Paul52

The Yeti is surprisingly spacious once you start to pack it but as others have said before you have to think a bit differently and make use of the height in the back, with or without the spare wheel/false floor. As well as the various cubby holes around the car the areas either side of the spare wheel are useful - I store my tyre pump, first aid kit, two light waterproof jackets, a better wheel nut wrench, an assortment of spare dog leads (I don't know why, you would have to ask my wife) and a few other bits in this area. Then there is the flexibility of the rear seats. They can pull forward to make extra space in the boot, one or more can be folded flat to make extra space or, depending on how many passengers you are carrying, one two or all three can be removed completely. With all three seats removed you have effectively a small van. And finally there are the integral roof rails for a roof box or similar. Hope that helps. If you aren't familiar with the rear seats in the Yeti ask the dealer to give you a demonstration. And of course when you buy a Yeti you get a helpful and knowledgeable forum thrown in to answer the inevitable questions like "what is the lever in the armrest box for?".

Thanks Phil. It does seem my problem could be symptomatic of several things so I think letting someone with the right skills and equipment is going to be the sensible way to go. Time to book it into the garage....

Thanks Muddyjim. Reading Thinkingsquirrel's saga of finding his wiring fault I don't think I'm inclined to have a go at sorting the problem myself. And just to make it interesting just when I thought it had given up the ghost completely today it unlocked on the key fob without a problem. Sometimes you wish for those days when you inserted and turned a key....

Sign of my car's age I suppose (passed the nine year mark) as following many years of fault free ownership the problems are beginning to start. Two or three weeks ago I had an occasional problem of the tailgate catch not releasing so it was a case of crawling over the back seats to use the manual release. It would then be fine for a couple of days. Then a week or so ago when it did unlock on the key as I lifted the tailgate as it opened about 6" I heard a short and slight electrical buzz; perhaps it always did this and I never noticed but once things start to go wrong I get neurotic about noises. It now seems to have failed completely and if I want to get into the boot I have to resort to seat -surfing and a screwdriver. I'm not looking to do this myself (it seems my standby "give it a squirt with WD40" isn't going to do it this time) so it will be booked into the local garage (who have been very good and reasonable so far) but I'm just wondering if anyone else had a similar problem and what it was found to be.

"Getting senile"? Or are you cunningly laying down a very plausible alibi if a neighbour with a Yeti should suddenly find a part missing from his car??? That's the thing about getting older, you think ahead.

I agree with Urrell, these can go walkabout. I've had to replace the nsr twice - you'd think something that big not being there any more would be immediately obvious but ....... If that is the problem make sure you order the correct one - not only are they handed but the profile seems to have changed two or three times over the years.

I think I may be about to pay for my "Had it nine years and really nothing gone wrong with it" smugness. Thursday it was the driver's side window - which now seems to be sorted, at least for the moment. Just been out to get into the boot and it's locked. The other doors locking and unlocking absoultely fine but the tailgate - not wanting to play. Immediate thoughts of an expensive bill (I'm coming to the conclusion I can have a go myself and then take it to the garage or just save myself a lot of swearing and just take it to the garage). But I get the parcel shelf out the passenger door, ease my creaking bones over the back seat and slide a screwdriver into the emergency release and Bingo! the lock releases and I can get the tailgate open. I try locking and unlocking the tailgate and everything is back to normal.... Now I can either worry about what is going on or go and have a glass of wine. Cheers!

Thanks Urrell. Of course by the time I went back outside to try and fix it .... it had sorted itself out! That's Skodas - Simply Clever or simply infuriating. You pays yer money..... But I've made a note for the next time as it's sure to happen again.

I know this has been covered before, I've seen it in the manual (but now can't find it) and a search on the site has thrown up some interesting threads but not the one(s) I'm looking for. So, for the sake of my sanity....... The drivers window is shutting and then opening a few inches. I know there is a simple but arcane procedure to sort the problem out. Could someone please remind me. (Frustratingly this happened a few months ago and I went straight to the solution. Is this another sign I'm getting old?) Thanks

For some months I've had an irritating rattle from "somewhere towards the back". At first I thought it was a seat belt buckle not properly seated in its recess, then something moving around under the false floor, something in one of the boxes under the false floor. And on it went, intermittent, not very loud just annoying. I dedided to stop worrying abut it - the cars 9 years old (and no, I don't know what I'm going to do when I really can't keep it any more - I've never had the same car this long, that's how good it's been). Then recently I had the parcel shelf out and when I put it back one of the pegs in the tailgate that the cords attach to was loose - a full turn and a bit. Tightened it up and not heard the rattle since. Of course with noises like this it's early days but if nothing else finding it avoids one day opening the tailgate to find the post missing.

In the past various owners have reported odd behaviours when the battery is past its best. As your car is, like mine, nine years old I'm guessing it's on its second battery (if you are lucky) so might be worth bearing in mind?

