Leaderboard

So this thread is going to be a bit of a hybrid! As well as outlining the projects I am doing on my car, Ill supply as much detail along the way for new projects to hopefully allow others to do the same and also to answer any questions you may have. Lets start with the car itself; Car Skoda Superb MK3 TSI Sportline Estate in Laser White Engine Standard 2.0 TSI EA888 with 220bhp Racingline air intake Racingline turbo intake pipe Racingline turbo intake elbow Transmission Standard 6 speed DSG DQ250 Suspension Currently standard original Brakes Audi S3 Front Calipers with plain fascia plates Superb 280 Rear Calipers with vented discs Drilled and grooved black discs OE brake pads Braided stainless brake lines Wheels & Tyres Standard Vega 19 inch alloy wheels with 235/40R19 Bridgestone T005 Spare wheel - Full size, same as above Exterior Standard sportline black pack Maxton side skirts Rear mudflaps Maxton splitter Maxton fog surrounds Interior Rear seat release from boot area LED boot lights White LED boot torch Electric tailgate Heated front seats Heated rear seats Heated steering wheel Ambient LED footwell lights LED front door puddle lights LED rear door puddle lights Electric/Memory front seats ICE & Security Canton sound system Rear door keyless entry Tailgate easy open/close 12 parking sensors MIB2.5 Columbus radio Virtual cockpit 3 zone climate control Heated windscreen Heated washer jets Front and rear dash cam ADAS Adaptive cruise control Predictive cruise control Adaptive lane assist High beam assistance SLA headlights Side assist Cross traffic assist Self park Rear view camera with lens washer As you can see, for a Sportline that started off with only the following optional extras: Electric tailgate, MIB2.5. Its came quite a long way and heres a few photos to show the work done so far, if anyone wants further details on any of the current retrofits, let me know, the future ones will be documented as I go. Lane Assist 3Q0980654 camera fitted as well as a new windscreen - all features enabled and fusion canbus ran to the front radar. Heated windscreen Canton soundsystem An absolutly massive retrofit requiring around 150 meters of new wiring, all corners of the car, a lot of new speakers and a lot of custom made wiring 0 Side assist/Cross traffic detection Another expensive retrofit requiring new wing mirror glass at £400 each side, new radars and brackets behind the rear bumper and all associated coding and wiring Release rear seats from luggage area & Heated rear seat elements 3 Zone climate control Another massive retrofit - stripping the entire dashboard from the car to replace the complete heater assembly to allow the 3rd climate zone, this also gave me a good chance to neaten everything up behind the dashboard and also flush the heater core. pACC/Predictive cruise control Required replacing the front radar and also a calibration of it - done perfectly with any solid smooth object and a few tape measures and patience. Facelift tailights Fitting these allowed for dynamic indicators and unlocking animation - these arent a straight fit and require custom wiring adapters and new wires running to the BCM Virtual Cockpit Quite a specialist retrofit this one, needs access to the main dealer tool for component protection and immobiliser recoding - but so worth it! Carbon clean @ 50k miles Not much a retrofit but after 50k of constant motorway miles i thought it would be a good time to give it a walnut blast. Cost around £40 in parts and my already owned air compressor and garage vacuum LED boot lights and engine styling Nothing too special, just a custom made LED torch, LED lights that dont fault and Racingline air intake and associated parts

Canton speaker grills Since doing the canton retrofit I wanted the matching speaker grills, but at £450 per door card and almost impossible to find the correct spec sportline door cards, I got creative and found some cream canton grills, dyed them black and fitted them perfectly to the door cards Memory passenger seat This seat started life completely manual, It is now fully electric and has the memory and easy entry features Direct TPMS Allows full view of pressures from the dashboard Brake upgrade 280 rear brakes for the added vented discs Audi S3 brakes for the front - very similar to 280 fronts but with the added face plate Ambient light upgrades As well as the standard LED lights in the doors I thought id add matching footwell lights, The front warning lights were upgraded to LED and the rears got the same matching lights. Rear kessy Adding rear kessy handles (exact same as front) was such a useful feature, but did require a fair few new wires Electronic chidlock on rear doors Only an option after 2018, I wanted it on my 2017, not too hard but does require new rear door modules Heated steering wheel Not the hardest retrofit but fairly expensive as cars before 2019 require a new airbag as the design is slightly different These are all the photos I have of the current retrofits, The next part will be all the to come retrofits and a bit more detail as i go!

