Mindbomb

That's pretty poor, and that's me in my most diplomatic mode. Looks like it's been backed into a metal security post or something... I'm sad to say that it's almost at the stage where before you take your vehicle into a dealership, you have to go around it with a video camera / phone and film the car as you walk around it. To get back on topic somewhat, after changing all of the parts of the adblue system for new kit, the dealership plugged the car into the net and requested that the Skoda Mothership checked it all out. They could find no diagnostics which failed, no error codes, no flaky signals, nothing untoward at all. Other than their own employees saying "No really, it doesn't work - we've done 400 miles trying to reset the Adblue system and it just won't take it", it would have been declared to be absolutely fine. Anyway, a new ECU was sent out (no idea what that would have cost me if I'd had to buy it) and as soon as it was plugged in, the "reset" applied immediately and everything was fine. However, other than the car insisting it was out of Adblue when it was still half full, everything else I could detect worked without any issue. If it hadn't been for the large "600 miles before death" message on the dash, I'd have no idea anything at all was wrong. Have you pulled any of the codes from the OBD interface when you've had this litany of issues?

For info, the tank is 13 litres when full, which is 2.8 imperial gallons. If you brim it to the filler-cap, as I ended up doing, that should be 15 litres. I managed to get 9 litres in to completely fill it meaning when the car was telling me it was shutting down in 600 miles, it still had 6 litres in the tank, which is about half full. I knew at that point there was something amiss and and 8 weeks later, after changing an exhaust sensor, the adblue tank and sensor, a manifold sensor and doing 400 miles in test drives, it ended up in a replacement ECU which (so far) has been faultless... ... OK - I have the issue with the headlights not always levelling but there's a patch for that which the car will get at it first service, which is due now, but we'll gloss over that! Accidents do happen, and it's unfortunate that they damaged your car, but to try to cover it up is inexcusable. When you pointed it out was there any attempt to deny it was their fault or did they cough up for it immediately?

The overfilling causes an issue because the fill level is measured with an ultrasonic sensor - it needs an air gap between the sensor and the fluid level to operate. Why they chose this method - no idea. The cost sounds about right - my dealer wanted 2 hours labour at 105 quid an hour. Turns out the issue with my car was that the ECU has soiled itself which took 8 weeks to locate and diagnose so whilst I was without the car for 8 weeks, meant I didn't get charged anything to correct the issue of me overfilling it, as the ECU claimed the tank was empty when it still had 5 or 6 litres within it. Not my fault when I added 1.5 gallons, as instructed and it over-filled. The "must be filled by the dealership" bit is horseshít though - my dealer said they were happy to fill it for me, free of charge and only charge the cost of the Adblue, which I think they said was about 90p ler litre. Still more than you can fill up for at the pump but less hassle if it screws up. Your manual even gives you instructions on how to top up, how to reset the level after topping up and so forth - if it's a "dealer only" that wouldn't be in the manual. What's next - dealer only wash-wipe top-ups? That last bit really gets my goat up to be honest - it's bad enough that there's this ridiculous situation of being able to "overfill" what is nothing more than a fluid tank and land yourself with a bill to "correct" the issue but to tell customers that they should bring the car in for the privilege of having someone pour several litres of liquid to a tube...

According to the manual, it will refuse to start, once the countdown has reached 0. It will still continue to run, but once that engine turns off, it's not firing up again until it's had its Adblue dose (and at that point it might also want a service of the DPF and Christ know what else). S.

My lights have done this twice, to my knowledge. In my case, I've got into the car, hit the starter button to turn the power on and seen the headlight dance begin it's cycle and end too early. This is with no attempt to start the engine. When I do start the engine, it fires straight up and the lights stay in the down position. I then turn the ignition off, and killing the power entirely. I then do precisely the same process, and this time the headlights complete their entire cycle and point straight ahead, and again the the engine then fires straight up. Doesn't look to me like there's any power starvation going on, as this has happened with a power on with no engine start and also with a power on and immediate engine start (brake depressed upon initial switch-on) Of course, I can't replicate the issue on demand, so each evening I've been going outside and firing the car up, phone in hand, to take some pictures of where the lights end up pointing when it happens versus where they should point when everything works to plan, just so I can show the service department when I go into discuss it. The car obviously knows this, and has been perfect all week.

Sadly, with the complexity of software these days it's exceptionally difficult to test all combinations of factors. Perhaps the test cases for the headlight code didn't cover what happens when a particular patch is applied to improve the stop/start mechanism AND the car was parked the night before in the middle of a DPF clean, AND the temperature dropped to under 4 degrees C overnight AND the measured voltage in the battery is right on the cut-off point for enabling stop/start. Now that real-life testing has shown that people are experiencing a weird lighting glitch, the bug is reported, replicated, fixed and the test cases are improved to cater for more situations. That's how things work these days - you produce a product which you feel is good, release it and then watch as your users break it in ways you didn't think of. As for does it bode well for the future... we're getting better at it. Programming languages like 'Rust' make it considerably harder to write code which suffers from things like memory leaks and race conditions but there's no substitute for giving idiot-proof code to idiots... source: I write software for a living. This kind of stuff happens daily.

