Russ77

Update..... My local mechanic did the work for me, the slave was weeping and there was fluid in the bellhousing, everything was working absolutely fine until the guy MOT'ing it found the clutch pedal was clunking again so it looks like the Slave & Master cylinders were screwed! Just waiting on a price to get the master replaced. The pedal does still work OK but the hesitancy when coming off the clutch when accelerating must have been the master cylinder all along. Drives lovely now and the much lower biting point nearly caught me out every time I pulled away driving home from the garage lol

Skoda broke down their quote: Flywheel - £778.36 Flywheel bolts - £21.96 Clutch - £354.91 Bearing - £56.80 Clutch bolts - £11.36 Labour to fit £600 Total cost - £1823.39 Inc. vat The independent mechanic has quoted £500 for LUK Clutch, CSC & flywheel from Euro/GSF parts and he's letting me have them at cost. He's a friend of my brother and is only going to charge me £170 for fitting

I've got a 64-plate MK3 2.0TD CR with 96K on the clock. On new year's day, when I depressed the clutch to start it, the pedal hit the floor and stayed there. The hydraulic fluid reservoir was empty but there's no sign of leakage in the engine bay under the reservoir or as far down as you can see underneath and there's no fluid on the clutch pedal. I filled up the brake fluid, pumped the clutch a few times and could select gears OK. A mechanic friend of mine then bled the clutch and the pedal feel/position was restored although he needed to bleed it again shortly after as there was more air in the system. Given the lack of visible fluid, he thinks the likely culprit is the slave cylinder and has said it would make sense to change the slave cylinder (obviously) along with the clutch & flywheel. A couple of other points..... in the 3 years I've owned it, a handful of time the clutch has made loud clunking noises when depressed, more of a plastic noise rather than metal but with 3-4 quick depressions, this would go away. Also, for a long time, when changing gears and letting the clutch out quickly, there's a very slight pause before the things get going again. It's no clutch slip as the revs drop, pause and a fraction of a second later it picks up again. Could these be a symptom of the slave cylinder failing or perhaps something else? I've obtained some quotes with vastly varying prices (all inclusive of parts & labour): Skoda Dealership - £1824 Local VAG Specialist - £1080 Local Garage - £1141 + £60 to cover the hire of a "special tool" to set/reset the clutch (is this really a thing?) Local mechanic - £670 (he's a friend of my brothers who's worked on my wife's car, giving me parts at cost (£500) and charging me £170 to fit them I know cheapest isn't always best, I don't doubt my mechanic's ability and he's going to be using LUK parts but is there anything that could bite a one-man-band mechanic in the ar5e and on this type of job and cost me more in the long run? I appreciate that's quite a lot to process and TBH I thought I'd get it all down for my own sanity (the wife's completely bored of this already lol) Cheers Russ

By law, the speedo can't under-estimate your speed because if this it will always over-read by a little bit. Brand new tyres can have around 8mm of tread and you can legally drive on 1.6mm so the wheel will rotate faster with an worn tyre. If you had a speed that was 100% bang on your actual speed, what level of tread would you calibrate it too?

I'm seeing posts on a "mummy" group where someone's sh1tting themselves as they've ordered goods from eBay that are coming from China. One of the best replies so far "if you're worried enough to post on here just throw the parcel in the bin". IMO it's unlikely that an item that's taken several days to get from China to the UK would still have live virus present (assuming it had it in the first place) would still pose a health risk but then these are the sort of people that believe everything they see/read without question and aren't prepared to do their own research.

