newskodadriver

Sorry I don't understand, what do you mean I have to load maps? I don't ever use the maps on columnus as I have a mobile phone with Google maps. You think the issues are software based? But why has it taken 13.5 years for it to break down like this. Also, what do I do with the Iso file ? Burn it to CD and just put it in and the system will automatically recognise it?

Does this help? From the SETUP button menu pressed 15 seconds. From my description, what do you think is the issue with my unit and is the only fix a replacement unit? Thanks

Why don't you think that's the correct part number? That's what the garage said. I could also try and take out the unit just enough without unplugging to see the side according to this video https://youtube.com/shorts/7R1JN-fh4Bo I've just spent half an hour trying to find a print out of every single component of my car that was given to me 10 years ago by a skoda master tech at the dealership, that would also settle it, but I haven't found it yet. I'm sure I'll find the correct box eventually

I don't know what my columbus model is, however, my garage tells me that the part number for my registration is 3T0035680BWHS (elegance trim). Basically, it is constantly resetting itself. For the first 60 seconds after it resets, everything is fine, but as time goes on, it gets steadily more laggy and unresponsive until it resets itself again. And sometimes it randomly turns on by itself. Music from my phone on bluetooth will play for a while, until it stops, at which point I can soft reset, or wait for the system to do it itself in a couple of minutes. Or when I first start the car, it is so slow the parking sensors throw a fault because the columbus is unresponsive. Or weirdly after taking a phone call, whatever music was playing before suddenly goes to max volume, but only on the driver side speakers. It's just bizzare, and unwelcome. I can also soft reset it myself by pressing 3 buttons, which I do repeatedly. It has been playing up 13 out of the past 14 days. On one day only, it was completely fine for the day. There is no fault code that is consistently showing for the radio / telephone on a scanner (carista), and some fault codes for the telephone precedes this issue, so I don't think that's it. Yes, the car is from 2012 and has done 369000 miles, so it has been used extensively. Still, any chance of a fix on the original unit? Or should I try and source a part from a breakers yard or something. Obviously, I'm unsure what's wrong.

Thank you for the reply. Apologies but here is my late update on what happened. The AA came out on fleet breakdown insurance. They did not tow me. They swapped out my battery for a fully charged one. And just just told me to drive 16 miles (13 miles motorway) 22 mins with them following behind me. They told me it was standard protocol to not tow vehicles with bad alternators. But to do what they did. Apparently, the longest trip he did like that was 50 miles. Swapped out another battery half way through. Also told me a fully charged battery should do 25-30 miles with aircon / lights / music off etc. So I guess, I could have just charged the battery up myself.

Yesterday I noticed an red battery light while driving. I immediately drove back to the house. En route, I discovered the system voltage reading for battery from OBD port / Carista was 11.8V when I thought to connect. I assume the light might have triggered at 11.9v, as soon as it dropped below 12. 1V too late imo, especially as engine had been running 30mins+ since last start up, bad design, should have triggered at 13V. Normal volt is 13.7-14.1v. By time I got back, voltage was slowly dropping, some flickers, but dropped to 11.5V when I parked up and locked up. Car is parked in a location and orientation suitable for towing, if needs be. Garage is obviously closed. But it is 15 miles away and need a motorway trip to get there. The vehicle has commercial breakdown insurance. However, it is DSG. Front wheel drive. Should I leave everything to breakdown next week? Or should I proactively take the battery out to charge it inside the house and drive it to the garage in a 1 way trip for the battery? Assuming full charge is 13.9V. I don't know how much starting the engine will take off that. But I know the battery won't die at 11.5V. And from yesterday, it dropped 0.3V in 10? Mins? So should survive a 22 min trip to the garage with no air con / stereo if starting engine doesn't use too much power? Also, how would I know if it's alternator / battery now? Taking battery out would not be helpful if that's is what's the problem.

Is the only way to know the siren battery is dying is if it goes off by itself just before it dies completely? Mine is 12 years old too, and I'd rather not it does silently then not go off if a yobbo smashes a window etc.

BTW that issue was solved where if I thought the engine shouldn't be warm enough to start at 750rpm, I simply press the accelerator manually in Neutral to raise the rpm to 1k and hold it there for 30 seconds to 1 min. After that, if the engine was as cold as I thought, it would hold itself at 950rpm thereafter until it was properly warmed up. I think there is a mismatch in sensor readings somewhere and revving the engines manually for a little while gives the system time to reach the correct conclusion

DQ250 6 speed wet Also, it would have been 750 rpm. I misread the analogue needle, sorry. I looked more closely today at the normal resting rate. The higher rpm at idle would have been 950