I'm taking a short winter break on Madeira next month and have been looking at car rental costs - and will end up renting a petrol car because the costs of renting an EV are nearly twice as much. Yes I know there's fuel costs as well, but on a small island like Madeira in only a week you can't do many miles so fuel costs won't make up the difference. The headline cost of renting an EV needs to be much closer to the cost of renting a petrol/diesel car for private individuals to stop scrolling and click on the EV.

My old manual 1.9pd Roomster started having a crunch when selecting 2nd gear. Not every time but it started to become more regular, and kind of expected. So I changed the gearbox oil and the crunch immediately stopped. I guess in retrospec I didn't change it for no reason, but 100% it made a difference. I used Fuchs Titan Sintofluid FE SAE75W. Maybe the oil was a different spec to the original, I have no idea but 100% the crunch immediately stopped and never returned for all the years afterwards I owned that car.

Seems very very cheap considering its an L&K estate... even with that mileage considered. Id be taking someone with you to look at the car in depth or pay for one of the AA assessments to be done. If all checks out at that price, then its a very good buy.

Tape over them? Either opaque or use some of the stickers you can get on eBay to dim the blue circle on Sky Q boxes.

ISO9001 is a quality management system standard - it relates to how you manage your quality management - as opposed to how you manage the quality of what you produce.

You are kidding aren't you...??? If you believe that you need certifying as slightly mad... Sure some will be much better than 'ebay specials' but there are many, many OE parts that are 'engineered' down to a price and nowhere near as good as aftermarket parts from other manufacturers. Skoda brake discs and pads come to mind as one immediately well known item... made of lower quality materials and poorly finished. Turbo hoses are another well known OE failure item where aftermarket items are far better. There will be many other examples too - not everything but enough to categorically disprove your comment.

I really wouldn’t be worried about DPF, I only use my car on weekends and is a 2016 and just over 41k miles with an average of 3k a year. Sometimes the DPF does a regen and all I do is continue driving for longer than needed (nice one EU) until it stops Regarding the car it looks good apart from the uncared for leather, it shouldn’t be shiney! And the drivers bulster looks grim, so if you buy get Gliptone leather cleaner and conditioner, plus it smells lovely I’m surprised at the cost is so high for that mileage, makes me think my cars worth a lot more than I thought 😁

In the late 60’s I worked for ZF on gearboxes ranging from F1 Lotus to 6 forwards and 6 reverse huge railway equipment gearboxes,and I can assure everyone that although the majority only had worn out bearings due to huge mileages,gearboxes however are only as good as the their owners,I once stripped a coach box that had a weird oil mixture put in it,and when I removed the lid you could not see the gears as the oil had turned to a mega thick plasticky paste and the gears were turning inside it.Strangely enough there wasn’t that much damage,mostly just worn out bearings,the original fault was that the driver had difficulty changing gear ! I could only assume that the owners had put an additive in the oil to try to help with the gear-changing problem and there had been a reaction causing the oil to turn to glue.So changing oil is not all bad all of the time,and if it makes the owner of the vehicle feel better ,why not ?

VCDS minimum. If you have the ability and knowledge to look at a DPF and know what a good one looks like compared to a clogged one...... I'm yet to be convinced of the success of a cleaning process so I would be budgeting for a replacement at some point. Given the high mileage per year of the car it could well be ok. Do you know why the car is available? What are your usage plans for the car? Long runs every weekend or will it be the school run? If the school run I'd be looking at petrol and not even entertaining the idea of a diesel.

