DrCorbyLee

There's a diode installed in these lights, looks like a small cylinder with bare wire leads out of each end cap which is installed in parallel (from recollection) with the bulb. Passenger footwell light has stopped working intermittently in the past a couple of times and changing diode fixed it. Diodes are few pence each. Will sort details when back to laptop.

You already have HIDs (xenon) headlamps? If so, surely you can only change the additional high beam bulb. From my own experience you will be better off putting new xenon bulbs in them. What no one tells you is that xenon bulb's performance decreases significantly with age. I've seen some bulb manufacturers recommend changing them every 3 years (but then they would ;-). I changed mine after 8 years / 110K miles and it was like night and day. The new standard bulbs restored what I thought were the best headlights ever when first got the car at 3 months old but had deteriorated so much was dangerous to drive at night, especially in bad weather. Adjustment to optimise aim also pays dividends, often set little too low exit the factory which self leveling doesn't correct, just keeps them level to this too low base setting. If an MOT tester spots you have LED bulbs in the headlamps then I think in theory you will be failed. Only a slight risk in them spotting this but nevertheless a risk. The fact that your mate's Vauxhall didn't throw a fault says more about their engineering than VAG's - I suspect they simply aren't monitoring that particular lamp circuit. Great for retrofitting with LED, not so great for knowing when a bulb has failed!

You'll definitely have the same issue with headlamps. Plus as far as I'm aware there aren't after aftermarket upgrade LED bulbs approved for use in the UK and LED (and HID) headlamps need to be equipped with washers and self-leveling functionality to avoid dazzling on-coming traffic. So even if you can get an LED headlamp bulb to not throw a lamp failed fault, you will very likely fail next MOT. WRT number plate light, I think you can only code out the fault on facelift cars (as these already LEDs for some lights) Have read that these are about the only guaranteed plug and play solution - https://www.kopacek.com/Skoda/SUPERB-II/Superb-II-Combi-MEGA-POWER-LED-licence-plate-lights-system-KI-R Not cheap but assume they have the resistors (and necessary passive cooling) to simulate the resistance (and henc current draw) of a traditional filament halogen bulb. Personally I can't see why you'd want to change the number plate lamp, quite a lot of trouble and cost to go to for a cosmetic change only. I've changed the reversing lamps and the lamps built into tailgate to LED and this make the car a lot more user friendly especially in dark wet winter nights and neither throw a lamp fail fault as I assume the circuits aren't monitored as not safety critical.

The £15.54 + VAT was 2 years ago and prices have obviously increased since then. Not Sure LLL would be the cheapest source of genuine bits, my VAG specialist must be getting a good deal from TPS and/or applying low margins as his sell prices are always less than you would pay from Skoda dealer parts department. Another option is Skoda Parts (www.skoda-parts.com) as even allowing for cost of UPS from CZ to UK, genuine parts come in significantly cheaper than in UK and as long the order value is less than £136, the price you see is the price you pay i.e. no custom charges or extra tax to pay despite Brexit. From my experience the quality of the standard backing plates is fine, my car is over 10 years old, has done 135K miles, gets covered in literal **** (I work a lot on sewage treatment works) and is lucky to get washed once or twice a year and I've only had to change one of these (although did both fronts at same time as fitting 2nd new set of front discs and pads)

Had my fronts done 2 years ago with genuine VAG ones and they were charged to me £15.54 + VAT each so not sure there will be a huge saving going for copy parts especially once you factor in delivery costs. And you can guarantee they will fit first time potentially saving labour (the VAG specialist I use won't consider using copy parts for anything as has had too many problems in the past and customers were less than please when savings on parts were wiped out by increased labour costs)

Sorry, pasted same link twice. This is the one with instructions

Basically you swap to Australia as country to unlock this using VCDS (or OBDeleven). The first link should help you find a local member who can help or if you search on VCDS on eBay there will likely be someone offering coding changes on a more commercial basis. The second link should provide whoever does the coding with the necessary information to implement the mod, 5 minute job

Sounds like faulty ballast on near side headlamp. If the ballasts on both sides are same part numbers then maybe try swapping them around and see if the fault follows the near side ballast. This may help

Not sure if this is of any help- And in terms of scanning for faults, has it been scanned with a tool that can interrogate all the control modules e.g. VCDS or a basic OBD scanner?

