T2000

https://www.tyrespot.co.uk/services/hunter-4-wheel-alignment/

To be honest it will be the nut on the threaded bar of the inner rod on the balljoint end that will be seized as above and various ways of removing it, my preference would be remove track rod end nut and knock it out of hub and then undo inner rod, usually with mole grips or the like as the 'knuckle' has 2 flats on it or a hex shape, take off the whole rod with balljoint attached and assemble new rod and balljoint to the same length and refit, no special tools required. As you have a MK2 which is now a few years old it makes sense to do the whole lot as they may be some play on the inner anyway and for £37 odd for both TRE's and inner rods it isnt a bank breaker.

Not really a myth, I've had 2 VAG cars throw a glowplug light and both times it was the brake light switch on the pedal, replacing them cleared the light, they are a one shot fit, although it was a 2003 Passat and a 2004 Golf so maybe they redesigned the brake light switch?

I see you have an estate, check the rear high level brake light, it may have some failed LED's in the cluster throwing the dash light, mine did this, I just lived with it as it was a ball ache to change.

Yeah my new one was Bosch, I suggest taking it off and put it on a condition charger, 12.1 is low

Only reason I say is that I had similar issues as yourself throwing all sorts of comm errors and dash lights, as you I didn't use mine a huge amount due to WFH, I bought a new battery and fitted it which cured the slow starting but it still threw errors, I took the new battery off and put it on an intelligent charger for 24 hours, when I connected it the battery was 11.9 volts (should be around 12.5), must have been sitting on a shelf a while, anyway it hit full charge put it back on and clear all faults and it was fine then.

How old is the battery?

When you first mentioned smoke I thought of valve stem seals, a compression test would have possibly picked up the rings.

Do you have a sub under seat?

Yeah all LE wheels are 18's, mine were also, I just used that link to show who makes them and that there are different sizes and offsets so one would assume different bore sizes also hence the reason you have spigot rings on 2 of them, I would guess that the stamps on the back of the wheels non spigot vs spigot ones are different.

The LE wheels are made of chocolate so a lot got replaced due to bends and cracks, Team Dynamics made them I believe called Monza so you may have a couple of replacements on there with a slightly different centre bore http://www.kitcardirect.co.uk/team-dynamics-monza-r-wheel-7-x-17.html, incidentally I have a brand new centre cap for these sitting here if anyone needs it for free.

They would have had to knock the driveshaft through the hub with a soft mallet after removing the hub nut so could have disturbed something, I agree with the diagnosis, vibration on load and smoothing out on lift off points to inner joint/s.

Is it an L&K by any chance?

Got a brand new centre cap for these in a box if you need it.

Fancy seeing you here 😉

I was thinking it may have been brake light switch, that causes CC to stop working

Do your brake lights work?

Superb is based on the A6 Platform. With regards to the pre facelift VRS look out for an LE, it gets the facelift dash, interior, Climate and touchscreen Bolero, also has nice leather seats, comes with the CR170 engine as well.

168 is sold to a guy in Armagh now, biggest mistake I made.

With the Erisin the standard 2 plug aerial just pops in as per factory, the unit comes with a seperate GPS unit that you locate somewhere and also come with little wifi aerial you screw in, if you want DAB you add that for a small cost and that comes with it's own aerial also.

The Erisin is a good unit and looks factory and does everything you will ever need, the live doesn't need sorting on a 2010 car it's earlier PFL that do, had mine in an LE for 2 years no complaints, even had it in Skoda and they didn't notice it wasn't OEM, a doddle to fit as well as it is truly plug and play. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Octa-core-Android-9-0-Car-Stereo-for-SKODA-OCTAVIA-Bluetooth-GPS-Sat-Nav-DAB-4G/113025288569?fits=Model%3AOctavia&hash=item1a50d50979:g:IdoAAOSwwKZdExmI

No need to remove them they will just twist around, I posted it on the thread you were in, did you buy the Erisin? If you did I had no issues with battery drain but there are some dip switches on the back that you can change for CanBus, it's in the manual.

I'm assuming when you put the Android in the Fakra connector leads were pointing to the right in the angled connector? I did warn about this that it needs to be rotated 180 degrees in the connector itself to clear the rear cage, I found out the hard way but hadn't forced it enough to break it just to deform it slightly but straightened it out and spun those cables 180 degrees and it slipped in.

I had an LE and the one I fitted was this https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Car-DVD-For-Skoda-Octavia-Radio-Android-8-0-Bluetooth-GPS-DAB-Wifi-3G-8-7826GB/113163907480?hash=item1a59183198:g:T2YAAOSwDvBctS~Wtruly plug and play and fits the OE surround, it takes 10 mins to fit and uses all the OE connectors, the CANBUS is built in so no ugly external boxes, has a double Fakra connection as the OE does, you have to rotate the cables on the OE Fakra connection 180 degrees though to clear the back cage and that's it, pop of the trim surround then 4 torx bolts, unplug the the connections at the back and plug into new unit, add the wifi aerial and GPS box that comes with the new stereo and put it behind the stereo taped to the metal cage, job done. The Android stereo retains all the on screen display stuff and integration with maxidot and adds a few more bits.

I bought mine Direct from Erisin on EBay, UK supplied, was in the car 2 years and apart from a couple of freezes in that time it was flawless, sold the car with it and it's still going strong.