handles) make you realise that the Superb now really is executive standard. There's a lot more clinking than solid thudding. The infotainment centre is of the "It wasn't broke so why mend it?" variety that's taking me forever to understand. In particular I can't get rid of that bloody woman's voice forever asking what me what I want to do. It doesn't look anywhere near as impressive as a Superb. Overall: It's a nice car, it's a lot cheaper and it's probably at the same level now as my first 12-plate Superb. They're both, in their way, great cars to own & drive. You pays your money, you takes your choice.

A singing wren

A pressure bleeder prevents air from heading back up the brake line as it effectively mimics how the fluid would act under braking. As long as you push a load of fluid through and no bubbles come out you will be fine

That looks more like a fixed interval.

It goes kinda like this: Pre Facelift 220 230 “SE” Facelift 230 245 “SE” 245 245 Challenge Ive made up the SE designation to highlight it was marketed as a special edition. Depending on the market the above is not a hard and fast rule but it’s something to guide you by. At least, that’s my interpretation of the models.

I currently have the 181bhp Leon FR diesel. It's the bigger brake, rear independent suspension version on 18s. I really like it, quick and economical. My old 07 Octavia was scrapped I heard a couple of months back, sold to a mate and too much to fix. Not sure what happened as they aren't car people The Octavia is a 67 plate, 230bhp petrol with heated seats and black pack? I believe it's the wheels, black rails and carbon look interior. I've not actually seen it yet, my wife went yesterday and fell for it, lol. It's our first auto and looking forward to collecting it next Thursday.

More birds this evening, along with a yellowy orange moon......

You did notice that I put "save fuel" in quotes? Exactly because I don't think it saves much, and if you're driving gently, it does risk undercharging the battery enough to start ECUs complaining about low voltage. I have seen a VCDS scan from an earlier car that had a loose alternator control wire.

If the pressure in the pipe is above atmospheric, then atmospheric pressure air will/can not be drawn in. Seems obvious to me. Bye.

I took my bridgestones off my vrs wagon for this very reason ,replaced with avon zv7s ,transformed the car so much quieter now ,the bridgestones seemed like they were made out of concrete ,other tyre makes are available haha 🤪

@numskull They do not want to change a Service Indicator / Record because really they are not supposed to and if the Local Dealership is not in the same Motor Group as the one with the incompetents then why should they. They also know that Dealership are at it, or useless and might not even have serviced as per schedule. That basically covers it. Ask the Dealer Principal what they want to do. Do they want to pay for the next service? They should not be allowed to inconvenience you. Your time is a valuable as the hourly rate they charge you for jobs.

Alternatively if you have a modern smart phone, use Google Maps or Waze which are better and more up-to-date than either Skoda's or VW's mapping and you can put it onto your infotainment system screen or VC using Android Auto. Although saying that I did have to buy a replacement map card from Ebay (£25) because muggins here dropped the original in a drain when transferring it to the house for an update and I couldn't get the drain cover up. 😫

My headlight switch stay in "Auto" 99.999% of the time. The odd time in fog I may decide to override it but the system is clever enough to be right most of the time in my opinion.

Mechanic had good look over car estimate for valve/head work and timing chain kit plus an exhaust front pipe approx £700 upwards car is not too bad overall but has plenty of superficial issues and it is quite old, so I think it might be time to say goodbye to this one. I have been looking at Yetis as a possible replacement. Thank you for everyone's input

Just to let you know the windows are now working - took PipH advice and checked the wiring inside the door gaitor. 4 wires broken so fixed and lengthened. However 2 of the switches are not working and need to be replaced but at least all 4 windows open and shut from the drivers controls. as for the starting problem, still at it. The glow plugs all needed replaced but the lead connecting them isn't working so replacing the relay (I've started another post regarding this).

With the headlights switched on and the ignition on, the h/lights /sidelights work, take the key out and that kills the lights, conversely if only the sidelights are on with the ignition switched on, when the key is removed the sidelights stay on but the car beeps to draw attention to the fact that the sidelights are still on! -- go on, give it a whizz!

