Gerrycan

Don't do anything, it is covered by warranty so contact the dealers to sort out. If you fiddle with it in any way, they may claim it invalidates the warranty. You should be able to get a courtesy car if they need to keep it to sort out

It does seem poor, the official WLTP low speed consumption is 6.4L/100. Have you done a longer journey that allows the engine to warm up and if what is consumption like then? Where are you based? How long are your journeys? Average speeds? Distance on odometer? When last serviced? Tyres checked and what pressures?

I know it is Olympic year and all, and the Olympics will be coming back to Aus, if we can decide where and what stadium to build, but it seems that running is fashionable again with a lot more female participation especially at high levels. Athletics is a minority sport here but there were an unusual number (six) of ladies who posted qualifying times for the marathon and unfortunately only three could go to Paris. It meant there was some controversy over the selections in the press. Like the British press, ours tend to be nationalistic and were a bit over enthusiastic over the qualifying numbers but the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corp) did bring some perspective to their cover of the story with the fact that Ethiopia had 79 female and 93 male runners achieving their respective qualifying times. Of course, only three of each could go to Paris. I mean .......wow, how bad would your self-esteem suffer at one of their Parkruns???

I'd say what you have done to date should be enough to allow the regen to complete but the fact it does not suggests there is something wrong. It could be high residual ash levels, or it could be a sensor malfunction. The poor consumption will be due to the system continually injecting fuel into the exhaust to get the temperature upto the required 400+ degrees to burn off what it thinks is excessive quantities of soot. I would be getting a specialist to look at it as soon as possible.

I think you are better off without AWD really. Useful in snow or allied to a bit of ground clearance or a really powerful engine but otherwise a mostly under utilised feature. Like you, neither of the diesels I owned had dpf (Australia lagged on emission standards) but despite liking diesels I gave them away when dpf became mandatory as they are not suited to our personal largely short urban drives. I think knowing the condition of your dpf will govern future actions.

I don't believe that is normal and would certainly be a major contributor for your generally poorer than expected consumption. As @varaderoguy says, a tdi is barely run in at 200k km but certainly enough distance for issues with the dpf to become apparent. A reasonably cheap ODBC dongle and an appropriate phone app will give you some idea of dpf ash levels. If ash levels are high then there are some businesses who will clean them out for a lot less than the excessive price of a new one. If someone has used this sort of service on their dpf, then it would be good if they could report on its effectiveness. Don't believe the claims from the sellers of fuel additives that their product will clean ash from a dpf.

The easy way is to peer underneath the car and see if the rear axle has a drive shaft going to it. Or this site might help: What Generation of Haldex is on my car? – Haldex Parts and ECU Repairs by Auto Fault Finder Ltd (haldexrepairs.co.uk). There are a lot of factors that affect consumption, so you need to supply a lot more information if want a more definitive reply. If you do a lot of journeys less than 10 km then your consumption is very good. If longer trips on motorways, then fairly poor Your typical driving conditions urban/country/motorway and usual journey driving distance and average speed would be helpful for a more definitive reply Condition of car: distance on odometer, condition of diesel particulate filter (DPF) would be helpful for others to reply. Are you in Northern Ireland and working in miles or Eire with metric settings? I only ask because if the latter then you have to make sure you are converting L/100 to imperial mpg not US mpg for correct figures. Surprising how many make the mistake of using the Internet US preferences.

Vrs has the 'wet' clutch packs so is unlikely to be affected by potential wear issues that stop/start traffic would have on the lower powered equipped 'dry clutch' packs. Good question for the dry clutch DSG though imo.

Different car, 1.4tsi, but identical symptoms and it required a new water pump.

Normally a car with torsion bar rear suspension, with little to no adjustment available, only has alignment of the front suspension. Still a good idea to have the rear suspension checked in case it has been knocked out of whack and causing your unusual issues.

Even without any experience of a PHEV, much less towing with one, it sounds to me like you have answered your own question. Your logic is pretty sound and the only question in my mind is whether the 80% is the right figure, but I guess that would depend on terrain? How much braking effect does the regenerative braking have when the caravan is attached?