And enforce the zigzag lines outside schools. These are the parents, not people who’ve gone to the shops, taking a walk in the park.

@@LeeWell that was an obvious thing, they want to discredit the Welsh government as we are heading into election time. I have zero problems with 20mph zones near schools or hospitals, but they should accompanied by flashing signs when speed limits are in force, especially the school ones as schools are not open 24/7 so when they are not open, speed could be returned to 30mph safely. As to the stupid slogan “20 is plenty where people live” people live everywhere and if governments spent some money educating children that roads are hazardous and need to be treated with respect, learn how to cross roads safely, and that they are not playgrounds, ever, then the number of accidents involving pedestrians will fall significantly as a result and air quality will also improve as cars are more efficient at 30mph.

I cannot recall seeing a more elaborate set of upgrades done by an owner! The sheer complexity of each operation is overwhelming let alone the labour that went into this… Hats down!

I don't know why you don't move back to the UK with all that never-ending rubbish weather you get down there.

Cant remember what the exact gearbox is in that but it will definitely be a wet clutch. They are more reliable than the dry clutch dq200. I wouldn't expect it to need work doing. The garage I use has mentioned tuned cars going for 250k miles with no issues. The engine is a good one but remember the need for longer runs to maintain the DPF. 156k in 9 years should mean it's ok but I would be wanting the DPF looked at before spending on it. At the very least get a reading via VCDS or similar and use it as a negotiation tool. That year is prime for water pump failure too so make sure its had that done when the belt was done 8k ago. I'm not sure if adblue was introduce by then. If it was then it's worth bearing in mind as it's another fluid to keep topped up. Otherwise anything that comes with buying used. Are the tyres all the same model and condition? Are the plates original and the same branding front and back (could be a sign of crash repair). Look at panel gaps and colours. Might also be worth budgeting for some suspension goodies too. This has DCC so the shocks are quite expensive to replace but they do tend to last longer than regular ones.

... and motorway and trunk road Service Areas could do with better signposting to the EV charging area(s).

They might be better organising themselves. Much more efficiency and profitability. Less vehicles sitting not being hired & less of those that are not what the customers want. As to EV,s there seems little point hiring them unless they are going to suit your requirements and budget and the cost of Public Charging might well be the issue. All hire firms could be more involved in the infrastructure of their regions and where the vehicles will be getting used. They might well have cards in the cars for charging at EV hubs and have negotiated good rates for them. Those i have meet at Chargers so far in Scotland have been ones having issues, but then there will be those that might not have and the cars are charging and they are off someplace. Understanding chargers in Scotland must be a mystery for many. The Councils / Government could help by Sign Posting to Public Charger Hubs.

Yes. It’s a very simple task for someone with VCDS or OBDeleven.

Can I ask what the apparent obsession is with OE parts? The OE process is a balance of cost Vs performance and often the cost side wins meaning OE is not always the best and better non-OE parts are available that perform better, last longer etc. In addition certain OE parts for older cars are no longer available so there's no choice but to go aftermarket non OE.

My first question would be. What is the turn over of Hertz fleet of hire cars normally? In the USA, & in Canada and Globally. Many many manufacturers use Fleet / Hire Companies to have vehicles First Registered. They supply them cheap. In the EU & UK they are doing that to meet Average C02 emissions. There are so many Polestar Hire Cars in Scotland and really they seem to be not doing much where i see them parked up / stored.

Good morning Taranaki!

