nicknorman

By the way, I bought my front one from here: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/324537018631 I subsequently bought the rear one from TPS which was much more expensive but no better! Should have bought another ebay one and maybe transferred the clever bit to the old attachments

Do you know if it’s the front or rear sensor? (Assuming it definitely is the sensor, which I think likely). The way to find out is to look at the reported value of each of the sensors - one of them will be stuck or showing rubbish or faulty. VCDS can do this, not sure if Carista does. The sensors are a different part number front vs rear but the actual electronic guts of it is the same, there is a different mounting for front vs rear. One can unscrew the electronic bit with green arm, and fit it to the existing mounting if you end up with the wrong one,

Yes on the 280 the washer bottle is the other side, and behind the wheel. And smaller I think, as it needs to be topped up regularly.

Well possibly, but new rad is £189+ vat which is not too bad.

I hit a badger on Friday night 10pm in the middle of nowhere en route to Aviemore. Or rather the badger hit me. Well that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. We need more green cross code adverts for badgers. Anyway 10 seconds later, “Boing” “Coolant low”. In red, just in case there was any doubt. I managed to continue a few miles before the temperature gauge went mad so I stopped at a house with a light on for a fill of water. By this time, I only had about 3 miles to destination. Managed to destination with temperature gauge just starting to go mad. The odd thing is that the radiator is in the middle, but the leak was at Lh corner where badger hit. I’ve never taken a front bumper off before, but it wasn’t that difficult once I’d removed the front wheels. I did see a YouTube of a chap doing it with wheels in situ, but that seemed too difficult. It transpires there is an auxiliary cooling radiator low down behind LH headlight area. And in front of that, a plastic structure that ducts air onto the rad. This had shattered and punctured the radiator in several places. The actual plastic bumper wasn’t too badly damaged, a split low down just in front of the wheel. Saturday morning in the Highlands of Scotland - not a great place to get VW group spares. There is no TPS in Inverness. TPS in Aberdeen said they wouldn’t be able to order it until Tuesday (due to bank holiday) so they would get it Wednesday. So in the mean time, aux radiator removed, bit of 22mm copper pipe inserted in hoses to short circuit it. Apparently the aux cooling radiator is added to cars with auto gearboxes but hopefully if I take it gently it will be fine. Now I have to drive 40 miles to Inverness to get the right antifreeze. Hopefully it won’t drain its coolant all over the A9! Just when you think the job list is shrinking, there’s always something else coming along!

I'm unclear why it would be black. Where did the black come from? Certainly true that gearbox oil loses its lubricity over time (and becomes thin and lifeless) but black implies combustion products (carbon) which you wouldn't expect to find in a gearbox.

My superb 280tsi with 19" wheels and DCC is very smooth on the motorway. Can be a bit crashy over low speed bumps, but that is a different thing. Could it be the prop shaft donut just in front of the Haldex? Presumably it would cause vibrations at a higher frequency than wheel speed. According to my dealer this can cause problems when it seizes, and mine was replaced under warranty.

Highly likely to be the suspension level sensor (front or rear) in my limited experience. Quite easy to replace and you can get relatively cheap versions from ebay etc. But if under warranty, get them to do it obviously! The message is confusing because it implies it’s something to do with the cornering function. But it isn’t! The give away is it going to the fallback mode of pointing at the ground, because it doesn’t know how high to aim the lights.

Pretty hard to check for a LIN signal without specialist test gear or an oscilloscope I would have thought - or do you have a clever way of doing it? Presumably the "local data bus 4" is the LIN bus, but could be wiring or an electronic fault at either end that could hang the bus I would presume.

Not quite that simple I think - I seem to recall that you have to disconnect the lower arm from the wheel hub. But mine is 4 x 4 so maybe that doesn't apply if it is 2 wheel drive. Also need to disconnect the suspension level sensor arm if you have xenon headlights and or DCC, and the drop link for the anti-roll I think. But you are right at least in principle, no need for a spring compressor.

I’ve had CrossClimates on for about 5 months now. So far so good, a bit noisier on some road surfaces. Can’t say I’ve noticed any worse grip on dry roads, but in the snow there is a massive difference. I do live in Aberdeen and drive over the hills a fair bit, so maybe more than average encounters with snow. Can’t really say anything about wear rate yet.

I’m wondering if it could be as simple as a fault with one of the front suspension spring top mounts, which has a ball bearing race to allow the whole spring and damper assembly to rotate with the steering. The amount of force needed to turn the steering when stationary is quite a bit more than when driving at 70kph, so when stationary any slight resistance is masked, whereas when going faster the steering is lighter so it is more noticeable. Well it’s a theory!

Definitely adjustable on mine.

