Papfox

Hi, My rear wiper on my 2012 vRS just stopped working. I checked the fuse and it's fine. My next guess is going to be either the motor itself or, possibly more likely, a broken wire in the wiring bundle from the tailgate to the body. Would anyone have the wire colour list to identify which wire the rear wiper is please? Thanks, Paul.

It's a little more than your budget but have you looked at the Garmin Venu (currently in the sale)?

Glad you found it. If the timing was off, do you know when the last time the cam belt/chain/tensioner were changed? My vRS was getting grumpy on starting. My local independent ran the car over with VCDS and the timing angle was 3 point something degrees out. They inform me that something very bad (replacement engine bad) happens at 5 degrees and the speed of the angle increase goes up as the chain gets more worn. The spec of the tensioner I believe was revised on some engines so you may not have the latest part and it is a worthy improvement. I'm not sure which engine you have but the cam belt replacement interval on my old vRS was 3 years so, if you've had the car for 2.5 years then it could well need doing.

Thank you. One Mann filter and an Autoglym bomb ordered

Hi, It's getting time to replace my cabin air/pollen filter. It got a bit smelly during lockdown and I'm going to aircon bomb the car but I thought I'd replace the filter as well. I see there are several companies that make them including Mann (the factory one IIRC) and Bosch. Would you have any preference for brand please? Thanks, Paul.

Hi, The aircon in my Mk II FL vRS has died. It will only get cold if it's cold outside and if it starts to get warm it gives up the ghost. It's also possibly making a groaning noise. I'm a noob when it comes to VCDS. Are there any measurements I can do that would reveal if it's the compressor (as I suspect as I had a very similar fault with my old Mk II) or something else please? Thanks, Paul.

A message for any makers in the group... Mod My PI from Tunbridge Wells suffered a burglary at the weekend. A large quantity of Raspberry Pis and related items were stolen. If you are offered any Raspberry Pi items for sale, particularly at discount prices or in quantity, you are asked to inform the Police or bring it to the attention of ModMyPi.

Blackvue do a parking mode power controller (the "Power Magic Pro") that wires to the battery and you can select how long the camera stays powered after you turn the car off. It also has a low voltage cutoff if the battery happens to be low to stop the camera running it down below a selectable voltage. They also do accessory battery packs that charge when you're driving and keep the camera running independent of the car battery when it's parked. I don't know if these accessories can be made to work with other cameras but I am hopeful.

I've disconnected the battery in my car moe than once and the radio didn't need the code.

Thank you both. One of my other hobbies is amateur radio. My mobile amateur transceiver can be controlled over an RS232 serial connection plugged into its accessory connector. The protocol to control the radio and surface metering from it is well documented and Linux software to do it is freely available. In a perfect world I'd like to achieve the following: Mount the amateur radio gear in the boot out of sight so I don't end up with brackets and control panels spoiling the look of the car interior. Install a Raspberry Pi or small microcontroller in the boot to control the radio. Craft a touchscreen and rotary control interface to display on the Bolero to provide access to the functions I want from the radio in the boot via the microcontroller. Use the phone kit mic and speaker link for the receive and transmit 2-way audio. Capture button presses from the MSFW phone buttons to operate the PTT and mute on the transceiver. Thanks again, Paul.

Do you have VCDS or can you find anyone on the VCDS thread who can scan the car for you so you can post it? That might reveal if it's grumbling about something.

If some helpful person hasn't written it on the side of the radio, I believe your Skoda dealer may be able to get it for you. If not, there are various sellers on eBay who will find the code for you for a small fee.

Another thought... Is your car an Mk II or a Mk II Facelift? My Mk II Facelift has, from memory, two extra vertical elements in the rear screen heater that don't seem to make sense as part of the heating function and my previous Mk II didn't have. They're about the right length for a 430 MHz radio antenna. I wonder if these are the receive antenna for the fob. Does your rear screen heater work OK? It might be worth checking the wiring to it. Can someone confirm what these vertical elements are?

Might be worth ruling out interference issues. Does this behaviour happen everywhere or is it worse in some places than others? Are there any non-Skoda accessories installed in the car?

