Paul52

For years I've had a sat-nav with built in dashcam that's served me well but it's on its last legs. The current equivalent is ridiculous money so I've opted for using Waze or Maps on my phone on the odd occasion I need route guidance and a dashcam for self-preservation. I bought a Nextbase GW322 from Halfords and got them to hard-wire it in - I'm past wanting to crawl round cars in near freezing temperatures. But I'm finding that without the engine running the camera will switch on, go through the logo screen and as soon as there is a live image it switches off. It seems crazy to only be able to change settings with the engine running! Before i go back to Halfords has anyone else experienced this? Late one evening I had to go out to the car and it was showing a low battery warning which does make me think it's been wired to a fuse that isn't permanently live. Oh, I did try Nextbase customer support. Let's just say I found it lacking - a chatbot giving a stock response that doesn't help solve the problem. Thanks for any thoughts on this.

Yes, sorry to be negative but for a while ours seemed to be OK before finally failing. I've just dug out the invoice from the garage (October 2022). Briefly, the garage reported open circuit to tailgate latch. strip out tailgate test microswitch - OK test tailgate latch - working intermittently, broken wires in top of tailgate. remove loom and repair. (They just added an extra wire to the loom rather than replace the loom) still working intermittently. Retest and tailgate switch faulty. Replaced with new switch. All has been well since. Labour was £250, the new switch £40 and the final bill with VAT was £360 so for budget purposes you could say now £400-£450? This was at a local independent garage. No-one likes bills for their car but for the work involved I didn't think this was bad (it was worth a lot not to have to keep climbing over the back seats to release the catch) and overall, at now 11 years old, the Yeti has proved pretty reliable and problem free.

This happened to me. I got fed up with crawling into the boot to open it from the inside. Garage finally tracked it down to a broken wire.

I'm just impressed that Chills was able to find and resurrect a 9 year old post!!

Mine is the Classic Yeti Elegance with bi-xenons so I dread to think what replacing a pair of light would cost with the labour involved. It does make you wonder where the slogan "Simply Clever" came from.

I also seem to recall a Renault Caravelle from around the same era - quite a decent looking sports car.

Nice to know there are still some R16 around. My first one was a 1965 model (bought of the car lot at the back of my flat in about 1977 to replace a Mk 1 Ford Escort estate with the 1100 cc low compression engine. Let's just say not a pleasure to drive and leave it at that. My wife had a back problem and her doctor recommended one as that's what he had). When we bought it it was what might be best described as battleship grey. We had it resparayed in Ford's Olympic Blue which looked fine on the can in Halfordds but was rather more eye-catching(?) when applied to a whole car!! Rust was the big problem with Renault at that time, my last R16 was replaced by the R20 - think giant hatchback - which I bought with several inches of snow over it. But it proved to be a good buy - reliable, economical (bearing in mind the 2 litre engine) and nearly as comfortable as the 16's had been. But rust was its downfall. Never go to try the Fuego - which I guess was Renault trying to steal Ford's Capri market.

As we seem to have drifted off topic....my vote goes to the Renault 16. Superbly comfortable, amazingly versatile interior (this was a car first produced in 1965) economical and with the novelty of lifting the bonnet to see the gear box in front of the engine feeding directly to front wheels. I had five, all second hand and getting on in years. Their main downside was a propensity to rust.