The diodes you need to search for are 1N4007. Now doubled in price to 4 quid for 50 with Amazon prime delivery but smaller quantities are available more cheaply if you search on eBay

EBay likely your friend here e.g. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/353409812433 Search RNS510 firmware for other options

7918 is V9 in plain English and was released November 2012 using data from Q1 2012. Have a recollection that this is what was on my 63 plate facelift car originally. So well out of date. Latest map that is available (and ever will be) is V17 which from recollection was released late 2019. Simplest option is to search on ebay for RNS510 map update V17. You may have problems reading a non-genuine home burnt dual layer DVD as you will be buying off eBay. Often a quick clean with a CD cleaning disc system cures the problem but you can unfortunately get into the situation where you can't access the old map on hard drive but can't load the new map into it (although can use the DVD map data directly). I had this happen on my V17 update (but not on previous 3 or 4 updates) but fortunately a quick clean with this got me out of the jam : https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B000CM47KU

Could be down to faulty GPS aerial. Costly for a proper fix (part of shark's fin on roof), you can plug a cheap eBay aerial directly into the Columbus and mount under dash. Quick way is to check how many satellites you are locked to. Will sort out some more detail when I'm back at base and in my car, might be tomorrow

Even allowing for that period off the road that is still a pretty low annual mileage for a DPF Diesel. Before you go to trouble of looking at cleaning DPF, I'd think about sorting access to VAG DPF so you can see exactly the status of the DPF: Unfortunately, when I just checked Carista has gone up considerably since I got mine 4 years ago when I knew was going to be keeping my car and started to worry about DPF life. Was £10.99 on Amazon back then, now gone up to £34.99, damn COVID / Brexit / war in Ukraine / anything else manufacturers use as an excuse to make extortionate price increases! Less than 40 quid including the paid for version of VAG DPF is still a reasonable investment to put your mind at rest regarding current state of the DPF and if nothing else, the month free trial of the full version of the Carista software might also be useful to be monitoring for fault codes when this dropping out of cruise in 6th happens

Is this a diesel? I'm wondering if you're stuck in DPF regeneration which won't allow the car to hold the higher gear whilst it's trying maximise heat input for best DPF regen' efficiency? On my own car (DSG), a sure sign a regen' is active is when the car won't stay in 5th when pootling around town with cruise set at 30mph. With the DSG it simply drops you straight back to 4th soon as 5th is selected but cruise stays on at same set speed. Obviously a manual can't do that so maybe response is to drop you out of cruise. If that's correct and this is happening repeatedly, it sounds like your car could have blocked DPF and is constantly regenerating. I'd certainly be worried about the state of DPF on an 11 year old car that's only done 26K as unless the 40 miles per week average before your ownership were just from occasional long runs, it does sound like the car has maybe done lots of short journeys which are not good for a DPF equipped diesel. My own car is a year younger but has covered 126K with the majority long motorway cruises which is ideal for keeping DPF healthy although even mine is predicted to have problems just after 155K when the Oil Ash Residue (essentially the crap that doesn't burn off in a regen') will reach the theoretical loading limit for the DPF. Even if DPF regen isn't the cause of the cruise problem, I'd consider investing in the means to keep an eye on the DPF. Cheapest solution is an android app called VAG DPF which is a couple of quid from recollection (and there's a free version with limited functionality to try first so you can be 100% sure it works with your engine variant) although also needs hardware to plug it the OBD port. Cheapest "approved" hardware solution for that is the Carista dongle which also has its own diagnostic software included which, whilst isn't as powerful as VCDS, is still useful. VAG DPF allows you to monitor and log a myriad of parameters associated with the DPF and you soon get a feel for the performance of the DPF and learn the signs for when it's in a regen even without VAG DPF running. That's useful as means you can often prevent interrupted regen's simply by going once round the block rather than immediately parking at your destination.