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Boeing c17 globemaster over derwentwater this week And another shot

A few shots from Brands Hatch today.

I had a Brown Water Scorpion on my patio just now: About 2" long. I don't recall ever seeing one before, but looking them up, they're native to North America. As it flew off, that pink under the wing cases is actually quite a vivid red. Gaz

In a DSG car the stop/start can be manually controlled without having to either permanently disable it or temporarily disable it via the on/off option in-car...... The manual method of control is by the amount of pressure you put on the brake pedal. If you just softly hold the brake pedal the engine will keep running but more pressure on the brake will let the stop/start kick in. I can pretty much decide when to use it every time now without even really thinking about it.

Always worth asking the airhead on the front desk what criterion are they using to condemn the discs. Disc thickness? Runout? Delamination? Excessive scoring? They should recognise this as code for; " not going to work on me, sunshine"

Can't agree more - such a difference in clear skies 👍 A few more from East Midlands (again taken with the FZ1000) last August:

This evenings sunset....................

I ended up replacing the blind spot light with a second hand working one. This cleared up most of the errors. After that the door lock still didn't work and was showing up in the error scan. Managed to get the lock replaced under warranty so all good now

Open App and go to Profile section. Scroll down to Permissions and consent. Then Vehicle Consents. Turn off Access to Vehicle Data.

This evening's sunset (and the not very shiny roof of a Karoq)

Hey guys, Just wanted to share some of my positive experience with the 6 speed DSG DQ250. I wasn’t happy with the DSG behavior on my Octy because it was jerky between 2nd and 3rd and vise versa. And also between 1st and 2nd with light throttle. So I decided to check the DSG oil by adding 1liter and also check for leaks from the DSG filter seal due to some oil on the transmission which I’ve noticed while changing the engine oil few months ago. The filter cap seal wasn’t leaking, but I was there already and added a liter oil, so changed seal and the filter as well. After the excess oil was drained when the fluid reached 35 degrees, I decided to do some DSG Adaptation a bit different from the one described in Ross-Tech site. I saw it in YT for Golf 7 R.. 1/ Auto Trans > Basic Settings - Reset All Adaptation Values - Basic settings for transmission - Calibration of Synchro-points - Start double-clutch fast adaptation 2/ Then I drove the car in tiptronic(manual) mode on odd and then even gears by pressing the gear selector twice quickly: 1 - 3 - 5 - 6 - 4 - 2 - 1. Did this few times. 3/ After this procedure, I switched to auto mode(D) and now the transmission is so much better - not jerky at all, upshifting and downshifting much better. Some people report that after some time their gearbox returns back its bad behavior and they have to re-adapt the gearbox. I don’t know how long it will remain like that, but I don’t mind doing the adaptation every 3-4 months - it takes 5 mins..

I took my skoda octavia vrs 4x4 estate 2922 car in for a oil service.i was told my front disc pads were down 90% and discs needed changing.the price was 545£ I refused.a fewcdays later it had to go back in for warranty work.i was told than my brake pads were down by 80% but no mention at all about discs.not bad going 90% brake pads and 1 day later 80% down did not disc pads could self heal.today had a guy out to do the work for me and he says the pads are only 70% worn ans says by a glance the discs look OK.is this a con game by the skoda garage?

Bought the L&K 280 4x4 Recently and the Air con proved not to be working I took it to a local garage to do a leak test the system pressurised with nitrogen found a leak on the top pipe at the condenser, the pipe was a faf to wiggle off, the problem was corrosion in the hole of the condenser bridging the seal cleaned the hole out with 2000 wet and dry new "O" ring and a smear of pipe seal. Next job is the oil leak which looks to be the sealing ring/rubber on the Camshaft Magnet VID-20250501-WA0001.mp4

Apart from the Guido Fawkes website, here's another source, but its source goes back to Guido Fawkes. https://highways-news.com/westminster-mps-lose-ev-charging-points/ from this google search: https://www.google.com/search?q=evs+banned+at+westminster+underground+car+park But no other reporting, is there any other report with different source? Not banned, as some still claiming. Only a small number of EV charging points are due to be removed. One can still park their EV in the underground car park. Edit: May be the banned idea came from some numpty on social media misunderstanding wording of this published debate? Misunderstanding talking about EV charge points and side note about cars banned from underground car park: https://hansard.parliament.uk/lords/2022-02-09/debates/5C59F88C-0538-4AE8-8201-3C0DA49E487D/ParliamentaryEstateElectricVehicleChargingPoints ChatGPT interpenetration, which I concur:

The market is getting bigger with more people looking to get into EV's. They, as dealer with limited resources, can't keep up. But at the same time there's more and more supply of second hand EV's. So AT's "market health" metric is down. From buyer perspective, it's great. Not so great from private owner perspective.