Well not that interesting but one I'd never seen in 2 years of ownership. External temperature was around 5c, cabin temp set to 21c with the aircon on. I'd been driving for around 10 minutes so the engine hadn't fully warmed up and I came to a set of traffic lights where SS would normally kick in but it didn't. I went into the infotainment system to see what was stopping it, this is what I saw (not verbatim): Engine needs to be running for air conditioning (see this one all the time) Windscreen may fog if engine not running The latter was definitely new on me, just didn't know my car cared so much about my well being 😚

I got the fuel cap open with minimal damage. Using a crowbar-like pry tool, I opened the flap as much as I could which gave me access to the actuator retainer. Using a small screwdriver I manager to break one side of the retainer which gave me enough wriggle room to open the flap. I didn't get around to picking up the new actuator from the dealership so I snipped the lugs off the old actuator for the time being and fixed the retaining part on the cap with some superglue. Tested the actuator and it's definitely screwed, won't operate at all and is stuck in the locked position. So the moral of this story is..... when the actuator starts playing up, either cut the lugs or replace it BEFORE it gets stuck in the locked position!

Mine should be ready to pick up at the dealers tomorrow (although I probably won't get to fit it until the weekend. I've bought a pry tool kit to help me open the flap without damage (hopefully), other than that it does look quite straightforward

On point 2...... it's the risk you take if you don't declare the mod. Under normal circumstances, if say you had a minor shunt they may never even look at your car but in the event of something more serious, it would be possible to forensically examine the ECU and determine it has been modified. Insurance companies have also been known to check social media/car forums to look for evidence like this too. To be honest, a question I've considered before is how would you know if your car had been modified this way if you've not owned it from new? If the previous owner doesn't tell you, you could be driving around in a modified car without ever knowing.

I fitted CrossClimate+ last April, they were slightly more expensive than any tyre I'd previously fitted (Avon, Goodyear, Uniroyal, Faulken, Hankook) but they are by far the best in every single way! "Summer" performance didn't feel any worse than any summer tyre I'd driven on. I've yet to aquaplane with them fitted and the wear is much much better than I expected. Fronts were down to about 4mm after 13K moderately enthusiastic miles. Where these tyres come into there own are mornings like today with the temperature was hovering around 1c. I used to get lots of unprovoked wheelspin in these conditions with summer tyres fitted and a feeling that I had to be a bit more careful even though there was no ice/frost/snow, just that the compound wasn't working as it does when it's warmer. The all-seasons just feel so much more assured and safe. I live in Essex so snow events are pretty rare and there's no justification for having a dedicated set of winter tyres, all-seasons are perfect and I guess this is the point for most of the UK. Unless you're living in Scotland/Wales/Oop North where it's hilly and there's usually lots of snow and/or you live in really rural areas where dedicated snow tyres (and more than likely a 4x4) are a necessity, the new all-season tyres which have come to market over the last few years really do make sense

http://www.tyrereviews.co.uk/Tyre/Davanti/DX390.htm Personally I'd avoid like the plague.....

Not necessarily........ When you turn the engine off, the regen stops, the fans are only there to cool things down. If the regen isn't complete then it'll try again when the regen criteria is met again. I've got a bluetooth adapter that plugs into the diagnostic port and an app called "VAG DPF", what I've witnessed on my own car is when the soot level reaches 100%, the regen process begins (at this point the revs sit at around 1K when idling). Driving normally the DPF heats up to around 600c and the soot level drops off until it gets to around 25%-30% and the DPF process is completed (at an estimate this takes around 15-20mins of steady driving, keeping the engine under a reasonable amount of load rather than just thrashing the nuts off it). What I've seen if this process is interrupted........ let's say the soot level only gets to 75% when you switch off...... it tends to wait until it gets back up to around 90% then kicks off the regen process again.

Is it a diesel? If so it's likely there was an active DPF regen running when you switched the engine off. The DPF is heated up to around 600c for this process so the fans continue to run to dissipate the heat.

Put CrossClimate+ on my Octavia last April, switched back to front in July and after around 12K miles the fronts still had a good 3-4mm on, the rears 5-6mm. Haven't driven in the snow but they were definitely more assured during the colder months. Very telling when I got a puncture and had to put my spare on which was spinning up on a cold day waaaay before the CC would even think of doing the same. They handle standing water very well and I'd have to say they're probably the best tyre I've ever fitted to a car I've owned (comparisons with Uniroyal, Hankook, Avon, Falken, Goodyear).

