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Sunset a few nights back..........

OK, well update from me: I bought an Octavia earlier today. Went to dealers where they had a dozen for sale. I looked at two 1.5TSi DSG SE L ones (both 2020, 28k miles). Couldn't quite settle myself on either, slight misgivings on the history/condition of both (one of them had had a "non-warranty repair on 3 separate occasions", and 4 different tyres; the other the coolant level was below minimum, which is not catastrophe, but not reassuring). They'd both been serviced on the 20k intervals Then I looked at another one, 1.5TSI, but 6 speed manual and only SE Tech trim, 2019 and 37k miles (and £4k cheaper). The service history on that stacked up a bit better for me: two matching Michelin Cross Climates on front (following MOT advisory), 2 matching Nexans on the back. Last service in the dealer system was from 18k miles, but when I took a look through glove box on test-drive, there was a paperwork for a further Skoda dealer service, and another service at an independent garage (with the name of the owner on the top), and the mileages all add up. Plus I have a bit more cash held back in case there's anything I need to deal with out of warranty eventually. So I've put deposit down on the car and should pick it up Saturday week when I'm back in town. Sincerely, thanks again for the help here. Even if I didn't go for the DSG, it wasn't because of unfounded fears of repairs, so the help was very welcome and useful. I'm now in (or shortly to be so) the Skoda family! (my 9 year old seems happy too, when I showed him picture of the car, he declared "oh, it has the bird!" (logo), I asked "is that good?" to which the response was "oh yes! It's like a crazy chicken!"... so there you go!) Finally: on Camry scarcity. They stopped selling them altogether in UK in 2020 or maybe during 2021. However Toyota kept selling them in Republic of Ireland, so it's probably the only make/model of car where there are more examples for sale in Ireland than in the UK... just checked and Autotrader has 40 in total, while in Ireland Done Deal has over 250. However I think there's new revision coming, and it's been confirmed it won't launch in UK, and I don't think it will launch in Ireland either. Some Japanese used imports might turn up over time; worldwide the Camry is a huge seller.

Find a local VAG specialist and use them.

I went to RIAT 2024 at Fairford on Sunday and took quite a few photos, but sadly the weather was once again not playing ball, although it never rained, every time I went to take a nice photo, the sun seemed to nip behind a cloud and for a decent photo of a warplane, it needs to be in full sunlight. Grey planes against an overcast sky is not the best shot to take. However, here a few of the most memorable and impressive planes flying, not in full display mode as I was at the far right of the runway and the centre of the display axis was some 1,300 metres to my left, so only managed to get take off and landing shots mainly.

We do now, compared insurance, tax, maintenance etc etc to cost of a few taxis, buses and occasional train and it was a no brainer compared to running a second car that was doing less than 4k miles a year - but it is the Superb estate that is the one car ! It depends on your location for access to public transport or taxis….

Slight update, having used the car for a whole 4 mile journey it rewarded me by doing a wee on the garage floor. The resultant oil leak was the size of a beer mat to give some context on the puddle side. Turns out the driveshaft seal in the gearbox has given its papers in and decided it didn't want to seal anymore. Downsides of a little used car i guess? New seal en-route so hopefully i'll be back on the road asap.

Crikey, I had a bit more fiddle and asked the pooter to remove the white boat. Took a few goes and a bit of a fiddle and it did this. I doubt it would stand up with a hi-res photo, but it is a bit spooky, all this Ai stuff. Now where can I order a 'replicator' like they have in Star Trek?

Bit more dramatic b&w

Re asking non EV drivers about being an EV driver. EV drivers will have heard many many ridiculous things from people that ask them about having an EV and tell you nonsense. Common is the price of replacing a battery. Common is how much it costs to charge and when you agree that public charging is expensive and really you need to be able to charge at home, then they say but they can and do not go far.

'Even a whiff of a damaged battery and it is being replaced.' Rightly so. How many replacement batteries are there being done. Or actually how many just written off as beyond economic repair. But then how many vehicles that are not EV,s or Electrified are being written off and nothing to do with batteries. Head of the SMMT this morning was speaking on the reduction on cars manufactured in the UK and he said a crossover point from models being discontinued and new ones being introduced. Very true. As to the increase in costs of producing & he said lots of investment in producing batteries and the cost of this investment in building more. ? Are more EV batteries actually being manufactured in the UK?

What tax revenue are Scottish Councils losing because of EV,s? They have fleets of them their selves. If they were to stop blocking or refusing solar farms and battery farms and actually encouraging those wanting to put them up have them on public land, COMMON GOOD land, which there is lots of, and redundant Greenfield sites that are not getting housing on anyway and is reclaimed refuse / dumps that have to lay dormant for many years. Get rental income in from that being used. The councils need the renewables to cut their emissions and costs. This is Scotland not England that had had a ban on new onshore wind for near a decade. This is where there is much more electricity than the country can use and where it can not all be exported because the National Grid is not up to it.

