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Not a main dealer actually. I tend to use “specialists” when my cars reach a certain age. Generally with decent results, especially with the VAG group. Clearly not on this occasion though. I’ll have a chat with Mitchell Skoda tomorrow, they’re normally pretty good if I need to pick a technician’s brain. Perhaps if I describe the new symptoms to them they might try a calibration rather than a £125 diagnostic. No previous faults, straight into this nonsense, and no conditions of note as I recall. It’s fairly heavily used; 2 kids & a dog @ >100k miles.

You’ve cracked it Pete; item 52 would attach to both screw holes and place the gas strut slap bang in the middle. Good website that. Any more bright ideas from anyone before I give up on powered struts forever?

All advice welcome! I’m desperate to get it fixed one way or another

Profile done. Central VW Audi, Ellesmere Port, Wirral. When I phoned around to see if anyone had experience with the fault they seemed to know the score. The boot started opening by small increments, a bit further with every press of the external boot switch. Then it wouldn’t close or lock properly. After the replacement boot switch it opens properly, locks properly, but won’t close. I have to pull it down. The garage cleared the faults and it worked for them before I collected it, but the fault reoccurred before I drove it away. No further fault codes. Then I tried the replacement struts just in case, same fault. Garage said they’d probably try the closing switch on the underside of the boot next as all microswitches have to be talking together for correct functionality, so I got one from skoda and replaced it myself. No change. When the boot is open and I try and close it, it jerks slightly downward before returning to full height. If I pull it down then it resists me and wants to go back to full height. I’ve unplugged the connectors behind the pillars for now so that I can close it. Very occasionally, if I lock and unlock the car repeatedly it might close for me. Have tried setting the boot height. Driving me mad

Good to know, thanks. Piece of cake to unscrew the existing knuckles so would be an easy change. Probably… I don’t want to downgrade, but the mechanism is knackered somewhere and I don’t want to spend more money chasing a fix. Tried new battery, exterior handle/lock, struts (aftermarket; managed to send them back for refund thankfully), boot switch on underside for closure. Only thing I haven’t changed is the pull-down motor inside the boot lid above the lock. Nearly £500 down so far without a fix. Not worth chasing any more in my option. Although the gas struts not fitting is making me have second thoughts

You’d think so wouldn’t you? Not sure of the exact difference, but attaching the gas strut to the existing ball knuckles (where the electric struts attach) results in a low boot height where I’d be risking my forehead every day, and moving the knuckles to the other position renders them too close together to even clip the gas ones on. I’ve tried pushing them down first, but they’re way too stiff to do by hand. If I open the boot to its full extent and offer the struts up, they sit somewhere in the middle

Hi All Long story short, trying to convert my electric tailgate on 2016 (MK3) Superb estate (3V5) to gas struts. If someone is able to help, I’d very much like to get the measurements from the centre of each ball connector on their manual tailgate with the estate lid fully open (i.e. just less than the length of the gas strut when fully extended). The ball connectors are moveable, and I’ve made an assumption that the shorter distance is for gas struts and the longer distance is for the electric ones, but the supposedly compatible gas struts I’ve bought seem to sit in the middle of the two holes. They’re just less than 600mm long. I hope that makes sense.