brettikivi

another 2k down, winter tyres are now on. With colder weather (we had snow the first three days of last week), the Aux heater is getting used and the numbers are immediately worse. My commute change seems to have been negative on the numbers, as there's literally five minutes of 50/40km/h at either end and a bunch of 80 at the Helsinki side. Limits are still posted at 120... and so I figure the winter tyres alone make for a 0.3l/100 difference. The Aux heater is drinking quite a lot Hoping to leave the car standing still for much of this week, I've done near 3000km in October alone. - Bret

It doesn't work like that. I'm becoming less and less a fan of what OBD11 does the more I see posts like this. Coding is like playing with the Windows Registry. Some stuff seems trivially simple and some hives like HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE exist for all computers. But where HP might add a specific tree "HP", it would be a little... obtuse to expect Lenovo to do the same or MSI. Just because it's a Windows 10 machine doesn't mean any changes you make are going to work and be without side-effects. You may or may not be able to see or experience those side-effects immediately. The registry may or may not be case-sensitive. You won't know until you try and even then it might not be clear without damage, like not being able to start the computer up any more. Having a backup or plan b starts to be important at that point. Back to VCDS: reading the VIN is trivial as it's in the top level of the ECU. Connecting the VIN to a setup and / or software and firmware versions is something that I see as being well beyond both the remit and capability of the log-reading companies and comes across as naive. It's not even in the capabilities of ECP and co, whose business model depends on them selling you the right thing, and even dealer information isn't always 100%. So why should it be possible for a small outfit to know definitively? If you don't know what you are doing, you should leave it alone. If you understand what you *want* and *why* it should work like that, then you'll also know that you should be taking care to ensure you have a record of "was" before anything changes and the changes you make. Understanding the principles of "leuchtfunktion", that side and tail and DRL lights are all seperate and each side is treated differently, that the BCM is trying to play nicely with the various electronic systems of the car, that the complexity of the systems involved is significant - the connection between headlight switch and LED is at the level of "tell the LED to turn on" being sent by bus and no longer "just" a relay or switch connecting. Like the facelift wasn't just a facelift and 2016 cars differ from 2015 ones (MIB version is a starting point), the facelift brought a whole bunch of changes - this is non-trivial information which seems irrelevant to those who are not versed in the ins and outs but may actually be quite important. Long coding gets around some of this by allowing you to understand that you changed the value of Byte 1 from 0x0011 to 0x0111, which is the better way to do it. Then you really should have a note of what the preceding state was and what you did to "fix" it.

those are ambition wheels here as well. - Bret

Active, Ambition, Elegance, L&K. Changed in 2016 or so here to Active, Ambition, Style, L&K. For us the wheels are the giveaway. SE stuff is just ... strange for me... - Bret

as far as I'm concerned, if I can read a number, the engine is warm. Especially from a -20C start. I might only see 65-70C in winter. - Bret

happy with my 1.0. Decent consumption, too. I'm on my second... - Bret

factory reset. Takes 2 minutes, clears everything. - Bret

now heading towards 17500km. Things have settled a little, though my commute just changed so my numbers will change slightly. I have had the experience of pulling a couple of massive trailers over the last two weeks, though, and it was interesting - first, it added around 25% to my consumption numbers (though most of the driving was in Helsinki congestion); second, the car was fine with it but it was nowhere near as sprightly as usual. That's fair enough with something like this behind you. Second trailer was far nicer to drive than the first - not quite sure why, but whatever. The electrics worked well, no PDC, Trailer on the display, secondary indicator light showing... Normal business sees me dropping the averages below 6l now. With winter rapidly approaching, the Aux heater has seen lots of use already and winter tyres will go on in a couple of weeks. Speed limits will change at the end of the month to 100km/h and I will try to run a couple of weeks with summer wheels at the lower speeds just to see the effect - I think it's around 1l, possibly more. - Bret

Depends a little on the power you're putting in.. what amp was it? - Bret

... so we've been talking for a while about the new kilometers I get to do through work and the current car is on a lease. With me pretty much guaranteed to go over the agreed kms, I went to talk to the dealer. He had a white Ambition BusinessLine, spec'd with LEDs. 1.0, manual, Combi. So on the 24th the grey hatch will be swapped for a white Combi. This is on a 100k km lease over four years. A couple of thoughts on consumption: the current car has a long-term average of 5,2l/100, with average speed of 63km/h. That's just since the winter tyres were put on, but it reflects pretty well where the numbers were going. 54mpg ain't too shabby for a petrol Octavia. Yes, mostly 100km commutes / airport runs with 100km/h limits, but the temps are awful, lots of wet roads (which makes a significant difference) and no particular attention paid to consumption. Very interested to see how the Combi stands up to this, as it will have a GPF. It's also getting a towbar. Tyres will be Nokian Hakka 9s for winter. Now to clear all the junk from the car and work out what I want to customize on the new one... - Bret