Some other code which runs at start-up (say, measuring outside temperature to determine whether to enable stop/start) now takes .15 seconds longer to complete, leading to a race condition/timing glitch/low voltage/you name it ad that now interrupts the completion of the headlight diagnostics and leaves them in a weird state. Could be caused by any number of external factors, which are now only relevant since update X fixed issue Z

I questioned the service manager about these reports - she'd heard nothing like it before and because I couldn't replicate it I couldn't demonstrate it either. Do you happen to know what patch they applied to the lighting control system?

This is interesting - my Superb has done precisely this, once, earlier this week when taking a cat to the vets. It's rare that I need to drive after 5 p.m so I've never noticed this before, but I got in the car, hit the brake, pressed the start button and set off only to find I could see the 15 feet of road in front of me beautifully but not much more after that. A stop, switch off and headlight dance later everything was back to normal. I've got the car in at the dealers this afternoon for them to take some data off my new ECU which they should have done when it was replaced, so I'll ask them about it. I'll report back if I get any information.

From me? A new Engine Management Unit was fitted which resolved the issue.

@peter_k - Yup, you'd think you do the easy stuff first. This is after 6 weeks of faffing about, stripping two cars down to get a donor tank and suchlike.... the only saving grace is I'm not paying for the "you overfilled the tank" issue, as they wanted to charge 2 hours labour to drain and refill it! Still, I'd have happily paid that if I'd know I'd be without a car for 6 weeks... Quite pleased I'd held off on any VCDS updates so far, or I'd be concerned they'd point the finger at me for changing the coding...

Just had a call from the dealership. Online diagnosis from Tech indicates that it probably needs a new EMU. New one ordered and we'll see what happens after that's fitted.

1 gallon to 1.5 gallons, so I added 7 litres. Left the car for 5 minutes with the ignition on, and engine off, as per the handbook. Still no clearing of the warning - still said add 1.5 gallons when you turned the ignition on. Left the car overnight. No difference. Drove it for 20 miles - no difference. Assumed I needed to add more, so I added a further 2 litres, making 9. this brimmed it and this is why the dealership said I'd overfilled it. Since then, its been drained, refilled, new knock sensor, new injector and a new tank/piping/sensor fitted (well, a donor from a working car anyway). Still no difference.

I'm told it's a 13 litre tank with 2 litres of over-fill in the pipe. I managed to fill the thing to brimming, which is how they got 15l out of it. I'd put 9l in so there must have been 6 left in the tank when the warning appeared... meaning it was whining when it was a little under half-full. Indeed - the consumption was very high if the warning was to be believed. Of those 3500 miles, the car had been to the south of France and back - say 1000 miles, so 2.5k miles "around the doors". When I got the car from PDI it showed 7,500 miles left in Adbue, so I've no reason to believe it was short-filled. That's one of the reasons why I was taken aback when the "650 miles to go" warning appeared at 3470 miles or so. It was way too early. I'm dealing with the dealership at the moment - they are stumped, as you can tell. It's now had pretty much all of the ad-blue system replaced, and the fault is still there. I'm told that when they drain the system, and refill it, they need to take it on a "reset" drive. This involves putting the car into a mode, and having to complete a sequence of driving within a time window. Something like "drive at at least 50 mph, at 2000 RPM, for one minute". Something along those lines. It's this "reset" drive which is not being accepted by my car and until it's done, the ad-blue warning won't clear.,... I'm told. Whether this is horseshít or not, I don't know. "Technical Germany" have been contacted last Thursday, and have yet to reply after 8 days, so I think it's safe to assume they are stumped too. When I enquired today about getting a replacement car, as I was talking to the service department, I was told to contact VW Finance. When I stated there was no finance on the car, and I'd paid cash, I was told I'd get a call back today from the dealership staff. We'll see if that call arrives but I'll be going up to the dealership tomorrow to have a little sit down and a chat about what next. Ideally, I'd like my car sorted out - it's got 700 quids worth of G-technic paint, leather and glass protection on it, which I don't really want to have to re-do if this car is swapped out.

At the risk of resurrecting an old thread, this issue hit me in September. 3500 miles on a 17 plate Superb. I topped up the Ad-blue when I got the "650 miles before no engine start message". It took 9 litres and despite my best efforts refused to accept the fact that I'd put any in I took it to my dealership, who said I'd over filled it and they'd need to drain the entire system and refill it.. The removed 15 litres, implying there were about 6 litres left in the tank as when started complaining about being low... something wrong there. Anyway, it was drained, refilled and... "no engine start in 600 miles" now. The dealership couldn't get it to clear. Tried all sorts apparently. Skoda Technical support said change the knock sensor. So they did, no difference. Change the adblue injector. No difference. Remove the tank from a working car and swap them over. Take several hours apparently. Did so, No difference. Everyone appears to be stumped. They've now had my car at the dealership for almost 6 weeks. I'm now at the point of requesting that they take this car away and get me a new one - I kind of expect my 30 grand+ cars to last more than a few months, 3500 miles and half a tank of adblue. Shame really, as the car itself is lovely, but if I can't start the engine, then it's not a lot of use to me. sigh.

