chrisgreen

Immediate thing that comes to mind is that your battery is knackered. Have you put a battery tester on it yet to check the state of the battery (rather than whether your alternator is working)? At the end of the day, the warning light you are having issue with is the battery, so that needs to be your first point of investigation. Other than that it also possibly just an early sign of instrument cluster failure.

Regards the diesel smell, you need to check that your injectors are not leaking. Injector seal failure could cause this. if you had an EGR valve issue, it would throw up a fault code (injector failure won’t and you likely won’t even notice any performance change, just the smell of diesel leaking out. Get the bonnet open, the plastic cover off the engine and have a very good look in there with a torch to see for any signs of diesel leaking out from the top of the engine. Regards the fog lights. Is the passenger side one coming on when you turn left (and the same for the drivers side when you turn right). Check both bulbs actually work. If so, this is the fog light cornering function and is intended to provide additional illumination when turning. It is normal.

Likewise, my 2014 Rapid Spaceback also has the squeaky, clunky front suspension (but apart from the noises there’s nothing mechanically wrong, it’s just a quirk of how it’s put together). Mine also suffered from the door seal fault. Due to a poorly Designed rubber door seal, the drainage holes on the doors - particularly the rear doors - would be blocked by the seal when the door was shut. This would cause the doors to fill with water. This was fixed on early Models like mine by cutting a small V section out of the seal, and later seals had this mod pre-done.

Yeah, the Rapid is a total parts bin special. But one that hangs together fairly well. While some parts are specific to the model (like the hideously expensive tailgate wiring loom I just had to replace), most are common parts. Case in point - the armrest cover. The hinges finally broke (common issue) and as its the same armrest used on several Polo and Golf iterations, no problem sourcing all manner of original and copy replacement parts.

Likewise, I oil change every 6 months, service every 12. Only doing about 6,000 a year these days so it’s OTT on the maintenance, but it’s a trivial cost & effort to keep the car in tip top condition.

Curious, what are these “strange, backward priorities” that you think UK car buyers have that differ so much from other markets?

I have a 2014 Rapid Spaceback with a chain-driven 1.2 TSI. No issues. I believe the chain issues in that engine predate the Rapid by a good couple of years and were addressed before the first Rapids went into production.

@globalste where/who did you source your V12 maps card from? Can’t say I’ve had the issues you are having. Only had one postcode-based nav attempt fail (and that was the COVID-19 drive-in testing centre In the E2 Staff Car Park at Heathrow, rather than a conventional commercial building or home), so not overly surprised the postcode was not in the database.

Hi all Does anyone know if the bug that was present in the V10 and V11 map software for the RNS315 Amundsen (the one that would cause the head unit to constantly reboot) has been fixed in the latest v12 software? I'm currently running v9 (which is stable), and wondering whether it is safe to risk the v12 upgrade. Thanks Chris