No pretty sure they are different. I recently bought springs for my 2016 280tsi (DCC) which I think would be the same, but the paperwork is at home and I’m not! Also might be different between estate and saloon.

MOT time. I carefully checked that the original 2 springs were still intact. Seemed they were, as best I could tell without taking the wheel off (but using one of those USB endoscope cameras). But no, MOT man says the other rear spring is now broken! So that is 3 springs out of 4 and the car has only done 90,000 miles. I have never previously had a broken spring in 40 years of car ownership - with many of those cars being very high mileage. So much for VW group "quality"!

As said, there isn’t one. But I think this is not because ŠKODA couldn’t be bothered, I think it is because they thought it could be dangerous. If you are accustomed to the car automatically braking when the car in front brakes, and then suddenly doesn’t because the “A” bit was turned off either accidentally, or deliberately but you forgot you’d done it, it’s quite conceivable that you would be caught out and hit the car in front. This is why if the front radar signal gets blocked by snow/ice, the whole shebang stops working rather than it dropping back into a CC mode. There probably is a speed limiter function so one option is to use that and keep the throttle pressed.

I think it’s also worth bearing in mind that the DCC is not just about selecting between comfort, normal and sport - ie 3 fixed levels of damping. The DCC system constantly modifies the damping level according to the suspension movement etc as detected by the 3 suspension position sensors, and possibly g sensors, speed, power, cornering etc. If you look at the current going into the dampers on VCDS while (someone else is) driving, you can see that the current (which controls the damping) is constantly changing (unless the road is completely smooth). So there is computer controlled instantaneously varying damping. Which may or may not be better than fixed hydro mechanical damping, who knows?! But it should be!

The DCC is useful, I use sport for out of town driving on rural Scottish main roads, and in town I sometimes use normal for the bumps. IMO comfort is too wallowy. As to longevity, not great as far as the fronts are concerned. I had to replace one at about 75,000 miles as it had pumped all its oil out! The other side has been on “light misting” for the past few MOTs. Around £500 a side, fitted. You can get Bilstein Damptronic B4 or B6 for about 1/2 the cost, and they can be overhauled, unfortunately when I had to unexpectedly replace mine, you couldn’t yet get Bilsteins but I think they are now available.

As always, it a fairly simple job stymied by rusty bolts, difficult access etc! I replaced a rear spring recently. Best way IMO is to drop the lower arm right down so the spring can be inserted without using a spring compressor. I had spring compressors but they wouldn’t fit when on the spring. The pukka VW spring compressors have arms that stick out into the spring but they are quite expensive. For my car than meant undoing the level sensor, and anti roll drop link and the 3 (?) nuts under the wheel hub. Pull lower arm down, insert spring, use jack to push lower arm back up. Make sure the ends of the spring are properly seated in the shaped spring mounts. Also bear in mind that things with rubber bushing, eg shocks, should be bolted up with the suspension in a neutral position. Otherwise the rubber inserts are subject to excessive twisting. So before you start, measure distance from wheel centre to wheel arch with the car empty and on level ground. After replacing the bits and before tightening bolts, use a jack under the wheel hub to compress the suspension until the distance previously measured is set. Then tighten the bolts.

I have done this a couple of times. As D402 says, you can just turn the ignition off after you’ve retracted the parking brake. Then once everything is replaced, turn ignition back on and reset the parking brake with VCDS.

206kw is 280ps. 272ps is 200kw. ps of course being metric horsepower.

Bear in mind the radar sensors for the blind spot monitoring are in the rear bumper, I’d check that there is no excessive build up of dirt or ice in that area which could possibly degrade the radar signal.

Yes that was how my car behaved for the first 5 years or so. The air enters the tank because it is kept a bit below ambient pressure to ensure no vapour can escape. Well there was in mine. I only started having problems after the vacuum / air rushing in sound no longer happened.

Just thinking about it, I’m fairly sure that the button won’t always work, as a safety feature. If autohold is actually operating, ie the car is being held by the autohold, pressing the autohold button won’t suddenly release the brake and make the car move. For the button to work I think you have to be pressing the brake pedal, or in P, or with parking brake on etc.

I have a 2016 Superb 3 with DSG. Yes I can turn auto hold on and off. In the first couple of years of ownership I did turn the auto hold off a few times. I don’t think I have ever done it in the past 4 years or so. When manoeuvring or in fact just moving off gently, the trick is to momentarily dab the throttle slightly first. This releases the auto hold and the car will start to creep. Then if necessary, press the throttle a bit again. If you just press and hold the throttle from the outset, it will always lurch. So my point is that eventually you will never want to deactivate the auto hold. That said, I totally get that you want the car to work as it should. I’m just saying that, setting that feeling aside, in a couple of years it won’t matter whether it works correctly or not.