Car had been left for 3 hours outside at 2C, so 2nd start of the day. Initial rpm was 650. I reverse from cul-de-sac. I stop, put car in D, drive only for 2 metres, then bring car to stop because of traffic. Car seemed slow to stop. Like it was surging. And once stopped, juddgered violently at 650rpm. I didn't put it into neutral because I needed to move off, I was looking at cars. The juddering disappeared as I moved off after a few more seconds. However, once I left the estate, and I came to a stop at the first traffic light in D. The revs were now holding at 1k. So my working hypothesis is that the low revs when cold has caused the juddering. It only happened in D when 650rpm. Not when in P/N when car was started. There seems to be a pattern (from yesterday) when I also left the car for 3 hours, then started again. 650rpm initial idle rev. Upping to 1k after having driven half a mile out. In the morning when car is left out overnight, rev at idle is immediately 1k. --- 1) why is there juddering when in D at low revs but not in N at cold weather? Why did it seem to surge? 2) why didn't the car start for the 2nd time of the day at 1k immediately? It started both yesterday and today at 650, and only then seeming to realise it's colder then it thought. Why was it the ECU fooled and how did it correct itself after half a mile? 3) did the juddering episode today damage anything? (no lights or codes with Carista reader) --- Sorry if I read like I'm paranoid, which I kind of am. I really need the car to not break down this winter, its final winter really. Going to extreme lengths to protect the health of the car.

They're a pretty reputable VAG specialist, but even if they weren't, garages generally don't try and rip off taxi drivers, who tend to be good customers if treat well. Although I've found garages that do a lot of expensive Audis tend to be more "carefree" with their pricing..

Fixed yesterday, dsg thermostat + new filter pipe + labor = 90 pounds. All temps back to normal. 84 coolant, 85 dsg oil, 90 engine in town and 95 on motorway. The dsg takes a bit longer now to reach 55C, as previously the engine would warm the coolant instantly which would warm the dsg instantly, but now can maintain higher normal temperatures. Engine now warms much faster. I think fuel economy is also up a bit, not like massively, but every bit helps.

Yes, that's normal behavior. So what I do is never parallel park up an incline, and ideally never reverse up an incline unless I can either get to 7mph 2k revs in a straight line without hitting anything or, I only need one burst of acceleration before putting it into neutral and letting it roll up as far as it can, this is used only when turning the car around using a drive or side street and not 3 point turn. If you don't use the accelerator hard enough on a hill, you're probably putting more wear on the clutch pack.

So, I have some questions about how the thermostat and the coolant system actually works. So according to what I've read, a thermostat is sort of blocking device that unblocks when a block of wax reaches 75C in the case of the DSG thermostat and triggers a spring to open. So I'm assuming whenever the DSG thermostat reaches 75C, regardless of whatever the actual DSG transmission oil temperature reading is, as the thermostat is a mechanical device, not an electrical one. And upon reaching 75C, it forces the entire coolant system to move to the radiator, cooling the coolant, which is then circulated through both the engine oil cooler and the dsg oil cooler. So my questions are. If the coolant temperature is 75C, then it would be as if there was no DSG thermostat. So how does the coolant actually reach 90C and stay 90C if nothing was broken? Also, is the main thermostat also set to 75C? And, since I had to replace the engine oil cooler recently because the plastic casing cracked. Is the DSG oil cooler also plastic and should I replace it out of caution at the next DSG oil change (due in several thousand miles anyway for me) Also, now in my 3rd day of intensively looking at temperature readings on Carista, my oil temperature this morning in a 90 minute drive reached 82 in urban conditions and stayed at 79 mostly. So I dunno why the same 90 minute block on Saturday night only resulted in an engine oil of 65C. It does seem like once engine oil reaches 80, it will stay around 79-82C. So the overcooling might not have been as catastrophically lower as I'd imagined. The garage said they don't have time to do it this week, and I'm making a 150 mile trip twice on Saturday for a personal event, so I'll be interested to see if will reach high 90s on sustained motorway driving at 2.2k revs.

Ah that's a little disappointing to hear about how inaccurate needles are on VAG cars. Through extensive Googling over the weekend, I found that on newer Audis, you can display the coolant, engine oil, and dsg oil temperature side by side in numerical C on the dash display. Would have made it far more obvious. On my car, it took digging through carista reader options to find them all. This is only the second car I've owned. I've driven approximately 280k miles since I got my drivers license. 258k of those have been in this car. Frankly, I don't ever want to part with it even if it will no longer be used a taxi next year. About the heater thing. The thing is, there was always heat in the winter, car was warmer than the house as I live alone and heating the rented 3 bed semi with single glazing and heating system that's 60 years old far too expensive. I might have been insensitive to how quickly it blew hot from one winter to the next, but I was always eventually warm. Again through Googling, apparently a thermostat problem would be more obvious if the driver was cold in winter, which I wasn't. I don't always work a "full shift", but the mileage is there. I never use it to just "pop to the shops". My commute from town to city includes 3 miles of dual carriageway near the start and end of every trip. Where I go for my shopping, I have the options of 6 miles through urban / semi urban roads, or 12 miles on dual carriageway and motorways, I choose the motorway option 90% of the times because I like driving in a straight line without start / stopping or changing gears. Hopefully as you say any damage in my case will have been more limited. When I drive at gear changing boundaries, since 150k miles ago, I always manually lock the dsg in the lower gear at 1.5k revs rather than let the dsg go to the next gear at 1.2k. And it was you who told me about the nifty gadget to help with EGR, that should have also made my engine combust at higher temperatures.