Really sepulchrave, you've bothered again, you really do flatter and honour us poor humble misguided children with your attention. 😉 I never realised you were also a Certified Lubrication Specialist and scientist why you've been shy about mentioning this before I can't understanding given your expertise in all other matters. Please tell us about the oil only being 100% oil and nothing else, any old oil will do so I can't understand VW engineers ever bothering with their numbers, but engineers do love numbers, them being scientific like. 😉 If the OP and I want to change the oil in the gearbox why do you care, I put what I PERSONALLY do not that I'm a Certified Lubrication Specialist or a scientist or an engineer, and it's not like a scientist or gawd forbid an engineer has ever got something wrong or misunderstood. Do you need to visit Specsavers, you seem to have misread or misunderstood what I'd put, but possibly just lazy skim-reading and usual shorthand standard reply, I deserve no more. Prey do tell us enlighten us to what the lifetime of the gearbox is according to VW, engineers, no less, seems to be only until the warranty runs out and then any problem would probably be because of the car owner, perhaps putting in a non-VW light bulb in a sidelight. I offered alternatives to consider other than changing the gearbox oil and stated that changing the gearbox oil wouldn't help under a number of circumstances. You know changing the oil won't ever help so - if the OP drains the oil he will see and feel it's pristine, he'll feel a little foolish and tip it back into the gearbox, get a refund on the oil he's bought, return here and praise you as he should and admonish me for suggesting or forcing him to bother trying to change the oil with my ritual magic beliefs. I will throw a few chicken bones southwards at midnight in your honour. :deepbowing:

@chli @vegarz @ace_finland with the B201A error, u need to generate a code, using an XOR Calculator. This is generated based on your existing adaption value (Step #1), in combination with the decryption key, which in turn generates a new Key (Step #2) for you to enter (Step #3). below is a screenshot from a how-to document i created, which contains the steps to fix the B201A error.

Good evening everyone, my 2015 Octavia had the original VARTA Battery which I replaced today, asked a garage to give me a quote for fitting it but they never got back to me. I replaced it with a YUASA 9000 and done Battery adaptation/coding through Carista OBD2 adapter, so far car starts very nicely. I’ve replaced the values from original which was the following: please kindly see the attached pictures. could anybody please confirm if I’ve done things the right way or the wrong way. Thank you so much.

I had to drive around an ev spinning his rear wheels in the snow on a hill this morning .

I tested today Mib2 database in my colleague's Kodiaq Amundsen factory loaded v1.10.18 had 4:3 aspect ratio logos, while latest v1.10.48 1:1, looks terrible, white edges from all four sides (last one is manually loaded 4:3)

These so-called communities that want lower speed limits are really a case of its the squeaky wheel that gets the drop of oil. The vast majority of people just can't be bothered to take part in any consultation meetings in the belief of "I don't think this is going to happen", or "I'm sure that others will prevent it from happening" syndrome. I must admit to being like myself at times and I'm sure that these meetings are deliberately timed in their announcements and the very short duration for which they are open, hoping not to attract any negative opinions to their proposals. Do they ever take the trouble to write to the residents in the affected areas? Its been my experience that they don't, they announce them in various low-key ways to avoid drawing attention to them, just like when the newspapers have to publish an apology, its in small case, tucked away in the middle of the paper so as not to draw attention to the fact that they had to do it. Yet when they published the article for which they had to make the apology for, it was more than likely on the front page and was in big bold letters to get people to buy the paper. Sometimes I only hear about certain issues when someone decides to flag it up on my neighbourhood website because the consultation period has closed and someone has just spotted the published announcement tucked away out of site, or on the local authority's website, which we all regularly visit and scrutinise don't we? 🙄

Amazing read so far, I have followed this thread and will look forward to updates.

That's not giving an example of 30mph being a problem, that's drivers exceeding 30mph being a problem.

Cheers Had to use Firefox to get it to open.

That has happened in the past, VAG have often had to pay out for damaged clothing and personal injury.

Welcome. You would have to go a long way to beat a Bilstein B12 kit.

The last car that I managed to fit in that garage was a 1986 VW Polo Coupe.... Granted it had no wheels and it was turned on its side!

Apologies, I posted in the wrong forum 😖

@RootedThanks for the info regarding Hertz, not looking too rosy there, is it. Shades of another Post Office style scandal there, with the arrests and jailing of innocent hirers.

