brettikivi

Check Mobile.de for similar cars. The sale price over there is a hell of a lot more than £15k/€16.5k. Karlsruhe isn't that far from you.

I'm up in middle Finland, about 4 hours / 300km south of the Arctic Circle. It won't really get dark for the next 3 months, from here to the solstice and back again. If it's cloudy, there's a chance of serious twilight. Darkness... not really, but sun coming up around 0945 and disappearing again at 1530 in mid-December. It's not particularly pleasant... no, it does get a little darker. This morning at 0400 it was light again already. Here's the graph: https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/finland/kuopio . Bret

Summer tyres back on. And you can almost see the lake again! (I drove over this about 6 months ago - it was an ice road). This is also why you won't get any pics of the light bar working for a while yet, as it doesn't really get dark now and won't for another couple of months....

a bunch of this is optimizations. To keep emissions low, to make sure temperatures don't go too high under extreme conditions. I would also assume to make life easier for the driver to be smooth with a trailer on and compensate for the higher train weight. Mine seems slightly tamer when there's a trailer correctly connected (yes, I drove one the other day and didn't realise that the electrics were broken until relatively late). Besides, what's also not clear from the list is how much of this is for homologation in European countries where the rules are stricter than the UK's "bolt it on, it will be fine".

there's also the cabling from front to back to ease CAN connectivity.

.. and the light output is glorious. Wasn't dark until past 2200 but this is a huge improvement. Did try to take some pics but will do a better job when I've found a straight road and some darkness without lights this week.

Yes.

So I used to live near (60miles north of) Helsinki and would drive maybe once a week to the office. When the clocks moved, I would either need lights or not. Back in September, my wife got a new job, so we moved another 300km north. My commute is now 400km. It's difficult to relay how different the roads are here to the UK. Of the 400km down, the first 50km is lit. Then it's darkness all the way until about 25km before Helsinki. There are junctions that are lit, small sections maybe, but most of it is dark. And in October, November, that means *dark*. No snow to reflect light, just damp asphalt that eats it. I'd not realised how bright moonlight can be until a trip a few weeks back. But we're hurtling towards summer again now. It's still not completely dark outside and it's 2130 here. We're a complete 2 months away from the solstice. For the next weeks, when I drive down, it will be light. When I come back up, it might be dark for the last couple of hours - in a month or so, not even then. Then, in July, things will start rapidly getting darker again... Now add in the wildlife: that's the foxes, bunnies, wolves (yes, really), badgers, wolverines, deer and elk that roam the place. You want to see them well ahead of time, and i'm driving during dusk and sunrise, the times they're most active. I would much rather see them than meet them. And to be honest, the traffic levels here.... well, the other week I counted 10 cars coming the other way on the 9 between the motorway south of Kuopio and Suonenjoki. That's about 30kms, so call it 20 minutes of driving. It gets busier closer to Jyväskylä, but it's normally pretty empty. So light becomes *really* important, as you don't want to be caught out with an Elk when it's -26C. This is all road-legal in the EU, the reference is only 45. With 35 from the original lights, we're at 80. 100 is the limit. TL;DR:light is life up here.

Standard ones AFAIK, I have not changed them. Is about 2-3x brightness, as expected.

A basic setting tells the system to start from 0 and check - go left - is everything OK? - reset value - now go right - repeat - up - repeat - down - repeat. There's similar on the older cars for the flaps for moving heat around - they cycle from the top to the bottom, re-calibrate the values expected, and this means things can start working properly again. It's really useful because it's a simple self-test and proves the basics before taking things apart.

got it back with the light in on Thursday, only got around to some potatochop today. See attached looking forward to the drive home on Thursday next week. Light is a Lazer Linear 18 Elite. Bracket from Lumise.fi. Location under the numberplate, in the front lower grille: Position light close-up: couple of comparison shots from the parking cave: Dipped beam high beam now:

dropped it off for the light install in the morning man, the audio system sounds good atm.

have you had it scanned to see if the door control module is failing and / or there's a comms issue? battery is one potential issue but a scan would also tell you that. . Bret

there was a discussion on this not so long back. The kick up should be visible on a kerb at about 35m distance from the car on a flat surface. So a car park, 35 paces from the kerb, you should be able to see the edge of the pool of light. And the startup dance should go up and down, left and right. If it doesn't, you have a different problem.