35-40k miles a yesr, so as per title, I assume a distance of 70k driven with faulty thermostat. No oil sludge or excess condensation was ever noticed at servicing. Every 9000-9400 miles. When not during winter, for example 4 months ago in May, the oil temperature could reach 100C, so I assume moisture / contaminants will have been burnt out at irregular intervals when weather was not cold. Currently with an ash value of 0.32, every 200 miles for DPF regen. Garage also doesn't think any damage would have been caused at all. Dunno how true that is. It certainly can't be great for the engine, and even if oil viscosity matter more for protection than oil temperature, it will have put more pressure on the pumps for the engine and the DSG unit.

Car is on 315k now, had a compression test before last winter at 270k and pressure was 26psi across all 4 cylinders. If wear was "twice as much", then I would expect 70k less life. Dunno if how that's supposed to work. It's coming off as a taxi next year, but even then I'm not going to sell it. I'm rather attached to it. It won't be worth trying to sell a 350k mile car, people might turn their noses up at it, and most of things will be "new". For example, by the end of this year, every single suspension component will have been replaced within a 12 month period, and it had new clutch pack and flywheel done last Xmas. Yeah the explanation wasn't the best back then. But also, I never focused on oil temperatures all the way through out. I would check if it was heating up from - - -, and I might check it on the motorway during a regen, but not during driving about town. The fact that the car doesn't have a coolant temperature readout or DSG fluid temperature without an advanced OBD dongle and the needle not very accurate and no CEL also didn't help. I rang the the garage this morning and they're going to sort it this week.

I will be telling the garage to do the DSG cooler fix when they open today as I've been doing some observation over the weekend for a different issue (oil sensor workshop! / intermittent signal) after the garage changed the oil cooler due to coolant leak. If I'm being honest, I noticed something weird about the temperatures 2 winters ago, and I flagged it up then, but they didn't think it was anything to worry about, vaguely something about it's cold outside. I've been been feeling sick all weekend for not having basically ordered them to do the fix years ago and have been driving around all this time with basically no thermostat. I rely on this car basically to keep myself and my animals alive. Basically oil temperature driving around town this weekend was 62C after 1 hour with engine on, or 72C if I turned off AC. Motorway was 85C max. The coolant never reached 90C. It stayed 78 when the car was stationary and dropped to 68 on the motorway. The thing is though, I remember even just from 3-4 months ago, when it was warmer, I was doing a DPF regen at 2.5k revs and oil temp went over 100C on the motorway as high as 108. It's more obvious with a Carista dongle (which I only bought a couple of months ago) to see temperatures. It showed DSG mostly at 55C. 65 max. Also, the carista apps shows an exact coolant temperature, the needle might look close to 90 on the dashboard, but it's only 70 something, it's just not accurately presented at all. Anyways. What are the likely damage caused that I should keep an eye on for the future? And how much life has been taken off the engine? After doing some research online, apparently some cars will throw an check engine light if the engine doesn't get up to temp within a certain time. Skoda really missed a trick by not throwing an engine light when a thermostat is broken.

Wow you must be making a mint doing those kinds of jobs. No such luck for me. What do you mean by "no cameras on the handles for the 2012"? Are you referring to where the rear reversing cam would go? Where / how are you going to install yours then? Where / how are you going to fit the front cameras? Does that have to be linked to your new xtrons unit? So, when my flywheel springs were failing, the noise was only intermittent, I never heard anything personally (I always drive with windows up and aircon on too), or I didn't know how to recognise it. But the mechanic said sometimes that happens, it might make noises for a while then stop, but if it ever starts to, it's on the way out sooner or later, in my case sooner. Also, what did you mean by your rear light cluster developing a leak? A leak of what?