That is awesome! I could only get down to around four minutes a kilometre at my best and when I tried to intensify training for further improvements, which I felt were attainable, I literally ran into injuries in the form of painful 'shin splints'. Unfortunately, the only real cure is then rest and a moderated training regime. More than a bit annoying but I was happy to get the many other health benefits that running offered without having to go to the extremes. If you have the physiology that can cope with your ambitions, and you enjoy it as much as you do, then why not? The social aspect is generally recognised as being extremely important in enjoyment of a sport and underestimated for general wellbeing, but I didn't get into the social side of running since it was not something my wife could really share. Good luck on the 19th of May in the half marathon, and let us know how you go.

Hired the sedan version about 3 years back holidaying in the Australian Northern Territory and while that had the less powerful 1.8l engine I concur it was amazingly economical. That was with the aircon on permanently to cope with the high temperatures and humidity. The hatchback is a bit too small and the boot miniscule. Unfortunately the estate version is not available here unless as a grey import from Japan.

My experience with speedometer accuracy is that there is quite a bit of variation between cars and even between individual cars of the same make and model. The worst was a barely legal 9.5% optimistic so I had to travel at an indicated 120kph for a true 110kph, and even its odometer was nearly as bad (which sort of suited me for tax purposes). My two Skoda were/are about 7% and 6% optimistic although the odo is almost spot on in both cases. I remember reading a review of a Rolls Royce and even that speedo was about 4% optimistic. My current 2003 Toyota Echo with digital speedo display is within 2% accuracy judged by GPS. So, everyone's individual claims are probably right, and it is what it is.

How does 13 or 11 divided by 2 equal 10 ? You posted the following image in thread

Unless there have been changes, I thought the Octavia PHEV only charged at a max of 3.6kwh? which takes about 4 hours for its relatively small battery? If that is still the case, then a standard house plug will take around 6 hours so why bother with the expense of a home charger?

What model Octavia do you have and currently what wheel and tyre size are fitted? 4 x $300 seems a lot for Ocatavia tyres, so also tell us what tyre manufacturer and type you are looking at. I have saved a lot of money with reputable brands by shopping around on the internet for my cars' tyres. If I'd just stuck with the brand fitted when new it would have cost me a lot more, and they weren't that good a tyre anyway. As @J.R. says, if you open the fuel filler there will be a table of different acceptable wheel and tyre sizes that can be fitted and their recommended pressures. Of course, a radical size change will incur the extra expense of new rims AND new tyres. Some people do this to get the ride characteristics they want but your concerns seem mainly at the price I believe that NSW vehicles are subject to an annual vehicle(?) (we don't have this in South Australia) so you should follow the size recommendations. I thought all Octavia came at least a spacesaver spare tyre in Aus? I would not buy any car with just a can of 'goo' for our driving environment. Which will be a bit of a problem when I look at changing to an EV as 90% of them don't have a spare.

Our older slightly less powerful 103kw but manual version of the 1.4tsi managed a driving holiday to from Adelaide to Tasmania with 4 adults and two had full international travelling luggage that really challenged the legendary luggage capacity of the wagon (at last I can say wagon here instead of estate ). Every stop at many wineries increased the load further for some reason and each day's repacking was like a harder game of Tetris. Tassie is very hilly in parts and sure you noticed the load, but I was really impressed at how well the vehicle coped with the load and gradients because the full torque is available at such low revs. While the engine is very smooth and happy to rev out you really do not have to and to be honest with just 103kw power (in our case) that is not where it does its best work. Our friends were so impressed with the performance of the car they went home to Scotland and sold their Porsche 911.....and bought a Golf R 😄. I don't think you will go far wrong with either car but if you can afford the initial purchase price and the higher fuel costs then go the RS route. It will be the better driving car for sure. With that much occasional load are you sure you would not be better off with a Superb? One other thing to be aware of is ground clearance on the RS is about 129mm and 1.4tsi about 147mm, not a lot but would be noticeable on our driveway out to the road and on some of the Aussie dirt roads we occasionally travel on.