... and now it's booked in for the lamp (lazer linear 18 elite) to be fitted next Thursday. Oh, and it's still snowing out at -3C.

intrigued on the rear climate, how simple that is... I washed mine at the weekend and you can't tell. Will be filthy again if I get to go back to Helsinki this week.

So, a log is attached from the first 15-20 mins of the trip down yesterday. You can see ambient was around -7. Aux heating was on for over 20 minutes before getting in the car; load doesn't seem to make much difference to heating speeds. Note also that oil lags way behind coolant. First few minutes is town driving, then onto the motorway, slowing for roadworks and then back to cruise clicked in. This was made with some excel magic (mainly the formatting of numbers) and Carport's logging. I note with interest that the speed is the correct GPS speed, not what the speedometer says.

I have to drive to Helsinki Wednesday. I will try to set things up that I can log oil temp. Should be about -5C at start and be below freezing most of the way down. Lightly loaded and with limits at 80 / 100km/h that should give a decent indication of how fast temp goes up and where it gets to. I will see if I can log ambient, coolant and oil temps. @ApertureS you have VCDS too, no? Could you do the same for a short trip of say 10-15miles at reasonable speeds and post the results? Would be good to see what a higher ambient does. I expect to be towing in the summer 1700kgs of caravan for a while, will attempt to log that too. . Bret

was the oil temperature so high before you replaced the coolant tank? Are you happy you've filled it to the correct level using g13?

if you leave aircon at 22C and auto, does it hold the temperature? when the car is warm, can you request cold air and it delivers? what about hot? 114 after 15kms is way too warm. SSP403 implies that the temp sensor is at the bottom of the sump, so it should be pretty accurate. I would want to scan sooner rather than later.

I would want to read this with as many sensors as possible, using something like torque or VCDS, and then also over lower vs higher speed stuff. I remember watching mine hit 102-105C on the motorway at 100km/h and 0C ambient. It was colder when it's colder but not with linear regression - -20C saw it stay around 80C, I think. But I tend not to watch it too much. I remember only seeing 110 on the 1.0TSI when pulling a brick of a trailer or with lots of very high rev running on a couple of laps of the ice track. Can you track it through a longer trip, say 10-20 miles? I would expect a rampup, with it dropping slightly after 70C (as the oil cooler is opened) and then coming back up, so if you're doing 50mph, I would expect to see a steady 95-100C at 5-10C ambient. If it's immediately really high after start, that would possibly imply a temperature sensor is faulty. Logging with torque or similar would be really useful here. I'm erring towards a faulty sensor. How many kms does the car have? Have you also had it scanned?

what's the oil level like?

Pressing the button with the (A) symbol next to the one with (P) applies "autohold" - this automatically applies the handbrake when there is more than 5% inclination of the car. You'll see a green (P) symbol in the dash when this is active. The button also lights up orange. Apply the handbrake manually by pulling the (P) handle. The (P) in the dash is red at this point. It should also be red when you turn off the ignition after the autohold has applied the handbrake. Autohold will also apply the handbrake and ease it off when you complete a hill start, allowing minimal roll backwards. (i have a 20% gradient to my parking garage and I get to stop at the top every time... it works well). I haven't tried things without the(A) button pushed, it is one of the first things I turned on and have left it alone since. . Bret

.. then it doesn't work on my Superb. They were /terrible/ the other week in wet, salty water. The Octy was always really good about this (and there was always significantly higher consumption in the rain). Very disappointed with the Superb wet braking at the moment. Need to check all the correct guards are in place.

mine's gone off to the dealer's for a service - inspection and then oil service as it would be due in 7k kms anyway... just ticked over 130000, too. Looking over the brakes with a clean and lube too, and it should be less than €300. I can live with that. Next up is to swap the summer / winter rims to try and get the "snow piles onto my rims". Essentially, the snow piles up on the inside of the rims at the rear and then when I stop it starts to melt.... meaning the rims become unbalanced. It's also really hard to get rid of with a brush. So the idea is to see if the Stratos rims help the problem.