I've been driving for just over 24 years. My Octavia is only the 4th car I've owned in that time and my second diesel, up until last September I've pretty much run exclusively on supermarket fuel seeing no adverse impact of doing so. However, one of my good friends is a mechanic and had said he was seeing an increase in issues with diesels that are being run on supermarket fuel. I've always taken such observations as anecdotal but seeing as there was only about 4p-5p difference in my local Asda and local BP station I thought I'd run BP diesel (only standard as they don't have ultimate). I bought the car in Feb 2017 just as the "beast from the east" hit (just my luck). I'll exclude the first fill-up as I was looking for any excuse to go out for a drive but the remaining fill-ups between March & September when I switched fuels, the average MPG was 53.2 BUT that included a very sedate 200 mile drive from Essex to Wales where we had to stick to 50MPH due to road restrictions and bad weather, the MPG was 52.05 The same period this year 54.34MPG so we're talking 1.2 - 2.15 MPG difference. Whether that's due to using BP fuel or not's another matter. My gut feel is that some major roadworks were completed earlier this year which shaved a consistent 5-10 minutes of my homeward commute. I used to be lucky to get an indicated 50MPG while there were roadworks, now it's a more consistent 55MPG+. I'd definitely be interested to see if there is any difference using the Ultimate fuel

Had 4 fitted to mine last April, best tyre I've ever run on (Hankook, Avon, Uniroyal, Goodyear are other brands I've used over the last 5+ years). Decent handling in the wet & dry plus much more assured when it gets cold. Not driven in the snow with them yet but I've no doubt they'll be fine

Cheapest/Easiest would be to have a passenger with a stopwatch time you. Next least expensive option would be a cheap ODBII bluetooth dongle (around £15 from Amazon ELM 327) plugged into the diagnostics port and the Torque app (around £3 ) and get it to measure your 0-60 time

Personally I'd get the belt done ASAP, it's 9 years old and 127K miles? I'm pretty sure it should have been changed after 5 years regardless of mileage (which is the case for most VAG belts from what I've heard/read). It doesn't really matter how often it's driven, it it still at/past the end of it's recommended life, when it goes the damage to the engine could be catastrophic and effectively put the car beyond economical repair. For the sake of a few hundred quid you're risking a worthless car or a several thousand quid repair bill :/

I had the same on the rears of my old Focus estate, happened to pretty much any make of tyre I fitted (Uniroyal, Hankook, Goodyear) and no one could really tell me how/why it was happening. I had the tracking checked and it was marginally out but still within tolerances, it wasn't as it I was chewing through tyres at any rate of knots so I just left things as they were.

Having owned MK1 & MK2 focus estates, the handling of my Octavia is the only real let down although that's probably a little too harsh criticism, especially as handling was the Focus' trump card. But...... my MK2 focus had 18in alloys on it (225/40/18) so the ride was quite harsh and potholes used to cause me all kinds of nightmares/grimaces when driving on our "lovely" roads. The 17in alloys on the Octavia and slightly higher sidewalls are more forgiving and make a much more comfortable, if somewhat "numb" feeling drive. Not something that bothers me too much, it does still handle very well for a fairly large car

I know you liked the car but no matter what the dealer did to fix this one, if it were me I don't think I'd ever have much confidence in it.

I see the comedians are in this afternoon 😃

Obviously....... it would just be nice if it didn't, for example when I'm cleaning the car and have muck all over my hands.......

Neither a search on here or google has been much use so here goes. Without the ignition being switched on, my amundsen1 unit powers down after about 30 minutes. Is there any way to increase this to say 45-60 minutes? I know in the grand scheme of things it's not a big deal and I get that it's a feature to try and save you killing your battery but I wouldn't have thought it'd hurt too much for the stereo to be on for an hour without the engine running. Cheers Russ

I've got Park Assist on mine, if you reverse too fast when you're using it, it does the same as you've describes and issues a message "Park Assist Ended, Reverse speed to great" (or words to that effect) and I can confirm it does feel like you've hit a brick wall!!!