nicknorman

According to Skoda/VW it is a “legal requirement” that the drive mode reverts to normal on power-up. The pre-facelift Superbs remembered the drive mode. But not the post-facelifts. It is a bit silly and annoying.

I got mine, it’s booked in in a couple of weeks time. But I had a look, as far as I can tell the heat shield is correctly installed. I was in Germany last week and hit 140mph on the autobahn. If the thing wasn’t going to melt then, it probably isn’t going to melt!

Regarding the key fob I have virtually never used that key, it has always sat in a box in the living room. Just checked it, no emergency key there. I am fairly sure it wasn't there when I got the car. On the other hand, in 7 years and 102,000 miles I never had to use the emergency key. Also I am fairly sure that you get 3 keys with an L&K, I certainly did with the new one. But when I got that car at 6 months old they definitely only gave me 2 keys. Umbrella - I kept it for the other side as you only get one with a new car. Tough! What I do have is the plastic things for the boot that clip off the bottom of the sides. They have velcro and can be plonked on the boot floor to stop stuff rolling around. I took them off when I was hoovering out the boot and found them after I'd sold the car - forgot to put them back! Can send if you like. As to the paintwork, that is quite annoying because I spent hours sanding, treating with rust converter, spraying primer, spraying the base coat and spraying the top coat. Looks like I shouldn't have bothered! I guess the rust converter was rubbish. But yes it is just surface rust and it all appeared suddenly after i had driven through a snowdrift. Personally I never use a pressure washer on the car, I always just used a hose and a soft brush thing with soap dispenser. IMO pressure washers are not good for the moving gubbins as it can get water into bearings etc. I never used snow foam either, but interestingly in conversation with the manager at the showroom where I bought the new car, he volunteered that I should not use snow foam because it is very alkali and makes the chrome bits around the doors corrode, which is not covered by warranty.

If you are into doing your own maintenance then these days something like VCDS, ODB11 etc is pretty much essential. I made some changes to your car including turning off seat belt warning (because I use the car at the gliding club airfield a lot and I hate beeping things!), changing the leaving/coming home lights to the fog lights, activating traffic sign recognition and probably some other stuff I’ve forgotten. I did reverse the seat belt warning thing before I sold it. I would also recommend getting a throttle pedal box, I had a Racechip one (transferred to new car). Of course it doesn’t ultimately make the car go any faster, but the standard throttle response is very soggy and the pedal box transforms the way it seems to drive.

Actually that “fault damper” was the suspension level sensor issue. Fairly trivial to fix. When the front damper pumped all its oil out, there was no dashboard warning. And indeed it wasn’t noticeable when driving, presumably due to the anti-roll bar transferring the damping action from the other side, I was fairly surprised when the guy in the MOT garage showed me the damper he’d taken off, he could pump it with his hands with absolutely zero damping effect. Regarding the springs, I’m 67 and had plenty of cars in my life. Before this car I had Saabs and Subarus, all very high mileage. I never had a broken spring, so it is not me or the environment, it is the crappy VW springs! It’s the same with the rear brake discs, the OEM ones had to be changed at 20k miles. The fairly budget replacements ones (Delphi iirc) were massively better than the originals. Car was always garaged overnight and Aberdeen doesn’t normally suffer from a salty air environment because the prevailing wind is offshore, but there is obviously a lot more salt on the roads for longer, compared to Englandshire.

This is my old car. Happy to advise on what was done when etc. Generally the Haldex and DSG were serviced by me at the appropriate times, Haldex pump gauze cleaned, engine oil & filter changed every 9000 miles or so (I put it on to fixed servicing after the first couple of years). I think it is probably due new spark plugs but on the other hand, when you change them they still look good as new. Brakes pads are getting a bit thin IIRC. I got £9k trade in for it. Yes one front shocker went, £500 for a new one! The other side was still fine when I sold it. I also had 3 broken springs at various times - VW group springs are rubbish! I guess the 4th one had broken without me realising it. Sorry about that! Not sure why there is an issue with the washers, they were fine when I traded it in but that was early December. Some rust appeared along the sills after a prolonged encounter with a snow drift. I did treat it with rust inhibitor and repaint it, but maybe it’s come back. Definitely just surface rust though. A bit poor for a modern car! i never used comfort, almost always sport or occasionally normal on slow bumpy roads. Anyway hopefully it will be a good car for you, the engine and gearbox were as sweet as when I bought it with 9k on the clock in Sept 2016. I only changed it because I would need a new one in a couple of years and I don’t like the 2024 Superbs - I got one of the last 2023 ones.

I had a 2016 Superb with the cornering xenon headlights. They were quite good, but a bit of a gimmick really. I now have a 2023 superb with LED matrix headlights, they are much better in all respects except for the absence of the cornering gimmick. I don’t miss it at all.

I tow an enormous glider trailer with my 280 L&K, it’s 11.5 metres long. Can’t remember the total weight but the glider is about 550 kg. Tows very easily. I have the factory retracting tow bar and it all works very well, car tells me what the speed limit is with trailer, when trailer is plugged in, which was very handy as I’ve just driven through the Netherlands and Germany with it. Obviously there is oodles of power. The later 280s with the 7 speed box are a bit more economical, we got over 30mpg towing the (empty) trailer, although in part because the speed limit with a trailer in Germany is 80 kph (50 mph). The Haldex 4wd isn’t great, but it helps. Probably a bigger difference for soggy fields etc is to use all season tyres, eg Michelin Cross Climates. Massive difference in traction on a poor surface, and perfectly OK on dry tarmac.

I think as a starting point you would need to have the car scanned for fault codes. Presumably when you say "threw up an EPC code" you mean the light came on for a while, but is now off?