Seems factual, a survey result and some averages. What do you think might not be factual? But on the other hand, there's clearly lots of selective statistical representation at play: - The (unrelated to headline) survey had ignored existing EV owners by only asking about switching. A different question would get a different response. - EV insurance price compared to diesel is 30% higher. Article elected to ignore price difference to diesel for the headline. Diesel is 18% more expensive to insure than petrol according to the article. - It is always more expensive to insure a more expensive car. On average there is more cheaper petrol vehicles on the road due to EV's being more expensive to buy in 2010's. Similarly diesel being more expensive to insure is also probably due to typically cheapest small cars are not diesel. This is just how statistical average works. Always think critically, factual is not the main problem here. I can go out and get completely different survey results or different insurance results using different methods, both are still factual. Inspecting and think critically about methodology is a basic scientific skill.

Depends how many drive cycles occur without the fault(s) re-presenting, after the lights showed. In this case, yes, something seems likely to be readable.

We're in the same position. Albeit SWMBOs chariot is a small petrol SUV. Cost wise the Superb isn't much different to the Mokka, although I do tend to drive them differently. The Superb is a relaxing 70 mph whereas the 1.2 Turbo Mokka needs a bit of poking. Having said that, with the sports button pressed it's fun, but for short journeys! One day we'll be sensible and reduce to a one car household but until that day....

I do run the A/C / Climate regularly for demisting & to keep the system seals from drying out (ex AC industry engineer). I just don't use the A/C for prolonged periods due to the low annual mileage & the rubbish summer temps we've been experiencing of late. You don't need mechanical A/C running when it's only 17c outside! I've long since given up doing anything on our cars that's more than just washer fluid top ups, tyre rotation & a few other minor tasks. There was a time when I spent all my spare time under cars doing engine swaps, repairs, body modifications & the like. I liked doing it but it was mainly because I couldn't afford to pay others to do it for me. Then I got company cars so didn't have to worry about anything other than putting fuel in them. Now we own & run our own cars, I'm getting too old to be getting under cars & can afford to have a local garage maintain them for us - just. I agree on the independence thing but it's also the convenience of being able to jump in a car whenever I need to do something on a whim & to get from A to B without having to do D-Day type logistic planning 3 days in advance. Today's a prime example. My car's in the garage & my wife has gone out with a friend on a whim so I'm stuck at home until she gets back & takes me to pick my car up later today. I haven't used a bus or a overland train since I can't remember when & I avoid them like the plague. That said if my wife & I go anywhere together locally, or further afield on a 1 day return trip, we nearly always takes her EV cos it's so much cheaper to run & we haven't used a public charger since we got it over a year ago. My car gets used for longer journeys, holidays or if we need to haul something that's too large for her car. The other snag is that while I have no problem driving my wife's car she doesn't like driving mine because it's too big for her!! I'm still not sure if we / I am ready to drop down to a single car yet. I guess all the while we can afford to run 2 cars we won't change but I'm sure there will come a time when we will have to consider it.

Frightening isn't it. Apparently this is a beta type release, so it's only going to get better! Just watched a vid on it and they reckon that if you were to ask the Ai to remove a pair of sunglasses, it would add a set of eyes to the newly revealed face, as it knows humans have eyes (obviously it will have to guess at eye colour and shape, but even so! It's also running all this on my rather old pooter and not crunching those numbers on a remote web server/pooter thingie.

It just goes to show, that we can no longer believe what we can see with our eyes, unless you were there at the time. Anyone looking at your last edited photo would never know that the girder bridge, the rock or the white boat ever existed. All I did was to crop the original and then enlarge it slightly, no AI was involved or any pixels harmed.

I'm not much of a whizz when it comes to Photoshop, I much prefer Lightroom, which is more akin to a digital developing room. But Lightroom has a new feature which I've just discovered, so I put your photo into it and pressed a couple of buttons. It removed the bridge on the right (I assume you like the stone bridges?) and the rock on the left as well as increased the resolution, which is probably most noticeable in the wheelhouse of the main boat. Subtle effects, but very clever...it must be as I haven't a clue how it works and what it does, so I know it's not me doing it

Please don’t post duplicate threads:

thanks anyway Pete

Nice pics ,i like the black and white ,but for me ,just personal not knocking the pic ,but the white plastic boat pulls your eye away too much from the background.

Generally they seem to claim that in the main it's washer fluid, brake fluid and cabin filters and checking the condition of the tyres, which always seemed to my mind to be an over simplification of the status, but then, most are going by what Tesla suggest as a DIY list.