Well Brian, when you decide it is time to give up being behind the wheel it will be nice to know you stopped with memories of a great car that has served you well rather than a lemon you wish you had never set eyes on - yes, Volvo V50, you know who you are.... I think I might have to try the E5 experiment as I always fill brim-to-brim and have a record going back to May 2013.Three or four tank fuls should be enough to show any difference. On a related matter, the consumption 1 figure is of little real value other than trying to get a figure of 50.0 or better after a bit of a run before turning off the engine but the more useful Consumption 2 readout was showing 41.7 mpg; I believe this is the calculated fuel usage or the past 10,000 miles rather than from new, although where I got that idea from I don't know. Out of curiousity I looked back at my records for the this May to November and these gave an average of 43.3mpg. Allowing for better fuel consumption in the summer than the winter it seems the Consumption 2 figure is pretty accurate for most purposes. A friend turned up in his new company car, a blue Tesla. Apparently you don't have to have white but anything else costs an extra grand! His children having demonstrated the "fart" function, how you can adjust the front passenger seat from the rear seats with a smartphone and that the in car audio has a karaoke mode his wife told me before she drives off in it she has to sit and input all the settings, such as mirror adjustments, air temperature, audio settings and a few other things I now don't recall before she will take to the road because she's worried about taking her eyes off the road to tap at a large large screen to make any adjustments. I can see her point and having had touch screens in laptops and phones for a few years now my feeling is that as they get older they become a bit more tempremental, which can't bode well for the future. ("Hello, I'd like a new TV-thingy for my eight year old Tesla". "Certainly sir, just sit over there and fit the defibrillator pads whilst I get you a price").

And I thought I was doing well holding onto my 11 year old car (12th birthday in May). Well done you!!

In an idle moment (my wife tries to stop me having these but isn't always successful) I was wondering whether there are any members of the club left, other than myself and ;possibly Brijo? Some original members have moved on to new (and possibly better?) things, there's a chance some of the cars have gone to the scrapyard in the sky and some of thir current owners may not even realise they own something a little bit different, a tiny part of Skoda history perhaps? And some of the newer members of the forum may be wondering what I'm going on about. I would explain but the original members of the club will know it's not a can of worms to open lightly I think it sufficiently close to the event that I can say Merry Xmas to the forum, a Xmas I shall be sharing with my 11 year old Yeti as I hope to do for several more years.

Can't speak for the post facelift 4x4 but the brochure for classic Yetis says standard is "tyre repair set, compressor plus bottle of adhesive " with an option for a "temporary space saver spare wheel (16") with jack, false boot floor and net programme (whatever that was)". The option was £85 in 2013 across the range (except S). I guess the logic was without a spare on board what would be the purpose of jacking up the car at the roadside as road side assistance would have thier own jack etc.

Hi Rheumy. Used to be Velocity before it ceased publication but mainly The Folder that is now A2B. But my professional career included a substantial chunk of sustainable transport work and that brought me into contact with a lot of cyclists and later e-cyclists. (My team introduced early lead-acid batteries e-bikes as pool bikes into Portsmouth City Council over 20 years ago). A close neighbour operated his business successfully with a cargo bike and there was the Tesco experiment with bike hods (trailers customers could borrow) at its Chichester store which was well received as a high quality cycle route passes close by the store entrance. As regards "Unlikely to keep you warm and dry if the weather is poor!" the OP says "I have wellies, fluorescent jacket, hard hat, laptop, paperwork to carry daily" which to me is someone that's not going to be too worried about a bit of weather. And wearing the flourescent jacket means one less thing to carry and would make the OP very visible and keep the wind and wet out, which is why you see a lot of utility cyclists wearing them. Cycle lights are so good these days that riding at night isn't the problem it used to be. A load carrying e-bike isn't going to be for everyone, probably not most people, but as solution to the problem being posed it was worth considering and, in the context of possibly having to replace or buy another car, probably cost effective.

Like Stubod my first thought was e-Bike. That would recognise the heart issue and also deal with any hills on the commute. But we aren't talking the cheap Chinese imports that abound on eBay and its likes, you would need something that is fit for purpose as a load carrier (or to pull a small trailer) and that suggests a Dutch or German manufacturer which also brings better electronics, mechanicals and batteries as well as mudguards, lights etc. (I don't have an e-bike but have read a lot about them over the years from reliable sources that know what they are talking about). But be prepared for a hefty price tag although to a degree that's offset by higher residual values and who knows if you had it you might start using it rather than the car for more than the commute. I hope I'm not coming across as evengelical for the bike solution but for a good few years as a middle aged sport-phobic bloke I cycled 10 miles each way to work two or three times a week and for me the benefits greatly outweighted the effort.

It's an omen....... you should reread Expatman's post.