^^^ What should be done. But when a customer wants the Service Interval Cleared Dealerships often say no. It is kind of wrong to get the service history wrong, but no big deal. The thing is Dealership service dozens or hundreds of cars a month so why are they so incompetent? Because they are at it. They cocked up changing the servicing regime is often the issue, or what they admit. They actually are chancers. Variable is 24 month / 18,000 - 20,000 miles. The 'Inspection Service' should not be left on at 12 month periods. (Another member posted today they paid £60 for an inspection service.) If at the PDI or at a Service Variable is changed to Fixed then that is at 372 days or 9,400 miles.(9,600 sometimes.) 372 days being a year and a week for holidays or time from PDI to collection. More confusion from what was a Minor / Interim Service & a Major each year is the Services are Now call Oil & Inspection Services with 'Extended Scope' each 3 years. If a Dealership left 'Inspection service' showing annually on a car on Variable Servicing then have them remove that, or pay to have a Service Done at their expense at their Dealership or at another. They took the pith or tried to when doing the PDI or the Service. For taking the Pith it is down to them to clear the message on the screen.

Yep, which makes the inspection interval odd. Or do the EA888 engines have an oil change every 10k? Even if they do, why does the oil change say 9600 miles, as I’ve only covered 130 since Tuesday. I called and complained to the servicing dealer and rather than another 80 mile round trip, he arranged for the local dealer 15 miles away to reset it to variable. Unfortunately they were unable to change the settings which seems very odd. Spoken to original dealer again who said he’d speak to SUK technical. All-in-all it’s all very weird and annoying.

UPDATE Just got back from the dealership and it's fixed! They thought it might be the small motor / mechanism that operates the recirc valve that had become faulty and ordered the part in to replace it but when they took the glove box out and looked around it was a pinched wire that had not been installed correctly at the factory, hence why it was going haywire when I used other things on the car. The master mechanic was great to be fair and he put it all where it should be and now I can drive in blasts of cold air. Just in time for a temperature drop and the rain So glad it's done now. Might be worth speaking to your dealer about it as once he identified what it was it was a quick fix.

Using since 2019. Just installed third set in a row.

Make sure that whatever you do, you don't overfill the sump. Its easy to do if you aren't paying attention. The engine doesn't apprechiate that.

Not a problem. Appreciate all the responses. Will still be checking it incase they didn't.

Especially given the whole right repair legal movements going on around the world at the moment. I cannot believe that an LED light unit is impossible to repair or replace the lens of, given the right equipment, this is just a copout to force customers to pay up for obscene OEM costs.

There are others who will be able to give a more accurate answer, but I believe yours being a 16 plate will be a 220. IIRC the 230 came out with the facelift, then the 245 came out in the last couple of years of production.

What an epic spec!

Thanks a lot, and kudos for your VRS!

That's the one. Yes....it really makes a difference.

@Wino Thanks, I'll take a look. To be honest, I was looking at the new loom route as the thought of all that soldering doesn't give me the horn - I'm a pen-pusher and as someone once said 'man's gotta know his limitations'

The parts catalogue suggests oils meeting VW group spec G 004 000, for both Koyo and TRW steering systems. oil container and connection parts, hoses; ; no '... - Fabia(FAB) [EUROPA 2000 year] (7zap.com) item 20 g004000 | eBay It will have leaked into one or both of the boots around the inner joints of the track rods, probably.

One that meets VW group spec 507 00. Everything else is unimportant.

https://www.opieoils.co.uk/f/2354/26629/2016/engine-oil.aspx 5w30 is the one you need. Opie Oils are selling it as a service pack of 6 litres. Brand is a matter of choice/budget. I buy supermarket for top-ups as long as it’s the correct VW approved spec e.g. Millers Oils Trident Professional or you can go Castrol, Shell or Mobil and pay easily half as much again. A garage will be using industrial quantities of, probably, Quantum.

I'm confused... if your car was set to the flexible service regime, then there was no need for a 1 year inspection service. The car would have been quite happy waiting for it to determine that it needed a service at any time up to 2 years or 18,000 miles (depending on how it had been driven during that time. But if you felt you wanted a 1 year inspection service, you should have asked the dealer to reset the be on the fixed service regime instead of the flexible one. In any case, I've just looked on the Skoda UK website, and the Online Service Plans (service-plans.io) page doesn't mention any restrictions on which service regime the car is on. It just offers 2 services 1 Oil Service/Change and 1 Oil & Inspection, with no requirement for them to be used within any particular timespan. It does say there's a 20% discount for the month of July too. Chris

Welcome back. 4 years went so quick. what do you think of the Leon what do you have exactly? You went from a 07 Octy? Plus of course tell more about new Octavia also😜

Yes, until the car falls off the axle stand anyway...

