Paul52

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).

Thanks to everyone for their advice and thoughts. I hadn't realised that the tablets don't give anti-freeze properties and life's too short to spend working out whether or not I'm going to have to add anything to the washer bottle for winter protection and if so what and how much. I've got to go to Screwfix anyway so I've added 5l of Prestone to the order which is good to -10°C which should be more than sufficient down here on the South Coast. (Not as cheap as Urrell has been buying it at Tesco at just over £5 but it will probably last me the best part of 6 month so I'll not lose any sleep 😊). Thanks again.

I'm running low on screen wash and wondered if anyone had experience of using the tablets you dissolve in 5 litres of water before filling the washer reservoir? I like the idea of reducing the amount of plastic involved but wondered if there is a down side, such as a residue building up in the washer reservoir over time and causing problems. (I have been using Michelin's concentrate sachets and been happy with them but they seem to have been taken of the market so I'm needing to look elsewhere). Thanks.

I can't offer advice on the technical aspects of your problem but I would have thought there is little chance of a goodwill gesture from Skoda on a 10 year old car. Might be worth asking for a contribution (they can only say no) but I would have thought to have any hope you would have had to have bought the car from new, had it serviced by a Skoda dealer and possibly have a history of buying new Skodas so they appreciate a "No" risks losing a loyal(?) customer. Even then if they offered, say, 20% of the cost of repair but it had to be by a franchised dealer would you be any better off than paying your independent garage? If you bought the car second hand and it's been serviced by yourself or a local garage I can't see Skoda being interested. Of your three options, on the Isle of Wight even without Covid there must be limited opportunities for long, fast run that diesels seem to need these days and I'm guessing low mileages don't give you any great cost benefit compared to petrol. My feeling is you should find a suitable replacement vehicle on a forecourt or two and have conversations about the cost to trade. Personally I'd be honest about the problem (they should be able to get it fixed cheaper than you) , a repair is still an option but you've lost confidence in the car and decided it doesn't really meet your needs now. If the cost of change is too high then you can have a rethink about whether to have the repair done and then either keep the car or sell privately. Sorry to hear of your problem but my thoughts might help you decide how to go forward.

And of course the Yeti, in both its iterations, enjoys the company of the Morris Minor, the VW Beetle, the Robin Reliant, the classic Mini, the E-type Jaguar and a few others you can probably name (probably from some time back) where when you see one you don't think "Is that a Yeti or one of those that looks like it?". (I should also add the Ford Anglia as I grew up with a couple of these and the Ford Capri that, as a young Anglia owner I aspired to. No-one aspired to a Ford Cortina).

Or was it one of MarieK's excellent photoshop exercises, he mused.

That's gotta hurt if one of the gas struts fails!!! Or did they adapt the tailgate for side opening? (Here we go - the traditional Yeti forum digression from the original post ☺️ - we'd been doing so well up until now).

As far as I can see it can only go in one way because, if the wheel has a boss, of the restraining "screw" in the middle of the well but more importantly you've got the polystyrene moulding that sits over that and holds the jack etc. Even if you dispensed with the jack/tool holder (the bits could go in the other boxes alongside) and had the spare without a boss I don't think you gain anything because the tyre is the same diameter one side as the other. The only way it might work would be to take out the surrounding boxes - which of course support the false floor which would then let the wheel drop flat on the floor of the well. But whether that would be enough to let the floor lie flat I don't know. If Nimit is trying to get to the position where he could effectively have five wheels rather than four road wheels and a spare I think he's set himself a challenge!