Is it a diesel? I wonder what the difference is between CFFB and CFGB, as mine is also 12 reg 170 horses. How do you only get mostly motorway / dual carriageway as a taxi lol? Do you work out of an airport or something? Mine is a city rank, so I only really get motorway miles if I'm driving home or I drive for an out of town job, which I do at every possible opportunity. That flywheel if left unchecked will eventually shatter because a spring will break. But it can rattle for quite a while, like over 10k miles. My mechanic detected it, but said the noise was intermittent. But it broke 5k miles after he detected it. I assume it was rattling for 5k before he founded it. I was advised to just leave it until it broke. If you want to preserve your clutch pack, you'll not want to leave it. Because when mine shattered, it took out that mounting shaft that comes with the clutch pack, so both was replaced. But my clutch pack had 100k more miles than yours at that point with more city driving, so no great loss. I'm interested in what you replaced the columbus with. Can you link me what you bought? And if you replace the colombus, can you retrofit rear reversing cameras on your new unit? I'd be interested in that. If you got a new steering wheel with flappy paddles, does that work well with the dsg manual mode? So that means you can either use the stick, or the flappy paddles? I personally don't find the dsg manual mode is always smooth. So a lot of times, what I do is push it to the left to hold gear, and pull back to the right when I know the car will upshift after I put it back into D mode. Or sometimes when I'm at the point between gear ratios, pushing the dsg stick to the left will trigger a downshift. But I do those things because I know how the dsg will react.

Sounds like you take good care and track everything on your car too. Cracking stuff. I sometimes forget not everyone here lives in the UK. 303k km into miles is only 188k miles. In km mine is now 498005 km. So nearly 500k km for people on the continent

So, I'm sure I read somewhere or maybe I asked one of the dealership mechanics when I used to go there, that there is an actual difference between the 140 / 170. I mean the engine code is different, and some other stuff may have been too. So it wasn't as simple as, skoda deliberately mapped the 170 down electronically, there may be some hardware differences too. The other thing I do, or rather don't do, is I never dry steer, and I don't mount kerbs. I simply avoid parking anywhere tight, avoid three point turns by reversing round a corner, literally have reversed down the entire length of an L shaped cul-de-sac before. That's probably saved the steering component a lot over time. Sometimes I see people's tyres randomly move stopped at traffic lights and I just think "what are you doing man"

2012 Skoda Superb 3T2 Elegance 170CR diesel CFGB 2.0 I'd like to think I've done as much as possible as early as possible to maintain it as long as possible. I was astounded the front springs / shocks lasted close to 300k from the factory. But I try and dodge every pothole and brake for every speed bump / badly surfaced roads. I've got complaints from passengers before but I ignore them lol don't care if they don't tip me. I crawl around estates with bad roads when it's just me in the car. And I live near a motorway and commute into the city where I start taking passengers so everything is always gently warmed up before I start working. I think over a lifetime of the car, driving habits and maintenance really shows itself.

What hasn't broken yet in your car? My mechatronics unit is still original at 309k miles. Anyone have a unit that lasted longer? The flywheel springs snapped at 280k and also took out the shaft. Both flywheel and clutch pack were replaced. I've just been told I need a gearbox bush mount for engine stabilisation. That's lasted from the factory 309k miles . 4 hour labour to get subframe off and everything. The turbo has never had issues. Examined at 270k Neither the engine (CFGB diesel) Compression test 40k miles ago at 270k miles showed 26 psi across all cylinders. DPF is still from factory. Had 1 "clean" service from injector gun. But it takes more effort to complete a regen cycle now and much more smoke + smell. Having to use a Carista obd to manually trigger regen at time of my choosing and using vag pdf app to monitor all the data plus only regen on the motorway as it can no longer complete a cycle in the town without the cabin being choked with fumes EGR died at approx 190k, no emissions fix Throttle valve at 150k, had egr nozzle rotated per skoda recall instructions Door looms lasted 250k before both front doors started breaking, requiring intermittent fixing since. Surprisingly my 2 rear shock absorbers from factory are still fine at 309. Front shocks and springs died at 298 and 300 Back Springs / all 4 arms (every 150k it seems to last, so will be on 3rd set of arms soon) / bushes / droplinks / bearings etc obviously dies as you drive. Current ABS module has lasted 250k miles and still working Starter motor still from factory. Alternator from factory died at 200k All door locks / boot hinges still factory All power steering still factory My columbus still works. Just always had annoying problem where if my phone is connected to Bluetooth and I make a call when the columbus is either off or I'm not playing music through Bluetooth, no sound at all unless engine is fully shut for 5+ mins to reset connection. So I always make sure I play music on Bluetooth until u hear sound before I make a phone call Aircon compressor died at about 150k or 7 years of age of car. Serviced (minor interim minor major) never oil light before service every 9400 miles or less at dealership initially then at VW specialist garage. DSG oil service every 37.6k miles /every 4th service or less. Car has about 3 MOT equivalent checks and 4 services a year. So it's checked about as comprehensively as you can get.

Not sure if it will fit or not. But I suppose I will have to buy one to find out. Someone on youtube reckons the pound coins are magnetic, but I don't know if dangling a small magnet attached to a string would be a good idea cos it might get stuck to the wall?