There are loads of repair kits on ebay with connector shell and ample wires with the connector inserts pre-fitted, long enough to get you well into the door where you can make inline connections to the original loom. Original loom is likely to be fine beyond the area that flexes. This sort of thing Door Cable Repair Set 107063 Febi Harness Wiring Loom Genuine Quality Guaranteed | eBay

Thanks for the extra info. Following a bit of surfing I found the detailed Euro 5B and Euro 6 emissions online (where I saw where the NOx levels dropped in Euro 6); I contacted Skoda UK customer services (out of a sense of mischief) and asked them if they had the official figures for the emissions of the 1.6tdi engine of 2013 compared with 2015. You could have heard a pin drop! It was suggested that I should speak to a Skoda retailer as only they would be able to give me this information . Yeah, right! That was a sidestep worthy of a bullfighter. I suspect that they thought I was some reporter trying to stir up the system cheating story. Might go and torment a Skoda retailer later!

My VRS-TDI/DSG was always changing up too early. OK I know it has plenty of toque down low and maybe I was the one that needed adjusting. But then put it in S-mode and the thing just wanted to rev its tits off. Much happier now with the TSI/DSG Doing manual shifts with a DSG is often jerky just because it has pre-selected the other gear and not the one you want. So you're in 5th and tip down to 4th but it was pre-selecting 6th for you.

Yesterday, I washed the car for the first time in two months. Today, it takes me about 10 minutes to stand up straight. Yesterday, I filled it with petrol. It was 10 months since my last visit to a petrol pump. It was the most expensive tank ever: £93.61 for 62.87 litres of premium unleaded. 28.7 mpg on my last tankful. I blame evaporation and city driving. Yesterday, I drove to Dungeness with four in the car. Two hours each way. Today, it takes me about 10 minutes to stand up straight. We had the beach to ourselves and the fish'n'chips was excellent. Car ran great. 4.5 year old battery fired right up.

im just sitting in the foggy back garden after my cycle. too hot to go inside. i just realised today is the 19th. its my one year anniversary!!!! i was meant to go for a 5k anniversary run. ooops. instead i did my 16.5k cycle. view from the top of hill, waypoint 1 time to waypoint 1 - a new record setting blast that, despite the heat gave me enough of a kick to try and keep the momentum going, and... BOOM!!! sub one hr time on route. I'll take that as an anniversary present to myself

Dear all, I think I ended this thread very prematurely. I was in a bad place with the VRS (and hence it got put up for sale and I locked the posting), but what a difference of two weeks makes: 1) Since we last spoke, the car has been back to West End Skoda in Edinburgh twice to get the steering geometry sorted. First time, the car's steering geometry was massively out. The second visit corrected the steering geometry, so we now have a car that is steering straight and true. The Michelin CrossClimate+ tyres have bedded in and now seem to be running well on the car at 38psi. 2) The car's MPG after an oil change (at WES), went through the floor. I went from 50mpg down to 35mpg. The car seemed to run really hot. I was convinced that the oil was not right. The oil was standard Longlife LE3 VW 504/507 oil. To change the oil, I have an oil sucker. The CUNA TDI engine (184bhp) engine uses 4.7l of oil (with an oil filter). I was convinced the oil was bad. When I mean bad, the oil that came out was severely burnt (after 500miles). It smelt like a burnt barbecue and the oil was literally smoking after you had driven. Not good. The oil temperature got to 112C - too hot. The solution was worrying and simple: the car was overfilled by the garage (by about 300 - 400ml). If you look at the dip-stick, the top mark of the dip-stick shows oil level at the top of the dip-stick marker. What I didn't see until I checked it today - was the skinny part of the dipstick just above dipstick marker was wet with oil. Basically, the engine having too much oil was causing it to cavitate. The oil was pressurised - the engine used more fuel to get past the overly pressured engine block which caused excess heat. I have a theory on how this happened which I need to explore with the garage first. I removed 4.4l of oil and replaced it with 4l of new oil. The Engine is now transformed. I am now back to 48-50mpg. 3) To get over the glitchy power delivery, I have implemented the Audi power delivery mod on Module 44 (Steering module). Basically, the steering module looks after the throttle pedal. Did you know that all Skoda/VW/Seat cars have a time based power delivery mechanism as opposed the Audi Direct Input method (ie what you press - directly correlates to the power of the engine). Its no small thing to say that this has transformed the performance of the car - the engine has stopped fighting the gearbox; it is now wonderful to drive. My husband has gone from hating the car to loving it. I now have a really good VRS.....the loving relationship is back....I'm now loving it again.