There's a lot to be said for having a reliable "bloke up the road". Years ago I had one and conveniently he was about a mile from my house and next door to a railway station.I'd drop the car in, catch the train to work and pick it up all sorted out on the way home. Unfortunately he then decided to up sticks and go to New Zealand to farm sheep. Well at least that's what he told me - he may just have been trying to get rid of me as a customer. (I had a series of Renault 16s at the time - kept him gainfully employed and me permanently broke).

Darn it. Just when you think you've got a handle on these new-fangled spreadsheets bad eyesight, arthritic fingers and an inability to stay focussed catch you out. Mea culpa, I checked back through my calculations and divided the total costs by 12 months rather than 9 years (for no fathomable reason) so I've corrected that in the original post. Also two MOT's weren't being picked up so I've corrected that. Generally they've been £39 but I did have a couple back a few years that were discounted for some reason - looks like tied in with a service. But I'm still very happy with the car and I don't think I can complain at around 50p/mile for running costs.

I purchased my Yeti at the end of May 2013 so it's now exactly 9 years old with nearly 70,000 miles. I'm sure mine is one of the oldest Yetis still in original ownership, may well be the oldest where it is still the main (and only) family car and probably the oldest where there is a complete and comprehensive record of expenditure over its life. So I thought the more nerdy forum members might be interested in my real world cost of ownership. The purchase price in May 2013 was £21,353 including a few options such as the sunroof, metallic paint, the auto-parking feature (a novelty I've never used in anger so not something I'd repeat - with hindsight the electric seat would have been a better investment) and extending the warranty to five years. Second hand prices are a bid mad at the moment so for my purposes I've estimated it's current value at a nice round £5353 to give £16,000 depreciation over 9 years. The subsequent running costs have been Insurance £ 2,420.84 MOT £ 290.00 Petrol £ 9,234.89 Repair £ 1,285.45 Service £ 2,297.30 Sundries £ 1,557.92 Tax £ 1,420.00 Tyres £ 936.46 Total £ 19,442.86 "Sundries" are costs I chose to incur - sun blinds, roof bars, extended warranties, breakdown cover etc. Average fuel consumption over the 9 years has been 41.1 mpg with a maximum of 47.1mpg My average running costs including all of the above and depreciation have been £3938/year (52p/mile) and without the sundries £3765 per year (49p/mile). And of course I still have around £5,000 equity in the car. Just out of interest I looked at what my costs would have been if I'd been able to have a PCP contract over this length of time (essentially paying only for fuel and insurance) which would have been £1295/year (17p/mile) plus of course the PCP charges. With nine years of ownership and no thought yet to change unsurprisingly I've been extremely pleased with the car - it's been reliable, it's versatile and my only real complaint might be that a bit more time and money might have been spent on making the seats a bit more comfortable but it would be nit-picking really.

Group C1? Just checked my licence and I have groups A, D and E. At the time my licence was issued group C was "Any motor tricycle other than an invalid carriage weighing not more than 425kg unladen. So I'm guessing a Reliant Robin/Regal, Bond bug, Isetta or Messerschmitt. Group A covers any vehicle except group D (motorcycle), group E (moped), road roller, tracked vehicles and group J (invalid carriage). So a strict interpretation would mean at least for the next few weeks I can drive a Hummer but not a mobility scooter? Actually around here the mobility scooter riders are probably a bigger danger than the Hummers but that's a whole new thread. As an aside my father many years ago (probably late sixties) picked up his only driving offence when stopped whilst riding a friends moped. He held a motorcycle licence and his own (and only) vehicle was a 650cc motorcycle with a double adult sidecar. Apparently at that time although you could ride a moped on a car licence this didn't extend to riding one on a motorcycle licence. Clearly someone drafting the legislation didn't think that one through. Thanks everyone for the various advice about the routes to getting the licence renewed.

Not specifically Yeti related but I wasn't sure where to put this post and I'm sure a moderator will move it as necessary (thank you in advance). Born in July 1952 my driving licence will in a few weeks need to be renewed. Looking on the government web-site it tells me I'll be notified 10 weeks before the due date by the DfT or DVLA, can't remember which. The problem is with nine weeks left to go I've still not heard from them. I can get the form from the Post Office (when I remember - a whole different problem) but it got me wondering whether because of exemplary driving or more likely rather good luck I've never had to send my licence away to have it "updated" with points so I still have the old paper licence rather than a photocard. As an aside as I don't have a passport this gives me another first world problem when someone insists on photo ID - you know who you are John Lewis. I'm sure there are other forum members who have reached, or are about to reach, 70 still with a paper licence, and I'm wondering if the powers that be have a system that doesn't pick up us old uns with the old style licence or am I just an anomaly (probably be blamed on Brexit or Covid). I'm posting just to make others aware so they don't get caught out.