Hello and welcome Phil Good to hear you're enjoying the upgrade. Gaz

If you care to revisit the post that Rooted posted it is there for you, both in the video and in the article and this been backed up by other sources. The internet is full of this storey. If 100k was delivered and selling 20k equates 33% of their EV fleet, then that means that only had 60k in the first place. It is also interesting because the sources are also quoting that part of the reason is the high maintenance costs of them. And they also state they have some Polestar among their fleet left, kind of suggesting that if they had 100k of Telsas in 2021, then they must of sold even more before the latest report was last week. Maybe the actual truth is something in between these figures, who knows? Edit. I just read the latest post from @Rooted where he provided further evidence of these figures and one of those quoted they only had 50k of EVs in their global fleet. So simple maths means subtracting 20k now leaves them 30k globally, if you can rely on the reports.

This guy loves a car ride! https://i.imgur.com/T2FCeaB.png https://i.imgur.com/mvJWg4h.png

They will not come as OTA. MIB3 can only update misc things via OTA.

It's not a question of liking you or not, this may come as a surprise both to you and frankly a lot of the other people on here, but here goes: THEY'RE ONLY IN IT FOR THE MONEY! It's a horrible job and no-one is interested in doing it unless they're going to make a decent profit on it. Good luck finding someone to do it on a labour only basis since half of the profit is in the margin on the parts. Car mechanics prioritise profit over anything else, if you don't want to pay much then they don't want the job. Ok?

That worked for me!!!

Blimey... 5 pages and this argument is still going on. At the end of the day it is one person's car and he has chosen to fit aftermarket parts from a quality supplier to improve the characteristics of his car. There may be geometry changes as a result but suspension is about far more than just geometry. The change is his choice and his choice ONLY to make... Some people want to keep their vehicles stock and OE and others don't. So why argue so vehemently?

I'd say you did it the right way. From your pictures it looks like Carista has renamed Fleece to AGM. That will save confusing. It used to have 'Binary AGM' and 'Fleece', fleece was always the correct type but you can understand why only having one choice with the letters AGM caused confusion. The battery type has a Mat and I believe it was the translation between a mat and a fleece that produced the wording. So you choice of AGM and not Binary AGM is correct. I think the ECU holds just a number for battery type, like type 1,2,3 etc and not an ASCII string "AGM', "EFB" etc. So as I've said it's good they have now changed the user displayed words of those ECU held numbers. This would explain why you saw your old battery as also 'AGM', I bet if you'd of checked with older software it would of said 'Fleece'. I have also heard like Gabbo that if nothing really changes that the coding is not so important. But I've always maintained if you can do it, then why not.

So VW has been configuring their batteries wrongly? I hope not lol, 😁 so these are the only options available with Carista OBd2, no fleece here.

If you didn't run the reservoir dry, and you didn't allow all the fluid to drain out of the lines, then I can't think why it would be necessary to use the ABS bleeding procedure. But it does sound as though air is in the system somewhere - assuming the pads are correctly installed.

It's a great feeling when the radio suddenly works! Am pleased for you mate. This site has saved me a fortune the last two years.

My two penneth. If you are using Intelligent Octopus GO, then the charger is largely dumb. I have a Zappi, which in theory can use excess solar to charge the battery (If you have solar panels obviously!) - but as I currently use the Car integration with Octopus, it has to run in Fast mode (IE Dumb). When it is plugged in, it will start to charge the car and Octopus see's it and then turns off the charge via the car and gives you the charging slots to get to the SOC you want. If you use the Zappi integration, then you run the charger in Eco+ mode - which means (I believe) that you can charge from excess solar as well as via IOG. So, if you intend using IOG via the Cars Integration, get the charger that suits your needs and aesthetics. The zappi isn't pretty (I can't really see it most of the time), but then most aren't. If you intend using the charger integration, you currently have a choice of 3. Ohme, Wallbox or Zappi. (In order of cost installed via Octopus) As for installer, there are quite a few, Octopus installed mine (Part of my EV package) and I have no complaints at all. I believe all their installers are actually employed by them with all the necessary qualifications - the lady that installed mine also sorted the henly block and resealed the fuse (They are one of the few that can do that I believe)