joeski

The common part of the linkage that drops off once the joint is worn is relatively cheap, did mine a few months ago, think it was £6. It happened about 2 years ago and I got some linkage clips off ebay that worked well and lasted 18 months, I'm guessing I'll get longer from the new linkage arm though. Really easy job, there are videos on youtube to help you.

I had a similar issue last year, it turned out to be a faulty microswitch in one of the door locks telling the car that a door was open when it wasn't. It's easy to diagnose, just look through back window when the alarm is triggered and see if the door open light on the dash is on.

I knew you could move them sideways if you lose the middle seat, I also knew they had handles at the front but always presumed they were for carrying them when you removed them. I'm nipping out in a bit, will have a play

The rear seats move forward and back? How do you slide them, pretty sure mine are fixed in place.

Because both windows are affected, my guess would be the control unit in the drivers door has failed.

Yep, it looked the same as the old one, just not split (yet)

Was giving my son a driving lesson in a car park and after some kangarooing he said the brakes weren't working properly. I had a check and they were just about able to stop the car at slow speeds but the pedal was hard and needed a lot of strength to get anywhere near half decent braking. Had a check and the vacuum pipe from the servo that runs behind the engine was split and loose on the right hand side where it meets the engine block, I had some electrical tape so temporarily repaired it and it held a vacuum long enough for me to try every scrap-yard within about 40 miles of where I live with no joy. Ended up getting one from the main dealers for £36 and replaced it in a few minutes. Just thought I'd share incase anyone else gets this issue. A new servo fitted is about £400 inc. labour so always worth checking the vacuum pipe. As a side note, while removing the old pipe I noticed the left hand side that goes into the servo was also split and taped up with black tape and had been that way for the 3 years I've had this car, so a flimsy bit of tape had been keeping my brakes working (and me and my family alive) for 3 years! Never picked up on an MOT either...

Yep, both windows are controlled through the loom going into the drivers door. The control unit for them is part of the window motor on the drivers door.

The reason I wouldn't recommend Skoda and to a lesser extent VW is because of the known issues that the dealers will happily charge you through the nose to correct. I.e. the loom issues, this forum has shown me that it is such a common problem and Skoda MUST know about it but totally don't care. With such an obvious issue they should at least offer the replacement looms for cost price, if not cost, then at least not 1000% cost which is what I'm guessing they are at the moment. My guess is they cost less than a tenner to produce but they still sell them at 10x that price, at least Dlck Turpin wore a mask so you knew you were being robbed... With all the trouble I've had with my Roomster, can you really blame me ? I would strongly recommend against buying a Roomster to anyone I know, another reason is the rarity of the parts because the Roomster has been discontinued for so long now and was relatively unpopular when it was in production. Wouldn't matter what make the car was - any car with replacement parts as expensive and hard to get as parts for the Roomster are would get a down vote from me. Anyone want to buy it? I'll sell it for half what I paid a year ago £1750, 57 plate 1.4TDI with panoramic roof, just shy of 100k miles ??

I hate my Roomster, never had nearly as much trouble from any other car. Every loom that could break has broken. Both front door locks have failed electrically. The window motor (which also controls door locks and triggers alarm) has had an intermittent problem for the last few months. The boot is failing to open with the back doors, only opens on fob button hold now. Back windows keep dropping. Drivers door has become loose in that there is still a gap for wind and rain when it's closed. The engine is awfully weak, I have to make sure I have double the gap in traffic to turn onto a main road because there is no acceleration. Can't get into 4th gear until I'm doing about 40mph unless it's downhill. Any long spells of rain mess with the electrics and causes the alarm to go off 5-6 times a night when it happens. Parts are nearly impossible to get hold of except at the dealers and they know it so charge extortionate rates (£100 for drivers door loom, £27 for drivers door window switch etc...) Even the windscreen wipers are a special 'expensive' kind. The car randomly thinks doors are open when they're not so triggers the alarm, usually at night, usually when it's raining. Parking sensors don't work. Sometimes the passenger door doesn't lock with the rest. I thoroughly regret buying this heap of junk. It actually depresses me that I'm stuck with it for the foreseeable future :'( Used to have a Zafira, now that was a car I was happy to own. Going off my experience I would strongly advise anyone to steer clear of Roomsters and Skoda in general, knowing that VW share a lot of the same electrical problems I'd steer clear of them too.

@BEN99W Do you still get the reversing display with your new stereo?

@aubrey Which sensors did you get off eBay? A link would be awesome as this is my next job on my Roomy.

There is a switch. The light should go out when the glove box is closed. Once you get to it you can see how badly designed it is, the switch is just popped into a bit of rather weak casing and repeated use of the glove box causes it to drop out its' housing. You need to take the center console off to get to it. It's on the right hand side of the glove box, you can see a moulded section of the 'door' that goes through a hole on the right to activate it.