Fair enough...i am going to try an adaptor USB-C to 12v ..even though mixed reviews ...not having much luck..if the adaptor does not work i will give up ..just not meant to be. Was parking at home yesterday when a message popped up asking if i wanted auto parking so i said yes as it remembered my previous parking at home. It was very unnerving..surprised how fast it was..i had to hit the brakes as it came so close to my front step...be a while before i try that again.

A true inheritor of the "BUFF" appellation ...

i'd love to charge to 80% but appears that is not a feature on this vehicle....maybe a FW upgrade, but for now what it does have a "charge on reduced current" option which drage out the charge process but as its overnight, not an issue - unless you have the app, which we can't get in NZ. everything else i have - phone, laptops, e-bike all have the 80% max charge setting so no idea why Skoda would make this available via the app but not from the vehicle settings......

The garage who gassed it I worked for in the past so I got it at trade rate but still much more expensive than the older gas in the last car they did. I seem to buy cars with air con faults

We finally had a week of dry spell, so I got round to washing the good old Superb. I also treated her to a set of Michelin Pilot Sport 4S. That's at least + 20hp in street cred. l

Meant to add I doubt it would be the battery as if its voltage had dropped to the point the car shut off it wouldn't start or turn over again. Same with key fob. The reader in the ignition barrel reads the chip in the key. The battery is to operate the lock unlock and I doubt once codes are cleared a new battery would make them appear again?

I think you need to get it scanned either at a dealer or someone with vcds. The scanners that RAC AA use sometimes don't pick up faults in certain sections. As previously said it does sound like an electrical fault that is ok when car is cool but happens once warmed up. A first place to check is the strip fuses in front of battery . They can look perfectly good but have a tendency to develop hair line cracks which are very difficult to see. The crack opens when warm and breaks the electrical circuit and reconnects when cool. Sons ABS warning used to come on every day after about 5 miles. Leave it for about half an hour and it was fine then back on again. Not sure what you mean by red electrical wave warning? Alasdair

I was referring more to the 'barn door' aspect that type of flap presents to airflow.

You did read the report. We read the report, you were challenged as to where there was a ban. You could not find it because there was not one.

@Graham Butcher You posted about it and it hadn't happened in 2024. It was not true when you reported it.

Something that I reported a while ago but when certain members couldn't take my word without proof, and the document had been taken off the HOC website, it was deemed to be not true. I see that they have now made it appear that is new news, and is on other sites as well, not just Vloggers. I assume now that we might also get landlords also publishing bans on EV parking in underground lists beneath residential blocks, which I also reported at the time because I have friends living in such places and they have been told not to park such cars in their lots, but never mind, just shoot the messenger eh? 🤔

£400?! I had a fuel temperature sensor go recently and that was £115, including the sensor and also repairs to the wiring too.

Googled and known issues with waterpump or thermostat housing leaks but if the level is correct, it doesn’t sound like you’re losing water. In which case. I’d thinking about thermostat sticking? It should open and close with the temp of the water but if it’s stuck and not opening fully then the water doesn’t get to run through the radiator sufficiently? Just a massive guess though

The 1.4 4cyl EA211 lump has been in VAG cars for a fair few years - be it ACT, CoD or neither. As far as I'm aware, interaction with the DSG box aside, both variations have the exact same throttle unit (put your foot down and you'll feel the kick down click at the bottom. The EA211 owners group on FB is worth a look - people there are regularly hitting 250bhp without anything significant turbo wise. There's also some good stuff here. Generally speaking, small upgrades to better performance usually worsen NVH and everything else. Stuff like dogbone mounts can tighten things up and make your gear changes quite sharp, but (IME) this has a slightly negative effect on NVH. There's nothing else you can really do for more power, without looking at a bigger turbo and other such mods. Sure, putting in some nicer plugs and looking at fuelling, cooling, etc will be a nice touch, but I highly doubt you'll see anything performance wise. Where do you get it mapped? I would suggest seeing what they say. Spacers won't affect an alignment. They'll increase the scrub radius, which can affect the steering, but otherwise you'll be fine. Spacers do, in theory, increase lateral grip, but there's so many other factors that you won't see any difference. You'll get significantly more grip by sticking on some PS5s than you will increasing your tyre/track width by 10mm.