Existing owners excluded, diesels excluded, clearly because the former already has made the switch...FACT Diesels excluded, again clearly because it is so much harder to be able to purchase a NEW diesel car in the same style as a new EV or even PHEV.. FACT. Also evidence shows that the vast majority of PHEV cars sold on the second-hand market still have their original charging cables still sealed in their plastic packaging, indicating that most have never been plugged in and are company cars, chosen because they can benefit from tax concessions by virtue of them being PHEV, they have the ability to be driven for a short distance on electric only. The insurance aspect I can't vouch for without doing a lot of requests for insurance quotes, which may be biased because of my age, hence why I was asking about the article being factual or not, but again you seem keen to put your point across and looking for flaws in it when the writer was looking for a specific type of owner/driver because they were trying to gauge the likely take-up of EVs with the deadline coming up of not only the existing 2035 date, but also the threat of it being brought forward to its original date of 2030. If you are only looking to do research for a narrow target with a simple yes / no from ICE drivers, why on earth would the researchers bother asking current EV owners/drivers the question when they are not the ones being targeted in the survey. Keep up at the back.

I’ve never turned the 280’s off, nor the MKII nor the MKI before that… and not the Octavia before that!

I'm not sure about the filter, but the sump plug has been omitted yes. 2 or 3 gallons of oil later...

It's wyx087's usual attitude of "I've made up my mind; don't bother me with the facts!"

Have just heard back from garage, said the car reported a misfiring on cylinder no.4 - glad a fault was readable! Planning to replace the coil pack to see if that helps (as sparkplugs still pretty new) so 🤞

Beyond this, EV lease costs have shot up, which may be a knock-on of the increased insurance costs. (Possibly due to a very cautious approach when repairing crash-damaged EVs. Even a whiff of a damaged battery and it's replaced.) A colleague at work leases a Hyundai Tucson and his lease is up in January. There's no way he can afford to replace it with another under the lease scheme, as the cost of the new lease is ... Bah! I can't remember the exact difference and don't want to pull a number out of thin air, but I recall it was three figures/month more than his current PHEV Tucson when he showed me.

Spline key or socket for undertray and a good oil filter wrench, i use the alloy set of the bay 1/2 inch drive fits them ok new sump plug or washer jack up car with the trolley pad on large cross member then slide stand onto chassis part just behing and away you go, don't forget to get the oil at operating temp brfore draining and don't forget to refit sump plug and filter before filling up

You make a good point. I can't recall the last time I saw a Camry around by me. Everyone seems determined to drive around in some flavour of SUV.

@Colin170CR I agree about the car repairs aspect, I always used to do my own repairs then I got a company car, and sold my car and for over 40 years I never needed to lift a finger to get anything done to the cars, it was all done under contract by the leasing companies, now I'm retired and running my own car again, but too old to get involved in getting under the bonnet apart from checking the fluids, everything else goes to the garage. As to using buses etc, even though I have a free local bus pass, I have used that about 3 to 4 times in the 6 years because as you said, you need to plan everything out well in advance, and we can no longer hop on a bus and go from one side of the city to the other, as all buses now are called shuttles and go from various points around the area into the centre and back again, meaning that you now have to catch at least 2 to do what I used to be able to do with a single bus. Then you have to get from point A to point B in the centre in order to catch the other bus, and this is called progress??? I tend to take my car to one of 2 garages for repairs and that always involves 2 buses at the minimum and because of the need to catch the second bus, it means that a trip by car of 5 to 10 minutes to reach either garage, now takes anything from 50 minutes to 90 minutes and waiting around in all kinds of weather getting frozen stiff in winter. And then to think that they want to get us all out of our cars and to walk, cycle or use buses or even trains if going further afield is just stupid in my view.

I was told years ago by an old mechanic friend of the family to run the a/c at least once a week. Having had a few PHEV's as a company car and very carefully checked mpgs over the years, it does cost a little but not as much as you'd think. Initially with the Outlander, I didn't use the heater or a/c but after a few winter months of coat wearing, I gave up and used the creature comforts!!

Thanks for the comments everyone

Just had the dreaded call from the garage with the extra "advisories". So, based on the Indi garage & Skoda records for the car:- Spark plugs - I swerved on these last year so I guess they need changing a year on. Haldex oil, oil filter & pump clean out - not really negotiable so yes. Air Con refresh - hardly used it with the mileage I do & the summer we've been having but Ok. So all in, & including engine Oil & normal service items, errrr £600!! That's put a big hole in this months pension😒 I'm starting to wonder if we can exist with only one car🤔

Is a Euro 6 TDI out of your price or just out of the quest?