It should open with the key fob, but you have to hold the button down for a couple of seconds. I think you also have to be outside the car.

So it sounds like it’s not just me then. Which is good. And bad!

I suppose part of the reason for this post is to find out if other people with post FL 280s have the same issue. It does seem surprisingly bad design so I wondered if there was something wrong with my car.

It’s on the second orange setting. The DSG makes the engine acceleration sluggish because it keeps in too high a gear with the engine rpm down at maybe 1300 rpm despite maybe 50% throttle. The engine ECU limits fuel flow at such low rpm partly to avoid labouring/juddering but mostly I suspect because there is no turbo boost. So you sit there with 50% throttle, 1300… 1350… 1400… 1450…(yawn) … 1500… 1550…1600 - and then it’s off! Brisk acceleration now it’s “on boost”, still with the same throttle setting. The old car with the DQ250 never did this. If I press the throttle to 75% it does decide to change down, but then hurtles off like the mad thing it is. The only way I can see to give moderate and steady acceleration is to manually control the gears. Which rather defeats the point of an automatic,

See last sentence! I already have a racechip pedal box which I transplanted from the old car. This is a different issue from the very soggy throttle response, which is actually much less soggy on the new car. This is only a gearbox issue not an engine issue.

I like a lot of things about my new 280tsi, but one thing I have noticed is that the gearbox is quite reluctant to change down when I want to accelerate moderately. It tends to hold the revs down below the boost range so you press the throttle a fair bit, no downchange, acceleration is very sluggish, then after several seconds the revs have crept up a bit and it comes on boost and accelerates quite rapidly, all with the same throttle position. The old car with the DQ250 would have changed down to keep the revs within the boost range much more willingly. Of course I can select sport mode or change down with the paddles or press the throttle a long way down (so that when it comes on boost it is off like a rocket) but I shouldn't really have to do that in "normal driving" and I certainly didn't have to with the DQ250. Just wondering if anyone else has noticed this, if there is any solution to make it better other than a gearbox remap? I already have a pedal box.

VCDS

Same for me with my 2023 L&K.

The other option of course would to keep the key in one of those faraday cage wallet things, just take it out when you want to access the car.

Yes I think the torque is limited by the transmission, not so much the engine's capabilities. And they are of course both the same cc. But the big difference with the 280 is that it doesn't spin its wheels when you move off briskly onto a wet roundabout.

You don't mention which 2017 model. Some some have the bottle in the vicinity of the left front wheel, some in the vicinity of the right front wheel. You can tell which, by which side the filler is on! Anyway to access the tank you need to remove the front wheel and wheel arch liner on the appropriate side. This is just lots of screws, and there are quite a few screws underneath as the wheel arch liner has a flat bit that goes forward a fair way. There may also be a few plastic rivet things (depending on model) - you need to extract the central pin and then the rivet will come out. Normally they are fairly easy to remove because most screw into plastic and so corrosion is not a problem. Some underneath do screw into metal clips but for me at least, with my 2016 Scottish Skoda on salty roads, they were not difficult to remove. They do have torz socket heads so you would need the appropriate screwdriver bit. And look around carefully, they are not all easy to spot up under the wheel arch, easy to miss one! This gives you access to the bottle, pump and some of the pipework but of course the pipework then disappears to the front and back windows and maybe the headlight washers if you have them.

Why do you think that because you found something hot in your engine, that this is the cause of overheating? Exhaust bits get extremely hot. This is normal.

I get nothing like 32 for town driving. More like low 20s. Climate might be a factor. 32 on a long run! The later 7speed versions are a bit more economical due to taller top gear.

You don't say which model. Or whether it empties within a few days when just parked, or when using the washers a fair bit. I had a problem when I first bought my car at about 9000 miles, turned out the connection at the back of one of the headlight washers had fractured. The headlight washers (assuming you have them) are only activated when the headlights are on and (I think) then once every 3 times the washers are activated but the fracture was allowing lots of fluid to escape. Anyway it will be leaking somewhere, just a matter of finding out where. Although it also has to be said that if you have the washer reservoir on the right side, the capacity is not very big and the headlight washers do use a fair bit even when they are not leaking. So check for drips under the car when parked. Put a towel over the windscreen, headlights off, run the washers (so the towel absorbs the water and it doesn't run down under the car) and look underneath to see if any water drips out elsewhere. Same tactic with headlights on although it is harder to distinguish between what comes out of the headlight washers and what might be leaking from the pipework behind. Probably the towel tactic will still work but you need to allow the headlight washers to pop out.

Yes but not all available at the same time. 280, then 272, then 280 all 4x4. 220 then 190 fwd. I think!

I just sold my old 280tsi L&K. Guess what, I bought a new 280tsi! That tells you something! I think it is a great car. Old one had done 102,000 miles. No issues with the engine or DSG, still worked as new. I changed the DSG oil every 40,000 miles, not difficult although the oil is expensive. Issues I had were: Haldex pump packed up at 20,000, fixed under warranty One wheel bearing noisy at 25,000, fixed under warranty All 3 suspension level sensors failed at various times, affects the DCC and the headlights. 3 springs broken at various times. 1 front damper leaked all its oil at about 70,000 miles. An expensive fix Evap canister control valve failed (petrol sometimes leaked out of filler) - cheap fix. That perhaps sounds a lot but mostly it was cheap and easy to fix. I think the several suspension issues could be put down to mostly driving briskly on Scottish country roads, lots of salt, plus bumping around the gliding club airfield. But for me the main thing was the flawless engine and DSG. And mine was an L&K fully loaded with every gadget. All the gadgets still worked when I sold it.