dochsm

At the risk of bringing the thread back to a technical base, I bought my Superb 2.0 DGS elegance 170 very much on the basis of performance and especially mpg, although it was nice that the Carbon Dioxide emmisions were specified as low enough to get a reduced road tax. However, I don't recall ever seeing anywhere what the Nitrogen Oxide or Nitrogen Dioxide emmisions were claimed to be or what they actually were. Accordingly scares such as '40 times the claimed NOx' emissions (which includes both oxides) are a bit pointless if we don't know what was being claimed in the first place. Even if we did know we would also need the scientific background to understand the meaning of the emmisions units and what actual effect the NOx emmisions, real or stated, would have on anything. So can anyone tell me... What, on any material likely to be seen by a customer, did VW claim my skoda would produce as NOx emmisions? (Better still if it is broken down by NO and NO2) What did the car actually produce during the USA test in cheat mode What is the car actually producing in normal everyday running - has anyone really tested this? Since NOx is not part of the UK MOT (that only tests Carbon Monoxide and hydrocarbons, not Carbon Dioxide or the Nitrogen Oxides) I can't really see how I am to obtain any useful information to understand the issue. This is made worse by the apparant confusion in the media, and in some forums, between CO, CO2, NO, NO2, and the four main hydrocarbons found in exhust gas All I can find seems to be angry comments and loads of lawers wanting me to go through them to claim for something that even they can't understand.

I've absolutly no problem doing it myself. I've never worked as a car mechanic but I rebuilt two of my gearboxes in the 80's, filing out new slots in a synchromesh and reaming bushes for the layshaft. I once changed my head gasket during my lunch hour and I've lost cont of the number of new pistons and rings I've fitted in the past. That's partly why I object so much to paying somebody else to 'check' lots of stuff without actually replacing anything. But I thought my hands were tied because of the service stamp needed for the warranty and possible eventual sale of the car (You know, full service history etc.) I suppose I could nominaly set myself up as an independent for the duration of the service!

@kevberlin What goneoffSki says may be true, that Official dealerships may have updates, but even that needs care. I asked my local official dealer if they would do a map update of the columbus during its first service as the maps were older than the car. They wanted to charge me an extra £125 to do it. The dealer I bought the car from, not local but reachable, did it for nothing. (It only needs a dvd putting in the slot and left there for an hour) Still not sure how you go about finding these 'fully Qualified Volkswagen Group Technicians and Master Technicians that like doing a proper job professionally.' I've just asked a nearby independent chosen at random from a list on the Internet that mentioned skoda and they quoted £240 - OK a bit cheaper than main dealer but not by much. They are still charging much more per hour for labour than most of their customers would earn in the same hour.

Sounds a bit like that other rip off, insurance, then. I might have to pay £260 for an oil change every 20,000 miles on the off chance that I need some goodwill outside of warranty. I doubt if their goodwill will extend to them paying for things I ought really to pay for once the warranty ends. I had enough trouble convincing a Skoda main dealer to admit that the columbus was faulty and needed replacing under warranty when it was only 18 months old. They never did admit it and I had to go 120 miles away to where I bought the car. But what exactly is an independent? We have a one man band garage in our village that fixes cars (and tractors!). Always does a very good job and also diagnoses and 'repairs' things if possible instead of simply using a flow chart to replace everything until the car works again. So long as I get proof of genuine skoda parts and the correct oil, would they come under the revised 'block exclusion' rules from 2003 as an independent?

