Tall

With The AA (and maybe others?) it's you that's covered, not the car. So you're automatically covered in your gf's car, dad's car, the new car you've not got round to telling the breakdown service about yet etc. You also don't need to be the driver either, and you're covered on bikes too.

Falkirk Car Carriers move a lot of cars up here. They brought a damaged non runner (with no keys and the ignition lock locked) up from Doncaster for me a while ago. No idea how they loaded/unloaded it but I guess by fork lift. Don't know if they would go to Orkney, but I'm sure they would for the right price. They have Transits as well as artics.

Just the right amount of heat with a hair drier then peel - too much heat often leaves a lot of glue underneath. Then remove the residue (there will be some no matter how good you are) with something like this... http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Farecla-G3-Advanced-Liquid-Compound-500ml-Bottle-Car-Polishing-/130743825199?pt=UK_Body_Shop_Supplies_Paint&hash=item1e70f0732f Obviously be careful with heat on windows - just enough to soften the decal, not make the glass hot, and spread the heat over a larger area. The other way to remove them from glass is to use a stanley blade.

"Bells" is a company which supplies things like pies. I saw one of their trucks with BE11 PYE

A lot of people looking for this price bracket of car buy from dealers, often so they can get HP and warranty, and so they can get rid of their old car as a trade in. You need to undercut the dealers prices by a fair bit to get the sale. I've not looked into particular spec or location but it seems you can buy a Mazda 2 petrol with 25k miles for about £7k from a dealer, if you shop about. I wish you good luck with your sale tho

If you're getting them to install mutiple boxes, and therefore paying an extra monthly fee for them all, then haggle for free installation. And some M&S vouchers too.

Not necessarily, it needs stripped to find out. BTW the more you allow that side to heat up the more chance you'll need new discs (I assume it's discs), since they'll warp with the heat.

Sounds like one (or more) brakes stuck on, possibly rear since it's affecting the handbrake. See if a wheel gets hot after a short run, that'll be the culprit.

Sky needs two cables to work it's "watch one channel and record another" service, so the cable tends to be "shotgun", ie two cores on one cable. Your new house almost definitely won't have this, so you'll need to run two coax's (or a shotgun) cable from the Sky dish to anywhere you want to have a Sky box working with Sky Plus. You can get Sky dishes with multiple outputs, so one dish can feed multiple boxes. Our dish has 8 feeds, so it can feed 4 Sky boxes, but it was already fitted when we moved in, so I don't know if this is a standard fit or not. You can run multiple tv's from one Sky box, but all tv's only show the same programme. You can also connect a magic eye to each secondary tv, giving you full control of the Sky box from that location. You might need a Sky compatible amplifier/splitter for this, depending on how many tv's, and the length of cable. The other thing to bear in mind is that the feed to all secondary tv's work by analogue, so you need to "tune the station in", which AFAIK is only possible if your tv is old enough to have an analogue tuner, not just a digital one. We have similar to you, ie single coax cables built in from loft ariel to 4 rooms, and have used the cable like this... Firstly we have Sky Plus in our lounge, fed by a shotgun cable drilled through the wall, from the dish on the roof. We connected the analogue out of the Sky box to the existing built-in cable, disconnected the other end of the cable from the ariel in the loft, fitted a splitter, and used the existing cable to supply the other tv's (we have two working, and a third wired). The picture is perfectly good on the secondary tv's, but not absolutely brilliant. The down side is we don't have a terrestrial tv ariel connected now, but we use Sky all the time anyway. Obviously if you want to watch different channels in different rooms, this won't work, you'll need extra cabling depending on whether you want Freeview or Sky.

I leave my ipod (nano?) plugged permanently plugged into my Toyota, and it powers on/off with the stereo. The ipod screen says something like "connected to car" and doesn't allow you to control the ipod itself, ie you must use the car's touch screen stereo. I use a genuine Apple lead to the car USB. Surely Skoda have thought of this, maybe it's just a setting?

I assume you've tried charging the ipod and seeing whether it goes flat if left on the kitchen table overnight?

Is it worth a call to trading standards to see what they'd advise?

White smoke tends to be water, blue smoke oil. How's the coolant level?

Plenty choice on ebay, made to your paint code. I found the paint code on a sticker in the spare wheel well.