Unfortunately, so many of these armchair experts automatically think that the actual experts are always right, which of course they are not, as @Tilt has already pointed out. Many businesses do not need or have all the interconnectivity except to take card payments, which must have live connections to various banks to determine a person's ability to actually pay the bill. It is and remains a fact many shops and small businesses still retain the ability to take cash and for that purpose a simple standalone cash register suffices and a quick look on Amazon will reveal 20 pages of the things, so why all the silly comments to the post I made mentioning cash. Some retail businesses still go around their shelves with pricing label machines, printing and sticking labels on their items for sale and the cashiers just punch the numbers into a simple cash register and then giving customers the option of using cash or card and then simply telling the register which method was used by the customer. Others like cafés, pubs etc have a limited range of products and so can and indeed many do, have their own dedicated buttons on the till, which the owner programs them with the prices and the register adds up the items and displays the result, so again no need to have online connection, just enough power to run whatever they need to keep operating, which come from solar or wind with maybe battery backup, or even as I have seen first hand, just a small ICE generator or battery backed inverters, which again Amazon has oodles of the things and also standalone chip and pin readers which need to be online can also be purchased from Amazon. So now perhaps, the other armchair experts, (I did check my facts before posting the original post), will draw a line in the sand and let the thread get back to its core topic of the Truth about electric cars?

It is a good idea to say what engine / gearbox, age and mileage the Octavia has done.

Sadly, not just Skoda Garages, there are many operators out there who view unknowledgeable drivers as a lucrative cash cow.

Take a pic of them and post it on here. I too drive like an old duffer, mainly because I AM an old duffer. My brakes are the ones that came with the car and have done over 25K miles. Here's what they looked like just now.

Good Evening Chaps Thought I would give you an update. I didn't want to post too early at the risk of jinxing the situation. So I've fixed my problem. It's been 2 months now and not an issue. I was getting multiple jolts a day some serious some minor. So I was travelling to work one day and it happened the worse it has since I've owned the car and it actually threw up a fault. Engine speed sensor. It didn't indicate whether it was crank or cam sensor so I swapped them both. Its the best its ever run since I've owned the car so I pretty sure it was a fault that was getting worse over time. It even starts first time and doesn't stutter which makes absolute sense now. I hope this helps you sort the issue if your still experiencing it. I know it might not be the fix to your problems but it's worth a shot for less than £200 if you do it yourself. Cheers Josh

I took that with a Lumix FZ1000 - it's only a bridge camera (1" sensor), but has a reasonable lens with 400mm at the long end 👍 A couple of others I took with the Lumix (cropped):

I've met my fair share of so called 'experts' in my lifetime ........... different backgrounds and the like. Not really impressed with most of them. The Gp's for instance that when I went to them with a dog bite, gave me antibiotics (flucloxacillin) that are known to be ineffective against dog bite bacteria. Ending up with me in hospital for 11 days with a bone infection and a total of 7 weeks on antibiotics of three different types. The hospital staff were amazed (gobsmacked a better word) at what had happened with the doctors mess up. Yet there were the Non Microbial staff at the hospital, mostly the physio's, that were saying Flucloxacillin was ok. The Head of Microbiology that covered both the Queens Med and Nottm City hospital (her name was Tara) assured me that they were all WRONG. Any future need for Antibiotics for myself does not look good. Another one, a (supposedly) qualified sparky contractor at our workplace trying to tell me that a water heater could be installed using a 3 pin plug ......... and a 3 amp fuse.......... he even got his calculator on his phone to show me his calculations...... I do think he had been smoking a bit too much stuff that day tho to be fair. The amount of people that I have come across that think they know what they are talking about is astounding. If I comment on something then I would have either checked my facts before commenting, or at least start the comment / conversation with the words 'I think'......... but certainly make it clear that it is not fact.......... Or just keep my mouth shut and ears open. Sadly most people seem unable to do this nowadays, its all Me, Me, Me.......... It was commented the other day that general intelligence is going down and with Ai becoming more mainstream, it is expected to go down further. And on top of that we have to endure people like Clown Fart and Poo-tin messing the world up. God help us, I say..........