You need to download the OBD11 app to your android phone. This costs nothing and can be done right now. You then need to purchase the OBD11 adaptor. This plugs into your ODB socket on your car. You can do this from within the app. You'll then follow the instructions for re-programming the throttle response by following clear and precise instructions. This will then squirt the relevant changes from your phone, into the OBD adaptos and then to your cars firmware . This is going to be pretty simple - you're going to change one number to another. To fork out the full price for the OBB11 adaptor simply to do this mod is not cost effective - it would be *much* cheaper to find someone near with the kit, buy a case of lager/bottle of Jamesons from <insert preferred shop>, get them to do it and recompense them in beverages. As you indicate you eventually want to perform other modifications though, we're still in business. Don't worry about the complexity - it's just changing numbers when you cut to the chase. You have to make a concerted effort to screw it up, and so long as you're literate you'll be able to adjust things as you see fit.

I've never tried Lineage (that's the "new" Cyanogenmod isn't it?) but so long as you can run a normal process with elevated privs then it should work fine. It's the stock roms which will prevent you apps from dicking with the settings and config of the phone, so anything which is opened up and relaxed should be ok. You sound like you're quite confident with tinkering with your phone - are you ok to compile it yourself, in which case I'll send you the source or would you prefer a binary? I'd recommend taking the source so you can have a look through it to ensure that I've not stuck anything malicious in there before compiling it yourself. Taking binaries from strangers on the net, sticking them on your phone with system privs and blindly running them is not recommended!

Normally, I'd say "absolutely" but it would most likely not work for you. In order to change the date programatically on Android you need to run with operating system level privileges. This is not normally possible to do unless you're running a modified version of the Android kernel, which I am. So, unless you are in the same boat as me and running a non-stock, flashed, unlocked and are happy for normal applications to run with root level access, you'd just get an error from it. I develop Android code at work, so I'm forever messing around with this kind of thing, hence the somewhat frigged around with OS I'm running.

Chromecast or a Kodi box is what SWMBO uses downstairs to either stream stuff directly from the net, stream downloaded files from our NAS drive or she chromecasts stuff from her phone. More often than not, it's a either a straight stream off from the NAS drive or I stick the entire season on a USB stick for her and she just plugs it into the Kodi and away she goes. The Sky box is rapidly becoming nothing more than an power vampire. I suspect that once she's watched this years Tour de France she'll tell me to pull the plug on it as she can watch everything Sky offers up, and more, for a fraction of the cost.

As I understand it (and I've not bought the dongle or the pro version yet - just installed the freebie version), you gain a credit every day by opening the app and you can view a video (an ad, I guess) each day for 5 credits. If you want to perform long coding by flipping bits on in the status registers then you can do this manually without spending credits. However, I believe there are pre-built packages (say, enable traffic sign monitoring) which perform all of the programming in a little bundle. If you want to use one of these, you can pay for it using bought credits or using the "one per day and five for watching an advert" credits. Convenience factor really, and no risk of ballsing it up. However, to do this you'd still need to buy the dongle and register the pro version of the application, which is still going to cost you a couple of quid but nothing like the cost of VCDS. I was curious about the application myself, so I downloaded it to have a bit of a poke around in it, and found it doesn't really guard against someone gaming the OS and knocking in hundreds of credits just by changing the date. I wrote a little application at work yesterday which increases the date on my phone by one day every two seconds... left it running whilst I was in a few hour-long meetings yesterday afternoon. S.

OBDEleven grants credits, one per day, as far as I can tell. It also only records the most recent date which it granted a credit on. Therefore if the date on your phone gets advanced one day at a time, whilst the app is active, the app clocks up another credit for you. You can't advance it 7 days and get 7 credits - got to be one day at a time. If happen to be at work, I suspect you could crank on hundreds of credits during a typical dump, hampered only by your boredom. Probably....

My apologies for the delay. The wheels were removed, taken to a local alloy specialist, stripped back and re-painted to match the originals. Can't tell the difference to be honest - if anything these look glossier either because they are "newer" and haven't lain in a warehouse for a year or the lacquer is thicker/newer. @chris_vrs gets the entire car tomorrow for a new car detail so he''ll be giving them a once over when he has then off the car to be GTechnic'd. To myself, they look perfect - I'd not be able to tell them apart from the same paint-scheme from the factory. I can get some pictures if anyone wants close-ups, but I doubted anyone would be interested so I've not yet bothered. I asked the dealer if this would affect any warranty claims - nope - as far as they are concerned those are the same wheels that arrived on the car so any faults are with the original wheels and any warranty claim wouldn't be impacted.

I've seen it mentioned on this site several times. It's simply alters the linearity of the throttle as I understand it - rather than 30% throttle requesting 30% torque demand, it requests (say) 50%. It makes the throttle feel "snappier" - it does not alter anything in the ECU to alter the torque curve of the engine itself.

Everything is better when it goes to eleven...

I thought the the 70 quid bumper cover from Skoda was a bit rich for what it actually was, so I bought one of these for my Estate - http://www.boot-buddy.com/skoda/superb-estate-2015-present-without-raised-boot-floor/deluxe-bumper-guard