freelunch

Had a drama: washed the Sahara dust off my Sportline, because we leave bright and early tomorrow for a long-anticipated holiday and I like to make a clean start. Found out my five-year-old battery was dead. "Drive to charge the battery" said the helpful message on the dashboard. I used my breakdown cover for the first time in five years. Two hours later, the Sportline was running and I went for a "drive to charge the battery". Drove via Halfords, who had a battery for me and fitted it (it was worth the £25 fitting charge to ease my stress levels). Phew! Really looking forward to this trip.

I recently had a 32Gb usb stick where every track was playing twice. When I looked at the list, sure enough, there were two copies of each song. I ejected the stick and stuck it in my computer. There were no duplicates. Reinserted the stick in the Columbus and the duplicates had disappeared. I supposed switching the unit off and on again without the stick in my have helped clear the memory? Dunno.

Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Good one.

Had a bit of a shock today. Popped into my local Esso station and filled it with E5. The headline sign announcing prices said £1.51, so I was expecting it to cost a lot. Had my back turned to the pump. When it clicked off, I turned to see £110.16. E5 is £1.69/L. Just wow. This is fully £20 more than my next highest fill up ever. Thankfully, I only do about 4K miles a year. If I drove for a living, I'd be bu**ered. Mind, I'd have a Prius, but I'm guessing electric vehicles aren't cheap to top up, either. What with taxes, food shopping today and the fill up... well, you know.

Try a different card. Or even a USB stick, just to test the formatting.

Only if you spec it up. The L&K is high spec as standard. The Sportline is a styling exercise: black grill and mirrors and silly "spoiler" on the boot, big rims, lower stance.

MS DOS (FAT). Drag'n'drop.

I format my SD cards with Disk Utility on a Mac. They work fine. It's plug'n'play with the music files, but for installing map updates, I have to use CleanMyDrive 2.app before the Columbus unit will accept the data. Maybe you could try a different card. Just stick a few files on it as a test. Maybe the unit doesn't like the SD card you're using?

Or a greenish gold

I was annoyed by the excessive throttle pedal travel before anything started to happen. I bought one of these: Pedal Box . it gets rid of the play in the pedal and adds sportier throttle maps. It does not affect the stock performance traits of the engine. They've gone up in price since five years ago (what hasn't?) but it was money well spent.

I bought a demonstrator, which came in red. I like the colour, but lusted after the velvet red when it came out, or especially the Dragon Green. So I kept checking in the the pricing each year, just in case my Sportline developed some sort of quirk that would force a new purchase. The damn thing just keeps running perfectly...

No, oddly, I don't have the 2016 brochure, either. I can offer you this: (link removed) Any use?

(link removed) 2018 price brochure

Oops. Gb.

Download and read the Columbus manual for the SD formatting and acceptable file versions. The main thing to note otherwise, is that you can have a maximum of 9,999 files on a SD card. Any amount over that is ignored by the system. This happens surprisingly quickly if you're loading mp3s. It means a 128 Mb card is really as big as you need. The system will read a 256 Mb card, but you can't really use the capacity. I've tried...

Yeah! Get the ones with the big Brembos...

m4a is lossless, too. I must be doing something wrong when I create my flac files. I don't get an album cover.

The Columbus manual says .wma, .wav, .mp3, .aac, .mp4, .m4a, .flac and .ogg. I use .mp3 and .m4a, but .flac does not allow album cover previews.

This Sportline is my first automatic. I've been driving it for four years. Best car ever, if you want a cruiser with loads of room. I get 35.6 mpg averaged since I've owned it. Sit in crawling motorway traffic for an hour and you'll be glad of ACC and DSG. Now is a good time to look for a dealer's demo – that's what I bought, and no regrets.

No, red is better. Black is beautiful for about five minutes after each cleaning. (Nice photoshop job.)

Don't want to move your Michelins to the front?

My 220 DSG used to lose grip in the wet when I was running the Pirelli P7s. Since I changed to Vredestein Quatrac 5s, the problem has disappeared, unless I really try to force the issue.

I have the same car, a year older. My worst mileage measured on a full tank was 25.5 mpg. Tesco 99, normal DSG, air con always on, city driving. My best tank was 40.7 on a touring holiday.

That might be true, but as France is inclined to inflict as much pain on the UK post-Brexit as they can, I prefer to take the least line of resistance. I still carry two breathalysers even though they are not supposed to be a requirement anymore. I was stopped in a road trap before Brexit. They went through me with a fine-toothed comb. I was very fortunate to have 0% alcohol on my breath after a long lunch. I didn't even vote for Brexit!

If you're used to travelling with a European Health Insurance Card, it's no longer valid. You need a UK Global Health Insurance Card (GHIC). Apply online and allow yourself plenty of time.