I agree that is pretty reasonable for a vRS but when you look at the average speed (39 mph) then I start to ask if a vRS the best car if you are looking for reasonable consumption? Without knowing the route in detail, my guess is that lesser engined versions (1.0tsi, 1.5tsi, 1.4tsi) would achieve far better than 50mpg with a similar driving profile and a lot less 'effort'. Would be interesting, if you had the opportunity, to compare results for the same journey same style with the car in 'Normal ' mode rather than 'Eco'. Not everyone has found 'eco' to actually be more economical for them. I think the rationale is that not everyone uses coasting to best effect compared to being better practiced at utilising engine braking.

Hi @Redmanc99, I must have responded to your post on my phone (based on my stilted grammar), but I missed the very important letters 'vrs'......doh! My response was based on my own lower spec, less sporty 1.4tsi Octavia. However, after a bit of a google search, it appears that both the vRS in mk2 and mk3 are around 129mm, although there was a reference suggesting that the 245bhp version may be 99mm. You would have been better posting in the more frequented Octavia mk3 section of the forum where my mistake would have been picked up by others. Did you buy one?

I have found the VW consumption information I referenced in an earlier post on a backup of my old computer. As I said it is for the old 90kw 1.4tsi manual in a Golf but the reference points upto 130kph are almost identical on my 103kw manual version so I would not expect too much difference with your 110kw output version. It confirms my theory that your original consumption displays at speed were quite unusually good.

Should be checked for sure but I would have thought the affects would be across the speed spectrum and his lower speed consumption is still pretty good. At 150kph sticking brakes would glow in the dark

@Balazs_HU, other than the expense there is obviously no harm in servicing earlier than required, may even be necessary if doing track work, but it doesn't necessarily guarantee greater reliability either. Changing the intake air filter as regularly as you do also seems a bit of an overkill but are you sure they are actually replacing it? The only other thing I can suggest checking is the accuracy of the displayed consumption. The only way really is to look at the 'since refuel' consumption display and compare it with the calculated consumption when you refuel the car. Try to use the same refuel procedure each time. When my car was brand new the displayed consumption was actually worse than I was really achieving by about 0.2L/100, then by about 40,000 km it changed to being absolutely accurate then by 80, 000 km the display had changed to being about 0.2L better than I was actually getting. Now it has swung back to being truer again. These are small variations for me but maybe yours are greater? Other things to look for that may affect high speed consumption are: Whether the undertray is still in place (significantly worse aerodynamics at speed), after all the thing would have been taken off a number of times with the number of services the vehicle has had, maybe it got damaged and not replaced by the mechanic? Whether the consumption change is related to a tyre size change (unlikely to affect it by that much though). I presume if you are travelling at those speeds they are at an appropriate pressure and checked regularly. I'm clearly running out of ideas now

The thing with the 1.4tsi is that the nominal peak 250Nm of torque comes in from just above 1500 rpm to nearly 4000 rpm and the mk4 weighs about 1400kg so acceleration to 100kph is a reasonable 8.5 seconds. No ball of fire but 250 Nm is enough for me to overtake safely even when the vehicle is loaded. Sure the RS would be much quicker (under 7 seconds) but it would be wasted on me because I don't drive the 1.4tsi anywhere near its potential on public roads anyway. Most (Australian) reviews rate the 8 speed torque converter as being a better drive in traffic than a dsg. @SouthernComfort is getting pretty good consumption in his mk4 especially on a run which is not surprising as his mk4 has better aero than my mk3 and probably longer gearing in his auto than my early model manual. I can guarantee you would not get that sort of consumption in an RS, maybe 6 to 6.5L/100 on a highway and around 8 to 8.5L/100 in urban areas, which is still not bad although there would be great temptations to use a bit more welly with possible speeding fines 😞. All you can do is drive both cars and work out whether the RS is worth the NZ$10+k price difference for you. I'm not sure what the NZ warranty period is, it is 7 years here in AUS so yours would be at least 5 years, you would think that would cover any problems with the dq381 during your ownership?

Sorry, I'll remember to undersimplify it next time @HenryNZ, what he said