I know this is an old thread and the OP will have sorted this by now but I changed my aerial + base yesterday and thought my info may be of interest. I bought an aerial base off eBay - https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/GENUINE-REPLACEMENT-CAR-ROOF-AERIAL-ANTENNA-MAST-BASE-SKODA-FABIA-OCTAVIA-RAKU/112504702872 Removed the old base by popping the 3 studs that hold the covering up inside the car where the aerial is located, needed to pull one pillar cover off too so that the roof trim didn't crease too much. Undid and removed old base - the wire connector has a clip that slides away from the aerial to release. Installed new base and then found that the original aerial mast does not fit into it, so went to euro car parts and paid for a new mast that did fit. All trim etc. replaced and aerial is working well now. The anti theft bit of the old aerial made the threaded union too long to insert into the base I had bought, I probably could have used a grinder to shorten it but it was scruffy anyway so just got a new one. The old aerial takes a pretty hard tug before it comes out due to the anti theft feature, I found it a lot easier to remove once the base was off and I wasn't worried about bending my cars' roof when tugging on it. The footprint of the new aerial base is smaller than the original too so you can now see where the old one was, not even wonder wipes would clean the mark off. I think the skoda dealer charge £35 ish for a new base and if I was doing this again I'd go with that for the footprint and the fact I could use my old aerial mast.

I had similar symptoms although my rear demister also didn't work, there was one wire completely broken in the gaitor and a couple where the wire was exposed through broken sleeving. Bit of insulation tape and a short section of very over-rated 13A wire salvaged from a kettle flex and it's been fine for a few months now.

Potato patata These are what I and others round these here parts call bottle nosed pliers:

Wouldn't you just know it. Was having the fault 20+ times a day, as soon as I get in a position to read the data and see which door is the problem, it hasn't re-occured once, the car behaved beautifully today again...

Yeah bottle nosed pliers, the ones with thinner jaws, do you have another name for them? If both ways work, then happy days I did it this way once and the guy at the dealership did it this way too. I just wish the #@*& who owned this car before me knew either way of doing it, there wasn't an un-broken gaiter on any door or the tailgate

Have heard these called a few names, I like the name gaiter, some call them bellows or grommets. It's labelled '1' in this pic. Was shown last week by a mechanic at the Skoda dealer how to take off the wiring gaiters WITHOUT breaking them. At the top as you look at it is a plastic lever buried in the rubber, you can feel it if you squeeze round there. Grab that with bottle nosed pliers and lever it up, the catch inside will then lever downwards and unclip the top of the gaiter from the door pillar.

Thanks for that

Seems I was looking in the wrong bit, I was looking under chassis/comfort and the door buttons there didn't work. Looked in cent. elec. and went to measuring block 005 and there was a live reading of each door. The intermittent fault hasn't occured since I found out how to read it. Sods law...

I know this was a couple of years ago, but I have this exact problem. What was it in the end?

Good evening. Been having loads of problems with electrics on my roomster. Ended up buying a 3rd party interface and grabbing VCDS lite from Ross Tech. My current main issue with the roomster is an intermittent 'door open' warning when no doors are open, this sets the alarm off and stops me locking the car. Anyway, The VCDS issue is that it can connect and read data with many of the modules, but it can't find (?) the door modules, just comes back with ''no response from controller'' when I click on any of the doors. Roomster isn't in the list of cars that you see in the drop sown box in the auto scan section and I read that it can be added in a txt document, anyone got any advice? Cheers.

Discovered last week that the passenger door hasn't been locking at all when I was locking the car, no idea how long it's been that way. Had a look at the loom and there were stripped wires and also the thicker brown wire that goes to the lock mech looked like it had overheated and stripped about an inch at the lock end and the gaiter end. So ordered a new loom for the passenger side (that's 2 looms in 6 months), fitted it yesterday in the 20 mins of light I had left after work and it hasn't fixed the problem. I've also had the ''door open'' light constantly on for a week when all doors are closed, so unable to set the alarm and needed to lock 'most' doors with the key in the door, the new loom didn't fix this, it has however become intermittent rather than constantly on, so the car beeps at me now every 2-3 seconds when I'm driving. Driving me mad Ordered a cheap vcds cable off ebay, will hopefully be able to plug it in and find out what the problems are. Will update when I know more. Loved this car for a while when I bought it, beginning to hate it now...

Damn those looms are feeble. Had my ear up to the door yesterday when it was playing up and it's not making a sound, the car also doesn't react when I open that door i.e. the door open warning light doesn't come on, so pretty sure mine is the loom also.