Good point. I am in the Huntingdon area, in Cambridgeshire, East Anglia

My 2012 superb diesel 170bhp tells me it needs another service at just over 40,000 miles, which I'll have to do to maintain the warranty. I guess this is a 'full' service, although its hard to find out exactly which one it is. I am rather amazed at the high cost for what they do and the enthusiam with which they describe rather pointless activies. For £259 it seems all I really get is an oil change. ie Real work done Oil & filter change (fully synthetic oil) - maybe £40 retail Check only - says they 'might' replace pollen filter, air filter, fuel filter - maybe £10, £12 and £12 respectively retail Just check - nothing done brakes, all drive belts, gearbox oil, suspension system, heating/air con Only to be expected but could do without Diagnostic check including report, Vehicle inspection and report, Re-set service interval display Full vehicle road test, Vehicle and software enhancements from ŠKODA's database Rather pointless or costs nothing Wash and vacuum (only once every 20,000 miles!), ŠKODA stamp in service book Any faults found during the 'checks' would probably already be obvious to any careful driver used to carrying out routine safety checks on their car. So it looks like in the best case I get about £80 of stuff replaced, so I'm paying £180 for somebody to simply look at my car and do a 10 minute oil change. Anyone know where I can get a list of 'approved' garages that won't void my warranty but might be a bit more sensible on price?

I have two of these E-PRANCE® New Mini 0801 They are around £50, each has a 16 Gb card in it with the front one also having a gps mount. Brilliant cameras, I've wired them in to come on and off with the ignition. They are very small yet have very good resolution. It will continously record and wrap round, deleting the oldest clip after about 12 hrs. have it set up to record 90s clips. The software is quite good and enables you to quicly get to the clip you need by its record time or by just scrolloing through the footage. The camera can quickly be traken off the mount to take additional stills in the event of a crash and has loads of features like G force recording, motion recording etc. You could even leave it running when the car is parked and it will record as soon as it detects motion. The one at the back came in very hand recently when a car hit the back of me at a crossroads at night. It showed my brake lights, then showed I was stationary, clearly showed the other cars reg and how they rolled into me. It even recorded us talking outside the car afterwards so I had a record of what was said, As soon as I told the driver it was all being recorded they offered to pay and came round a few days later with £600 cash! Oh another cool function is that the software can use the gps log to bring up a map on the PC and it then shows your route , speed, g force etc at the same time as it shows you the video. Not that its much use but its good fun.

Thank you very much for that Chris, especially since you appear to be one of the experts I was referring to. The named driver taking precedence over driving any car is what I was unclear about. Yes I assumed we would have to inform both but was unclear about who was actually covering my car at the time and so who might end up dealing with it. (Actually I have just tried to 'inform' my wife's company. The claims section wasn't interested as they said my company would be dealing with it, not them and even said they were not going to register anything about the incident against her policy. They passed me to customer services to 'inform' them. Cust services were also pretty uninterested and said I didn't need to tell them anything at all but if I wanted to I could call back after it was all sorted out and let them know the final outcome. - So much for me trying to obey the letter of the law in the policy by attempting to inform them immediately!). Good job I recorded the phone calls as evidence in case they later say I didn't inform them.

I agree, that's why I was posting here, on the assuption that there would be some experts around who might be able to help! (The ony thing that seems clear about car insurance is that whatever you do, you won't get all the money you thought you were entitled to and eitherway your premium will go up)

I'm going to assume that this will be classed as commuting as she had used my car, an automatic, for a few days while an injury to her left foot got better so probably my insurance won't cover her. Yes, when driving other cars her ins would be third party only. So I would not be 'claiming' from my wife's insurance but 'informing' them. My dilema is whether I need to also 'inform' my insurance company and have them say 'this is nothing to do with us as we were not insuring the car at the time but we'll put your premium up anyway'. Also, given that she would probably be only be third party on her own insurance I don't know if I tell one (or both) of our companies and then they claim from the driver's company for me or whether I write directly to the driver's company myself as my wife was given a photocopy of their ins cert. Our policy docs seem pretty unhelpful, apparently using the words 'inform' and 'claim' interterchangably.

