nicknorman

Well as I said, it should activate every time you overtake something with a few mph speed differential and more to the point deactivate when it’s safe to pull in.

It is certainly speed differential sensitive. For the near side, the idea is that an alert is given either if a car is coming up on your inside, or if you have overtaken a car quite slowly and it’s lurking in your blind spot such that you might have forgotten it’s there. But on mine, the necessary minimum speed differential is not tiny, I’d say at least 10mph. I use it routinely to decide when to pull in in front of a car I’ve just overtaken on the motorway. So if you have never seen it come on, that’s wrong. My sister bought a new Karoq several years ago, it transpired the blind spot monitoring was defective from new but this wasn’t obvious from any dashboard fault light. There are of course two transceivers in the rear bumper, one for each side. And bear in mind they are the same devices that do rear traffic alert when eg reversing out of a supermarket car park space. So it you get an (audible) alarm when reversing out with a car approaching from the right, but not from the left, this is a clear indication that the LH module is faulty. Or of course a diagnostic scan with eg VCDS.

I dislike coasting. I bought a 280tsi because I enjoy driving .. errr … expeditiously. I didn’t buy it for its economy! The sort of roads I mostly drive on speed is constantly changing due to bends etc and the clutch going in and out all the time would drive me nuts. Fortunately it is easy to disable via VCDS. Decades ago when I was skint I had a Saab 96 with freewheel, that was fine but now I drive in a different way.

A bit of research shows that earlier 1.4tsi had chain, later ones (the EA211 engine) had a belt. But as said a visible belt is probably the accessory belt (water pump, alternator, aircon etc). So there may or may not be a belt inside the engine for the cam drive.

Haldex is officially 3 years, not 30k miles. No idea why, surely it would be dependant on mileage! The haldex gauze filter (on the pump inlet) is not serviced as standard by Skoda but gets clogged up with fibres from the clutch plates and looks horrendous, so I would want that to have been cleaned or be cleaned on arrival. The earlier cars had 6 speed DQ250, the later ones DQ381. The 6 speed is better to drive as it keeps the revs in the power band, whereas the 7 speed tends to change up earlier and is a bit reluctant to change down, you have to press the throttle quite a bit and then it suddenly hurtles off. All in the interest of official emissions no doubt. But the 7 speed does high 30s mpg on the motorway, whereas the 6 speed is low 30s or even high 20s due to revving faster in top gear. 7 speed is faster standing start partly due to more (closer) gears, but also a higher torque limit on the geabox. Officially it is about 0.5 seconds quicker 0-100kph which is quite a lot when you are in the 5 second zone.

Just a thought but are you sure it actually has a timing belt? Not sure what your engine is but my 280tsi has a timing chain, which doesn't require routine replacement. We hear stories on here of dealers recommending a timing belt replacement for engines that actually have a timing chain!

My 2016 petrol Superb had a plastic sump pan. It didn't corrode! Corrosion to perforation sounds a bit unlikely on a 7.5 year old car. More likely would be that they or someone else overtightened the sump drain plug and stripped the thread. I would ask to see exactly what the issue is, as it sounds a bit dodgy to me. Sump and sump pan are pretty much the same thing. If it really does need replacing, I would have thought a second hand one from a scrappy would be an option.

I've always used Quantum oil as sold by TPS (VW's parts division in the UK) but yes that looks the right grade. If you open the bonnet, there should be a sticker visible at the front with the correct oil grade. I would be looking for the classification eg VW 504 etc. An OEM filter is not expensive. Assuming you have a metal sump like my 2023 206kw engine, there is a standard bolt with copper washer. Really one should replace at least the washer, or anneal it. But if you don't, I doubt there will be a problem! If you have the plastic sump like my 2016 206kw then you should replace the plastic sump plug as the seal is by means of an O ring.

I think that puts it post-facelift? But it would depend on when the car was actually built, rather than sold I guess, as it’s close to the change. My 2023 model has a different steering wheel with heating and a separate button for travel assist, your wheel looks like my old 2016 car. With my old car it was easy to activate traffic sign recognition via VCDS, but it didn’t really have a separate button for”travel assist” mode. It did have adaptive lane guidance which worked well.

I think the TA button is only on the facelift Superbs. My 2016 one didn’t have it, my 2023 one does. Your steering wheel looks pre-facelift? So you probably don’t need the TA button, it was kind of on by default in pre-FL. What year is your car?

There are a couple of short circuit error codes relating to stuff in the door. I’ve known a few cars (not Skodas) with chafed or broken wires at the door hinge where they flex every time the door is opened or closed. This is where I’d start looking.

My 2023 does this sometimes from brand new. My 2016 never did. Something is different about the brake pedal system, not sure what. I don’t think it’s anything to worry about

Rather surprisingly it is in the CAN Gateway module.