Mines going into one today. Yearly oil & inspection service 🤞

Glad it's working well for you. When you've been used to it for a while, try setting it back to zero (i.e. restore the car's 'normal' acceleration), it reminds you just how sluggish throttle lag really is. What I really like is the sharper pick-up anywhere in the rev band, especially for overtaking. With these cars being FWD and light at the front end, I found the excessive torque of higher settings (5 and above) felt like the devil taking over. I never fitted the EVC to my previous Mk7 Golf, but I did put one on our Grand Cherokee V6 diesel 4WD, which we used mainly for caravan towing. Being a heavy car and well planted on the road, it was fine on high settings, but even then U6 was about my comfort limit. The fun part was, it made my 0-100kph time (with EVC) equal to that of a friend's GC with a Hemi 5.7 litre V8 (sans EVC). No one would believe it, until witnessing my V6 and the Hemi running neck and neck for the test 😲

Btw if anyone needs a wiring diagram or parts for vw Skoda https://superetka.com/?cat=etka it’s free and has Elsa and etka hope I’m not breaking any rule … I don’t own the site

Fantastic, Thank you. I will give this a try when I get back from work today😀😀

As someone working in IT I'm genuinely upset about the amount of waste computer equipment and peripherals getting junked as they are 'no longer supported' after seemingly minimal updates. Pallets of IT get taken away at a cost to be recycled - and it's been exposed what an environmental disaster that is. I get the impression that they are mostly just piling up these days. Even my own PC (around 10 years old) is not being supported beyond Windows 10. 18650 cells in the packs noticeably lose capacity over time. So for me EV's have no appeal. It's like they took all the things I don't like and put them in one place. Add to that the issue of finding charge in deepest rural Devon where regularly visit and it pretty much leaves me with nothing. To top it off they are often to be seen at the front of a line of slow moving cars as they are likely trying to conserve power. While overtaking a Tesla in my Skoda Estelle I found it almost laughable.

Despite buying a DA I LIKE to polish by hand but I also suffer from the 'car looks nice' right shoulder! Why, why, why do I alway only use my right hand to polish the car? I try to use both hands but within a few minutes realise that the left is redundant again.

On my trip to France earlier this month I was surprised how many charging points there were, and most with available bays. No idea of the cost per kWh though as mine is the 1.5 tsi estate. I calculated that an iV wasn’t worth it from a cost point of view. More expensive initial cost, very short battery range, and mediocre mpg on petrol. The majority of my mileage is long journeys on which I’m getting 55 - 60 mpg (Plymouth to Winchester (coastal route not the dreaded A303) the other day was 60.8). A run to the supermarket of three or four miles will be about 40 - 45 mpg unless there is horrendous traffic (which I usually avoid). Your usage pattern may be sufficiently different to alter the equation but don’t rule out the 1.5tsi just yet. My aforementioned trip to France (Provence), 12 days and ~1850 miles, worked out at over 55 mpg with the cruise control at 130kph wherever legal (four adults, the boot rammed, and aircon at full tilt as it was well over 30C most days).

You’d have to do the sums i guess, but my advice would be probably just don’t bother charging it in France at all for the time you’re there. You can run around on petrol only when you’re there. you should see between 45 and 50 mpg like that, or a bit less if they’re really short journeys. If you get a dedicated charger at home, then you’ll also be able to get a very cheap overnight tariff. It could mean the cheap costs for the majority of your use at home subsidises the French usage. Of course you’d have to lump the costs of installing a charger and the likely increased costs of a hybrid over equivalent diesel. i think some energy providers give low night time tariffs without a car charger though too. personally i prefer the way the hybrid drives over the string of diesels have had previously, but then mine is a company car so I’m also influenced by bik tax and cost per mile. you’re kind of the case point for a plug in hybrid. Mostly short local journeys done on electric but without the range anxiety for infrequent long journeys. Like having two slightly compromised cars in one. overall it may be comparable to just running the diesel all the time, but then these decisions aren’t always just about the cost per mile, its okay to want a new car!

Corn bunting

They are excellent, the drivetrain is very reliable and like you say a large boot. It was the rear legroom that wasn’t enough for us when I looked at a Corolla Touring Sports, but I saw you could buy a new Swace for thousands less than even a year old Toyota and it is literally a different badge stuck on at the factory. Enjoy.

My favourite photo of this car to date 😄 I deffo wasn’t overtaking and gapping that Porsche, although I’ll happily let you think that 🤣🤣🤣

Just buy a torch and stick it in the car

£160 sounds well worth the money.

Thanks xman Nothing past 2018, what a crap idea, but at least I haven't lost my IT skills Lets hope I breakdown with a good WiFi signal 😉