When I used to work in breakfast TV, the camera crew car was a Chrysler MPV. That did have auto-lock. It was a total pain in the rear. Total number of times it saved us from someone leaving the cameras unsecured, zero. Number of times it screwed us by locking the crew out the car, lots. I didn't work anything close to every day and I had to break into the car 3 times in a year when someone put the keys down in the camera cage in the boot and it auto locked. Thankfully, the rear quarter windows opened on that model and were flexible enough that someone could flex them open an inch to hook the keys out. I used to keep a straightened coat hanger with a hook bent into the end in the technical vehicle just for that purpose. More worryingly, one day when it happened, the presenter made a joke on air asking if there were any car thieves who could come and help and three showed up. Their response time was half that of the AA too. On a more serious note, it is possible to screw yourself by locking your keys in the Octavia's boot as it auto-locks in the following circumstances: If you open the boot with the boot open button on the fob, it auto-locks when you close the boot. If you unlock the car with the unlock button on the fob and don't open one of the passenger doors, it will auto-lock after 30 seconds.

The advice I was given from an owner when I got my first vRS is that the temperature needle should always be dead vertical (to within a gnat's) once the car has warmed up and if it's not or it changes when you're driving then there is a problem. If it's going low, it sounds like you're getting too much cooling so one of the thermostats is almost certainly stuck, probably open. I think my engine (vRS, petrol, manual transmission) has two so your car probably has two or three as it's a DSG. The good news is that they seem to be cheap (online part-only prices seem to be in the £5-25 range, depending on brand)

On my vRS, I always wait for the "choke" to come off after starting, don't thrash it in the last 10 minutes of my drive and let it run for a minute after I put the hand brake on before turning it off. Having to buy a new high pressure turbo for my car isn't a nice expense.

That's a result. If it's replaced, I would check the oil level daily for a week then at least weekly for a month to make sure the new one is healthy and it's not using oil.

If you suspect the turbo is faulty, check your oil level very regularly until it's sorted and for a short time after replacing it to make sure all is well. If the turbo bearings are going, your car may burn a large quantity of oil. Is the exhaust abnormally sooty? Is the exhaust smokey if you boot the throttle? Friend of mine with a Mk 1 petrol vRS had his turbo fail badly (actually it did quite a good job of failing) and it started drinking over a litre of oil every hundred miles. Hopefully, it's just a split air hose.

Do you have access to VCDS or can you get the dealer to check the car with service software? Are there any fault codes? Is the cam chain driven on this model? What is the car's measured cam chain angle? That value may reveal whether there's an issue with the cams, chain or tensioner. Does the engine sound rattly starting from cold or is there a ticking sound at idle? Either of these might point towards the cam tensioner if it's a chain driven cam.

Keeping it seems to be a sensible suggestion in my eyes. Even if you don't want it, as long as you get a loan that you can repay early without significant penalty, looking at Autotrader, I think you should be able to sell it reasonably quickly for something in the twelve grand ballpark. I like "fettling" my vRS. On paper, you probably can't do things to a car that is the property of a lease or PCP company so this would be a consideration for me.

I think the leather looks nice and is easy to wipe clean. I've also heard people say that, if anyone who uses the car likes to wear shorts or short skirts in the summer that the leather is prone to getting uncomfortably hot in the sun and skin sticking to it on hot summer days. YMMV.

If the panel with the sockets can be bought as a spare, I see no reason someone who is reasonably competent shouldn't be able to put it in and source appropriate power. I would hope it is available as USB sockets are prone to wear and I view them as a semi-consumable item.

Looking at the option list, I wouldn't have the keyless entry and start due to what I'm hearing about remote key relay attacks thieves are using now. I don't particularly like that guy's tone and attitude but his technical explanation of what happened is accurate. If you frequently carry rear seat passengers, the rear side airbags, rear USB ports and in-car WiFi might be worth considering. The double sided boot floor might be worth having. On my last car, I wrecked the boot floor when a bottle of oil in the boot leaked and it soaked through. The non-absorbent side would probably have prevented that. I would consider the Canton sound system if I was buying for myself. Does the car have satnav? If not and you use a windscreen-mounted satnav, the heated windscreen may prevent it from working properly. I would ask someone who has that option. Does an option still exist to get rid of the lip between the boot and the rear seats when they're down? My current Mk II FL has that lip and it's a pain when loading large things with the seats down. That virtual cockpit does look as sexy as anything

If you can find out where the lease company auctions their returned cars, another option is to let it go then go and buy it back at auction for less than the 10 grand. Probably safer to just keep it though. I'd have someone's arm off for a 13k mile vRS for 10 grand. Do you have VCDS or know anyone who does? If you're going to keep it, I'd check it for any fault codes and get them fixed on the lease company before September if you're going to keep it.