Regarding FL coasting in Normal mode, I found this very irritating. But it can be turned off permanently with VCDS - I did it soon after buying!

Just wondering if the start stop could be activating. It does have an annoying habit of stopping the engine while you are still rolling forwards, then you press the glass just as it’s stopping and it takes a moment to sort itself out.

No, the aux electric heater is part of the engine. That is some box of electronics, can't remember which one.

Yes the sensor for the automatic wipers is on or behind the windscreen I think. The automatic wipers are not for nervous drivers, they are for drivers who don't see the point in having to switch something on manually when it could be done automatically. Same with the headlights.

I think there might be some confusion. Some colder countries fit an auxilliary heater which runs on diesel (or petrol I guess) and can be used to warm the car up before starting. The aux electric heater is not like that, it is integral to the engine and automatically comes on when the engine is cold, to speed the coolant heating up, probably provided there is enough output from the alternator available (depends on other loads). There is no driver control for it, it is completely "transparent".

Not sure if the aux electric heater is fitted to the tdi. It is standard on my 280 tsi. You don't do anything to activate it, it is automatic. It just results in the heater starting to work much quicker on a cold start. As I understand it, it is an electric heating element in the coolant system that runs from the alternator and makes the coolant heat up more quickly. You would think that the tdi would need it more since diesels are slower to heat up than petrol. By DSG mapping I mean the way the gearbox decides when to change down a gear(s). With the older car, it tended to keep the engine rpm above the minimum for turbo boost / reasonable amount of power. So pressing the throttle a bit from overrun at low speed would result in immediate change-down and plenty of power. The new gearbox is much more reluctant to change down under the same situation. So you press the pedal down more, then it changes down but hurtles off! Or if you don't press it down more, after a period of sluggish acceleration it suddenly hits the power band and hurtles off even though you haven't changed the pedal position. My technique is to press the pedal down quite far, but briefly. This encourages it to change down without the "hurtling off" thing. Obvioulsy this behaviour is all about increasing the official mpg, but really one shouldn't have to adapt driving style to get arround the bad mapping and poor drivability. Maybe the tdi is different, it will certainly have different mapping from the 280tsi.

I had a 2016 L&K 280tsi and now I have a 2023 L&K 280tsi. So I know where you are coming from. Yes the little details like no cooling air.. well in mine there is no cooling air in the centre console either! But then again, it wasn’t something I needed or used. The heated seats thing - if you have ventilated seats as I do then pressing the button pops up the display and allows you to select between heated and /or ventilated. But whatever was displayed before doesn’t disappear, it just dims. If you touch the screen again it all goes back to normal, so I don’t find it too annoying. A few things are worse (satnav is terrible, no volume knob) but lots of things are better including the matrix headlights, heated steering wheel, faster warm-up (aux electric heater), the 7 speed DSG (apart from the mapping), Kessy on all doors. So overall I’m quite happy. Agreed, the stupid bolt-on iPad on the mk 4 is ludicrous and once Mr Musk gets his comeuppance, I predict the fad will disappear rapidly.

I would check for broken springs - car sitting too low and so too much camber. Broken springs can be quite hard to see unless you take the wheels off, and even then if an end is missing it can be quite hard to see.

Sorry I can't help with the parking brake issue, I think you would need to get the fault codes as a starting point. I would be more inclined to suspect something up with actual brake caliper motors or external wiring, since these are exposed to the harsh realities of salty Scottish roads, whereas the module sits in the cosy dry! But I just wanted to say that auto-hold has nothing to do with the parking brake, it uses the main hydraulic braking system (via a pump) to stop the car moving. And it is normal for this to disengage if you put the car into neutral.

As has been said, the TPMS works by analysing the data from the 4 ABS wheel speed sensors built into the wheel hubs. It is looking for very slight differences (or actually a change in the differences) in wheel speeds over a longish period (probably 17 miles!) since it musn't instantly react to relative wheel speed changes eg caused by going round a roundabout. Your error message was "Tire Check indicator / Wheel loose detection - Data implausible" which to me points to one of the ABS wheel sensors being slightly intermittent or otherwise marginally faulty. Not enough to upset the ABS or the ACC, but enough to throw the TPMS over a longish period.

The main advantage of 4x4 for most people, is the ability to move off briskly eg on an uphill join to a roundabout on wet roads, without a hint of wheelspin. Our other car is a Mini Cooper S which is 2wd but quite quick, however the wheelspin thing on wet roads is annoying.

As I said… I use automatic parking sometimes. It’s a gimmick, obviously, but a cheap gimmick since all the hardware to do it is already there - the parking sensors, the computer controlled steering, the display, the individual wheel speed sensors. The only additional cost is writing the software to make it work and once that is done there is virtually no extra cost to deploy it, meanwhile you can charge the customer lots of money. I cannot see driverless cars working other than on main roads/motorways. Negotiating a supermarket car park on Christmas Eve would be far too difficult!