This is a complete stab in the dark but as PC and laptop computers get on in years they can exhibit a fault where they can't hold the time correctly and this creates all sorts of other problems. This often comes down to an expiring CMOS battery. This lurks on the motherboard (I believe) and keeps vital functions such as time running when the computer is powered down and even disconnected from its power source whether that is mains power or battery. A new battery (often a C3202 or similar - a couple of pounds) and all is well again. The trouble is until you experience the problem - or read the problem pages of a well known computer magazine for the technically challenged, such as me - you won't have heard of this battery or that it has a finite life. I'm wondering if there could be something similar happening with your unit - there is something, whether a small battery or somethng cleverer - that holds key data if the primary power source, the battery, is removed from the car and this has now reached end of life. After all the car is now getting on for 10 years old. It would do no harm to ask the main dealer or look for an independent specialist in car audio.

Expatman gives excellent advice - get a second opinion from a trustworthy third party. At least then you will be buying with your eyes open, if the report is generally positive. As regards the sunroof there are lots of reports on this forum (and presumably elsewhere) of problems so its not something to be lightly discounted but I have a sunroof in my now 11 year old Yeti and on only two occassions, both in extreme weather conditions) have I had any water getting into the car and I can't be sure whether that was sunroof related, getting round the edge of the replacmeent windscreen or surcharging the scuttle drains all of which have been been blamed/found guilty for water getting into the footwells in posts on this forum over the years. As regards the fourth onwer selling the car shortly after the repair I think if I'd had a fairly serious accident in a car no matter how well it was repaired I'd still want to sell and move on. I know that's not logical but much about owning cars isn't.

If you were more of a man you would insist she sit in the back. But at the risk of waking up one morning and finding yourself less of a man.

It's very clever but watchimg the clip of the blue car I doubt the transitions between shots would survive in a professional video, the wheels are an unusual design (in at least two variants, neither seeming to need wheel nuts - held on by magnets?) and the shadows beneath the car aren't right. And if I needed any more convincing this is "Fake News" (and heaven forbid we hear that for the next four years) the clip of the red car is a bit of a give-away. Skoda - Simply Clever but not much good at spelling". But for us oldies, if AI is this good at this stage, how on earth are we going to spot reality from fakes in five years time?

The same with the Fiat 500 (500 what?) and a number of the other cars that used to be "micro" and now dwarf a medium sized family car from 20 years ago. And what with all the operators making their car parking spaces smaller..... where will it all end?

If its any comfort mine does this if I don't pull on the habdbrake hard enough.It's never been a problem - the brakes still hold the car even though there amy be an extra notch with a really good pull.

Thanks Stubod. When I got home I used a watering can to poor water down each of the four drains below the windscreen and then into the channel around the sunroof and got a decent stream of water out of each of them. So I think you are right - it was just the sheer volume of water; it was quite a storm that night but a couple of nights later we had prolonged heavy rain (but nowhere near as intense) and there was no sign of water in the footwell the next morning. I'm going to mark it down to exceptional conditions and not worry about it.

My 1.2 TSi (2013 model) has returned 41.4 mpg over its 11 years, much of which has been short local trips. It's now routinely returning between 43 and 44mpg based on the average of 5 brim-to-brim fills, so much the same as Expatman's 1.2 TSIs. Most of the time it's just me and management in the car and the performance has never disappointed me but in the past I've been on holiday with four adults and all their luggage and whilst some of the hills in the West Country were "challenging" I never felt we weren't going to make it. At those times I've wondered whether the 1.4TSi might have suited me better but they were like hens' teeth. But most importantly - it's never let me down. "Which engine suits the Yeti the best"? The one that doesn't let you down and on that criteria and based on posts I've seen over the years on this forum that rules out the 1.8TSi straight away!"

Thanks Stubod. I'll bear this in mind if it becomes a recurring problem - we've had quite a bit more rain since the tottential storm but everything still seems OK so I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

i gThanks for that. I'll try the bike cable when I get home. Hadn't thought of the bulkhead drain but I did have to clean that once before.