Funny how requirements change over the years. What you dreamt of in a car maybe 30 years ago were things like power steering, central locking and a radio cassette (auto-playing of side B of the tape was only for posh cars). Nowadays you wouldn't think to ask if power steering was fitted, and probably wouldn't even consider something without remote central locking, not to mention silly things like cup holders. Going back a bit further and hub caps, a heated rear screen and a cigar lighter were pure luxury! My "musts" these days are PAS and RCL (duhh lol), climate control (but I'd compromise if it wasn't dual zone), full ipod control, heated mirrors, leccy windows, steering wheel controls, reverse sensors (or camera), built in bluetooth with voice dialling. Nice things that I really like, which I might be persuaded to skip, depending on how much I like the car, are auto lights, auto wipers, auto dimming rear view mirror, and footwell lights. Oh, and I quite like leather steering wheels, maybe that factors in somewhere. I've only had one car with a heated screen, which was great, but I'm prepared to skip that since it's a seasonal thing and you often need to sweep the snow anyway.

Brake fluid low?

Wear on the brake sliders causing chatter?

Generally speaking, if the pedal is spongy during normal use, then try pumping them once or twice. If the pedal height becomes higher, or the pedal becomes firmer, then it could be air in the system. If the pedal "feel" doesn't change then it's probably something else, like worn pads/shoes/discs/drums. To bleed you need to slacken the bleed nipple, then have an assistant press the brakes while you release some fluid, and THEY MUST HOLD THE PEDAL DOWN while you re-tighten the nipple, then repeat as necessary. Obviously make sure there's enough fluid in the reservoir at all times. Obviously brakes are safety related so, if you're not confident, get a pro to do it

Something like this any good? http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Skoda-Octavia-2004-07-Fully-Tailored-Car-Mats-Black-blk-VRS-logos-/280862744388?pt=UK_CarsParts_Vehicles_CarParts_SM&hash=item4164b95f44

We recently got a new (to us) car recently and the dealer put me as keeper instead of SWMBO, and to cut a long story short - fill in the correct details and send it back. The DVLA will tell you to do a covering letter but we reckon you'll get on better with a post-it note stuck to it instead. The long story is... we got V5 in wrong name, phoned DVLA and was advised to fill in relevant section and send back with covering letter. Did this and got nothing back after about 2.5 weeks so phoned again. Best they can do is issue a replacement V5. Replacement arrived after about a fortnight, still in wrong name, phoned again, was told to repeat step 1. Another couple of weeks go by and I get a letter asking when I sold the car. This time the letter had a person's name and number so phoned her. She says she only gets the V5, NEVER a covering letter, so needs to send letter to previous keeper etc. Managed to sort it out by email direct to her, after 2.5 months, and got the correct V5 without showing me as a previous keeper. Therefore, we reckon a post-it note has a better chance of getting to the chick who actually deals with it, since the letter obviously goes straight in the bin.

Twist the arm slightly so that the blade points less in the direction of the wipe. AFAIK the blade shouldn't point in either direction, since the wiper works both ways, so try a gentle adjustment to begin with, and add more after a test.

I've came across a similar problem with lots of vehicles. When I open the window and it's raining - some of the rain comes in sometimes, especially if the open window is on the windy side. Surely in this day and age this could be addressed.

I think you'd need to set it up so perfectly that if you were reversing down/up a slight incline, or had people in the car, or a full/empty tank etc it would knock it off sync and it'd pick up the ground. As a side note I have a FF reversing camera in my car (not a Skoda) and while it's rubbish for reversing up to a hedge the same height as the boot etc, it's fantastic at reversing up to a marked line in a car park, or a kerb, or a post. Would it be possible to have something similar forward facing?

It's not just the excess you can claim back (if you're deemed not at fault), it's ALL expenses - ie you can hire a similar car etc for the time yours was off the road etc.

2 different ways of doing it. The cheap way is overboarding your existing wood with thin pvc, it's cheaper but you can be sealing in any unseen rotten wood so, although it's possible if your timber is good, it's not advised. The expensive way involves removing all the old and fitting new thick stuff. Done properly it should be maintenance free for donkey's years, but will obviously require cleaning occasionally. You can get various colours - white can look dirty fairly soon but gives a clean bright look. Some of the colours can fade, but the woodgrain ones don't. You'd be better to fit new gutters at the same time with both scenarios, so consider what colour gutter goes with what colour fascia. I've done a few over the years and the one I've always liked was for a relative, done in a darkish woodgrain fascia and lighter brown guttering. Also, if your roof has edges where there's cement, you can get "dry verge" systems which are a plastic edging which replaces the cement thus eliminating future mauntenance there too.