I have fully comp insurance on my car with my wife as a named driver. She has fully comp insurance on her own car and is insured to drive any other car, including mine. She drove my car to her place of work today and whilst parked in the car park another driver damaged my car getting out of their parking space next to her. My wife was nowhere near at the time. They admitted liability and we intend 'claiming' from the other driver's policy but I understand we must also 'inform' our own insurer. (difficult to find firm definitions of these terms) Qn. 1 Which of our two companies should we 'inform'? Do we inform her insurer as she was the driver in charge at the time driving 'another' car or do we inform my insurer as she is a named driver on my insurance insurance policy. (although nobody was actually driving at the time) Qn 2 (This might ease or it might complicate things!). My fully comp is for social, domestic or pleasure with commuting specifically excluded (I'm retired and no longer commute). My wife's covers social, domestic, pleasure and commuting. Since she was at work I guess the earlier journey she made their counts as commuting. Does that mean that she was not actually insured by my insurer at the time anyway, meaning it was only her insurer that was covering the car and so only her insurer we need to 'inform? I don't want my premium - or both of ours - to rise when I was neither driving, nor to blame for the damage.

Inidentally, just checked the warning noise for low temperature, no seatbelt and handbrake. They are al the same and all much higher pitch and much louder than the quiet 'bong' I hear that I started this thread about. (hink all the 'real' warning noises are more of a 'ding' than a 'bong'.) Odd though that it would use a different noise to warn of a lost traffic signal, especially as there is not much I can do about it. Does anyone have any contact details for the makers of the columbus system? I think I'll try to contact them directly.

Is the traffic info a continuous signal then (until it drops) - ie a carrier wave with no modulation on it until they send a report. Or is it a wave that only gets transmitted when there is some data to send, like a walkie talkie does? The latter would seem more likely as the data depends upon where you are in the country, or Europe. But if that's the case how would the columbus know if the signal has become unavailable if it is not being transmitted all the time anyway. Surely somebody from Skoda reads this forum otherwise it could be just the blind leading the blind. Can't we have a definitive answer from the makers - preferably the makers ofcolumbus but I don't know how to contact them.

Maybe its a systems test, testing the operation of the 'bong' sound.

Yes I understand its to do with the TMC. On a recent trip from near the Wash to North Wales I checked the traffic reports on the columbus when it told me the bit of clear road I had just driven through was blocked. The TMC agreed it was blocked, but it clearly wasn't . However, as a test I also had the same route going on my tomTom Live. That didn't report any delays at that location at all but correctly showed small delays elsewhere (that the columbus didn't) and also was more accurate in the time of arrival. So it looks like somehow they either use different TMC data or else the columbus doesn't clear out old data when it gets new stuff or if a previous report is no longer applicable. The latter seems the most likely.

This often happens, mainly in Europe but also in the UK. I'll be happily driving along and the nav tells warns me about traffic problems ahead. It shows slow moving arrows on my road for miles in front of me and sometimes even offers to change the route to go around the jam. Only problem is the road is perfectly clear, not a car in sight. I thought it might be confusing my route with a nearby parallel road but this also happed in the middle of France on a motorway, miles from anywhere with no nearby roads. I was doing 130 kph and the few cars that were around were overtaking me even faster than that! No slow moving traffic at all and no sign that there had been any recently. Its even told me the road is closed at the very point I was driving though. (Thats happened a few times on the A5 near Shrewsbury) Its got so that I hardly trust it anymore Anyone else had this issue?

Thanks to all who have replied No its not low temperare (happens in the summer as well) No its not due a service for at least 18 months. No not the seat belt - happens with and without a passenger (who does up the belt!) Battery? doubt it, the cars only a year old Radio + TP? - maybe, I do have TP on most times and have sometimes noticed that pressing the button to see traffic reports tells me there is nothing to show, maybe as theer is no signal. I also use the M6 quite to go from down south up to Scotland so it be be around Tebay that it happens. I'll pay more attention to where I am next time it happens.