Tried here? https://mib-helper.com Sorry saw you’ve posted the link. Ask Pab567 on here or chime in on the Octavia MIB thread for an up to date firmware for your device.

Those with electricity in their vehicle will just have to make it last if they can not get charged. They might be well and truly stuffed. Just like those with liquid fuel in their vehicle, maybe full. maybe not. They might have many km,s worth, or not. If the Filling station is not pumping fuel with their own energy supply, or hand pumps then them taking cash money is no hep. Those with petrols or diesels might not have enough fuel to get home... The Truth of ICE Vehicles.

Noticed the update today for my 2024 Superb. It's been turned off straight away. I'm not having any company having that data. I've recently had issues with my insurer because back in 2020 I did a comparison search for a modified car.

When did you last see a mechanical till other than maybe in some Retro Shop / theme bar? A manual Credit card imprinter?

the data centres will have been fine, it's the network connectivity between them and the ATMs that will have gone down. Cellular base stations only have hours of capacity. The DLAMs in the street have a few hours maybe. But if the ATM relies on a local router it will have gone down.

According to the FAQs...

I don't know if anyone knows of this technology by Michelin or come across it before, it's called the Acorus technology and it's supposed to prevent or reduce damage to low profile tyres. Here's an article about it. I've just come across it and it may provide the answer for those with low profiles living in areas with potholes https://www.extremetech.com/cars/262619-michelins-acorus-wheel-technology-means-potholes-wont-kill-low-profile-tires-wheels

Nowadays you have to be careful where you book a time for trans specialist. I woke up as a woman while I was pose to get my dsg mechatronic serviced 😔

It is a 2015 so a 6 speed DSG, and the oil is to VW504 00 / 507, Long Life, which will be 5w 30 FS III but can if wished 0w 30 FS III. No DQ381 or VW508 00 / 509 00 in 2015. PS We are in a whole new world, Real women or trans, or non-binary can keep old cars running well, even be technicians.

What it is worth doing is find a GOOD local VAG specialist near you; taking it to them and asking them to go through it and ask what they think needs looking at. Tell them you are planning on keeping the car and want to make sure that everything is good for the future. I'm making an assumption that you have a TDI (either 150 or 190). Things I might consider: Coolant change (and change of header tank if you still have the silica bag in and cannot remove it) Cambelt and Water pump change HALDEX service (clean/replace gauze and fluid) DSG gearbox fluid and filter change (either for DQ250A-6 speed or DQ381A-7speed gearbox) Oil/Filter/Fuel Engine Flush - make sure you run the car on 5W30 (better for higher mileage Octavias) Running some Super Diesel through it to clean the EGR and keep the injectors and DPF happy (or you can do the normal diesel plus use the fuel additive I use - https://www.hydra-int.com/DPB000K.html) to keep things sweet. Air Conditioning charge, Aircon cleaner and a new cabin air filter Clean and waxoiling under the wheel arch liners to stop rot caused by the sponge of doom and in the chassis rails. I heard a kitch saying - any fool can buy a new car, but it takes real men to take and keep running their old cars. Sorry - all a bit alpha male and all that nonsence but your carbon footprint will be considerably better and you'll have a car that you know/love.

As warrior says deffo looks like transfer ,a rub with some compound or t cut should remove it 😁

Major EV Fire Breaks Out Aboard Ro/Ro at Zeebrugge The blaze started on the third deck, which contained 60 electric vehicles and 40 conventional cars. https://maritime-executive.com/article/major-ev-fire-breaks-out-aboard-ro-ro-at-zeebrugge

Once again doing things... Blue mirror glass! Been wanting to do this for ages, so finally bit the bullet since mine were delaminating and generally being a nuisance as a result. It's quite the change, I've yet to try them at night though. Need to extend the wires that go to the heating element too, but that's low on the priority list just now. Today (14/04) was a trip to Inverkeithing with my mate to pick up some odds and ends for our Fabias. Somehow I left with a Flamenco Red bumper that was in a much better condition than mine. The car will never be a proper "show" car, but I like it looking well. Is this what the vRS boys mean by a "wide mouth" for the intercooler? All the better with the new bumper on, though. Reg plates coming as well, fresh set to fit.