Have a 2006 2.0TDI BSS Elegance here on 272,000 miles. DPF long removed and oil pump replaced a couple of times by previous owner. Car is driving perfectly with a few small issues - puff of blue smoke now and again when taking off, typical interior lights stopped working along with boot light etc pulled the carpet back and the wires are damp and some blue corrosion. Looks like someone has already been in there before. Bodywork isn't in the best shape either, but the car is driving perfectly and still in great shape inside, impressive considering most of the miles are taxi miles. It has been remapped recently too and now pulls really well.

Olderman1 - I really respect that viewpoint, I completely understand it. It's maximising security. I recognise that my appetite for risk is greater than many people (my appetite for convenience wins out at the moment). My threshold is to guard against the most likely risks, I'm happy to leave the unlikely to chance. Perhaps I will live to regret it and you will get to say 'I told you so'? I've done the test see video here . I left the key perched on the wing mirror for 5mins and then tried to open the doors/boot, they wouldn't open. If I had the time, I'd test it at 2mins, 1min etc to see how long it takes. I'm satisfied that it removes the risk of a relay attack in the dead of night from my driveway (the most likely scenario). I agree that it is not a 100% fix, as Olderman1 says, there's still a window of opportunity for thieves to exploit. Thatcham tests showed that it only takes 10 seconds to steal some cars (Skoda Kodiaq included). I may get a faraday tin/pot/pouch for home (it's very little extra effort to drop keys in a tin instead of hanging them on the current hook we use) but I don't want to carry one around whilst out, that removes the convenience of kessy for me (I love that I can open the car despite the keys being somewhere at the bottom of my bag). It feels like the risk is managed enough by the motion sensor for my own personal appetite for risk (personal appetite affected by the street I live, on, car crime rates etc etc).

I collected my Mk3 today. I've only so far driven it from the showroom to home. It's very shiny! I discovered it had already had the body and interior coating the salesman wanted me to have. Very impressed so far. We'll go out for a ride in it tomorrow. I decided to take out the Skoda All-In cover from day one.

What I found that helped me monitor the cars voltage was a cup holder cig socket/ USB doubler which has an led display which toggles between USB and car voltage. When the 1.9 diesel heater plugs energised on start up the voltage really drops to about 10.1volt ,and it also showed the relay stayed in some seconds after the heater light went out. You need at least 12 volt to start comfortably. I did check the heater plugs resistance all was normal. So in winter I wait till I can see 12.1 on the display I know I can start without problems.

For those of you who are interested, here is the spec of the car from erwin Vehicle-specific+information-modified.pdf

25/04/21 Update on the VRS. Its been a weekend of fettling the car. Let me put on record to say that I really detest some car dealers [sadly some of them Skoda dealers]. The selling dealer of this lovely VRS were less than honest in selling the car. That dishonestly shows when dealers say that the car has been fully serviced and had the oil/filter/haldex/air filter and cabin air filter done. Guess what....none of this has been done. Since we've had it, the DSG DQ250 gearbox has started to make some odd noises on shifting down the gearbox. I think it is the usual Flywheel issues that are a known problem; there are also issues with the grabby/snatchy nature of the gearbox when cold. Its going into West End Skoda to be looked at tomorrow: The selling dealer has also been informed, because like my previous VRS (where it needed a new clutch), I suspect the gearbox will need attention. Whilst it is there: 1) New Battery - VAG6161 shows that the battery voltage level is not holding its charge very well - half-capacity - this seems to be normal for VAG batteries, so I'm not too put out on that one. Its just disappointing that the car has been with us less than a month. 2) Selling dealer stated that Haldex service had been done.....no it hasn't....because the filter has not been changed. WES are doing that tomorrow too. 3) Gearbox being investigated..... 4) Might get WES to do another enhanced service on the car after the state of the cabin air filter - because you can bet the air filter is also not done. Sigh - people tell me that I expect too much from dealers; if they were honest and said there wasn't enough margin in it for them to get it serviced then that's fine.....its just when I'm lied to and they then have the gal to also put it down on the Service Record; that is when I get upset.

Spring - four leafed clover Summer - Sun Autumn - Rain / Cloud Winter - Frost Thanks AG Falco

Tyre should only be fitted to an Alfa Romeo?