Occasionally when driving my Superb 2.0 Dti (2013) there is a soft, low frequency 'dong' noise from the speakers, similar to the noise that accompanies a low fuel warning, freezing temperature warning or things like that, although maybe rather softer than those sounds. However no warning light is ever lit up and nothing ever appears on the display. At these times the handbrake is fully released, I'm not exceeding any preset speed warning, seat belts are fully clicked in etc. In fact nothing seems wrong with the car at all. I'm mystified why the noise happens, what it means and what could cause it in the absence of any other indication. Has anyone else ever noticed this? Can anyone tell mem what it might mean?

@Freedom Yes I thought that was odd as well. I assumed that as the HW version was higher Skoda might have started again with the SW version numbers. As to the part number, it depends upon what the E and B at the end refer to and what the difference is between them. Apart from the screen being more responsive I can't see any difference in operation. When I took it in the first thing they did was to check the sw version I had and they said it was up to date ie 5274 was up to date. Whether version 4120 is the up to date version for H71 I don't know. Oh and you are right - and I feel a little foolish now - in the language set up there are two versions of English, one called just 'English' and another called 'English (male)'. Changing the language to 'English' gave me back the sultry female tones again.

Sorry, its the English model, I'm in the UK, and its for a Skoda Superb. (my French isn't bad but I'd prefer to stick with my native English !) Before the replacement the details were Delivery part number 3T0035680E HW-Version H70 SW-Version 5274 Active map coverage West Europe Active map supplied Navteq Map version HDD 7690 After the exchange the details are Delivery part number 3T0035680B HW-Version H71 SW-Version 4120 Active map coverage West Europe Active map supplied Navteq Map version HDD 7690 (The changes are shown red/underlined) They said they had downloaded the latest maps but the map number is the same so even though the maps seem quite out of date, maybe those are the latest ones available

I've just had my columbus unit replaced under warranty as the screen was a bit unresponsive. Very pleased except that my old unit had a female voice and the new one has a deep male voice. The male voice is not so easy to understand above the tyre noise. Does anyone know if it is possible to change the voice used by these units and if so how?

Another E-prance camera, the New mini 0801 does have an internal battery, athough it only lasts around 20 minutes. Video quality is excellent though, you can easily see the registration number of cars, even those moving quickly. Far better than any other camera I have tried. My problem though is the opposite to yours. The camera starts recording (in roll over mode, keeping ths last several hours of video) as soon as it gets power. You do not need to turn it on with the button. However, since on the Superb the lighter socket is always powered, even when the car is locked, it means the camera is always on, maybe not something you want. You can turn the camera off manually with the button but I think if you do so then you have to turn it on manually again.

So why, I wonder, did the dealer not do 'a quick search' and warn me that the work they intended to do might lose my destinations. And you can back up your destinations if you know you need to. If by no other means than simply writing down the lat and long of the destinations you want to keep. Better still just take a photograph of the screen on a phone or even take a video as you go though each of the POIs. Many of mine where locations that I found when driving that I wanted to return to - things like a qood picnic spot on a mountain road or a wild camp location. Not the sort of thing you can put in again just from the map.

Recently took my superb in under warranty as the columbus sat nav screen was not very responsive. Fault was confirmed by the dealer and I was told there was a TPI for it number 2036209/1 (whatever that is) and they would do a software update. Just got it back after leaving it with them all day. Screen is still not very responsive and now all my saved destinations, latest destinations and even my home address have vanished! The dealer didn't seem to have thought to back it up first or even tell me everything would be lost and give me a chance to back it up before I took it in. Added to that, they charged me £15 for a loan car. So far the Skoda 'warranty' has meant I lost the car for a day, lost £15, lost all my destinations and still have a faulty unit. The dealer seemed very cautious when I suggested perhaps they needed to replace it under warranty - muttering about me possibly having to pay over a grand for it if the warranty company didn't agree it was faulty even if they said it was.

@Briskodian, I had already arranged a loan car, they just wouldn't let me have it when I got there! @gonephising, I'll try that as it will be a whole day _ £15 payment for a warranty issue @Big Jase, Dyslexia rules KO !