I can only tell you what happened with mine - original rear screen FM/AM radio was fine, first replacement screen with two connectors radio reception was dreadful, with second, three connection screen everything was back to normal. Other than changing the screen nothing else was done to the car so to me that says the rear screen must play a part in FM/AM reception. Urrell, my Yeti is pre=FL and doesn't have DAB.

Heated rear window does the FM radio - I had a rear screen replaced and in error a screen with two connections was used and radio reception was dreadful. Screen replaced with one with three connections and all was well again. My car doesn't have the fitted sat-nav so I use a Garmin unit that combines sat-nav with a dash cam but this post caught my eye because at the moment on one road I drive almost daily the "car" is shown to be maybe 50m to the north of where it should be, running through dense woodland!. Before I join this road everything is fine and when I leave it the "car" jumps back to the correct location. What makes it even weirder is it seems to be a seasonal thing! Whether it has anything to do with the trees coming into leaf but then why only on this road? Ah, don't you just long for the old days and paper maps with your navigator turning them in all sorts of directions in a bid to try and avoid saying "turn left" when there's onlya junction on the right.....

The Yeti is a great car - mine is coming up to 9 years old now, the only car I bought new and I've no intention of getting rid of it any time soon. It's been very reliable, surprisingly economical (around 42mpg - mostly short trips on local roads) and very versatile. As others have said you can't simply bung a spare wheel in the back there are shaped supporting blocks that give extra storage and a new floor level with the rear bumper. plus the essential tools; make sure before you take the car off the forecourt in with the jack etc. is a small plastic set of tweezers - you need them to pull the wheel nut covers off and it's not unusual for them to go missing. (I speak from experience - they were missing from my brand -new-from-the-factory Yeti).

I'm posting a before and after photo of a repair in case they are of any help to someone else. Backing out of a parking space in a multi-storey car park one of the columns moved a bit (come on folks, work with me here) and got intimate with my off side front wheel arch. Some deep scratches, flaking paint chips and a bit of metal distortion. Looking at it and based on repairs I've had done on other cars in the past I'm thinking there won't be any change out of £500 for that (on a good day) and I'm a bit precious about my NCD but although the car is now nearly 9 years old it's been reliable and other than that bodywork modification in pretty good nick internally and externally so I wanted to do something to put it right or at least tidy it up. Bit of a conundrum. Then I thought "SMART repair". I got an estimate of £120 from a local guy (trading under Scuffmaster) based on sending him a couple of pictures, he had the time to be able to come out and do it on the drive in a couple of days so I decided to give it a try - at least it would smarten it up and protect the metal from the elements until it was convenient to get a proper repair done - at the moment it wouldn't be convenient to be without the car for several days if it went into a body shop. When he arrived he took a proper look at the damage and, very fairly, warned me that he didn't expect to be able to get a perfect repair - it was pushing the limits for a SMART repair - but he thought "99%". The repair took just over an hour and I have to say I'm really pleased with the result. There is a slight ridge left on the edge of the arch where the metal was pushed up, which you can see in the "after" photo, but unless you know it's there most people wouldn't notice it. The colour match (Regency Green) is spot on. Hope this of some help to anyone in a similar situation in the future.

I wouldn't disagree with you but isn't that the argument for not using LEDs for brake lights? - their function guarantees they will be switched on and off multiple times on each and every journey so hastening their demise and an expensive replacement and apparently the creation of unnecessary plastic waste if you have to throw out the whole housing rather than a small glass and metal bulb. It seems another example of "we have the technology, we must use it whether appropriate or not. A good few contributors to this forum will be old enough to remember "If it ain't broke don't fix it". (This of course did not apply to The Plumber and others who took to pieces perfectly good Yetis so they could help the rest of us fix ours when the time came!!)

The price of progress.....LED lights should "last the life of the car" but probably won't (I'm already replacing led bulbs in the house which were advertised as lasting 25 years at about 5-7 years) and then it's a second mortgage for replacements rather than a couple of pounds at the local motor factors. (Am I the only one that cynically believes "lifetime" is manufacturer code for "about two weeks out of warranty"?).

Well. you learn something new every day. In my case you can own the same car for coming up to nine years and only now find out it does indeed only have one rear fog light. Now I'm wondering what other mysteries I've yet to uncover.

It's nearly midnight so I'm not going out to check but I'm pretty sure my 2013 Elegance has two rear fog lights. The OP has a 2010 S so earlier and more basic and it's not really a surprise that Skoda kept it down to the minimum spec to be legal. I do agree on the face of it it seems penny pinching but if you are selling cars it would be logical to have as many points of differentiation between models as you can even if the cost saving is minimal. One of those is higher spec cars have two lights, lower spec only one.

As Graham says, the 2011 cars wouldn't have had the removable torch (mine is a 2013 Elegance) and the boot light does stay on for a long time after the boot lid goes up - I've often thought it stays on far longer than necessary. (Having a light on both sides of the boot seems a sensible idea, whether one of them is removable or not. One of those simple ideas that should be standard).