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I am looking at Dacia if I ever need to replace my wife's car. They seem to have kept their prices relatively sensible.

Spectacular colour! 👌

I am not sure about this at all. When I saw the Spyro wrap I thought "Good Lord! You're going to get some attention with that." but I like the wrap. I made no judgement on the owner of the car with the wrap, other than he REALLY likes Spyro and was probably a Playstation owner. IMO, a more reliable indicator of a vehicle being owned/operated by a complete tool is a chameleon tint on the windscreen. (Very dark tints on front windows are also a good indicator.)

Have a read through here. Feel free to ask any specific questions you may have. 👍 https://www.briskoda.net/forums/forum/28-skoda-octavia-mk-ii-2004-2013/

That CarWow price seems pretty strong to me, given that the buyer will then have to make a margin on the car. Why don't you put it up for sale on Briskoda?

Hello fellow 190 TSI owner! 😊 Have you removed the silica bag from the coolant reservoir? If not, have you checked it hasn't split, and leaked silica particles through your cooling system? Can you clarify this sentence please: "Hot air is coming through the air vents even when it's all switched off"? Slightly randomly, what's the "Green Car" readout on the main display saying when the car is playing up? Does it know you're getting terrible MPG? When you say the gear changes feel horrible, can you elaborate on "horrible" please? I'd be inclined to take it to a specialist VAG independent rather than a Skoda dealer, as I fear their solution might be a parts replacement lottery, played at your expense until until the problem goes away. I'm not sure if the brake problem is coincidental or related, but I'd be tempted to get the brakes stripped and cleaned, rather than just have the disks and pads replaced, especially with that front offside wheel getting unusually warm.

That is just the tip of the tax iceberg. Almost everything you do with your money is taxed. It's a bit like a mafia boss getting his "tribute" out of his subordinates, but without the token gratitude the mafia boss would show towards a good earner for him. Income Tax, Capital Gains Tax, National Insurance Contributions, Inheritance Tax, VAT, Insurance Premium Tax, Excise Duties, Stamp Duty & Property/Land Taxes, Income Tax for Sole Traders, Taxes on Dividends & Savings, Capital Gains Tax on Business Sale, Council Tax, Tax on Vehicles, Alcohol Tax, Sugar Tax.

And people call ME a troll! 😄

Yes. That really seems like the sort of information that the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders should be able to readily provide. If not SMMT, then some of the market trend organisations and companies ought to have this data, maybe CAP or even HPI, which has access to a lot of vehicle sale related data.

I think access to the DVLA change of ownership data would probably help. Not sure if that's published.

The game is rigged.

You raise a good point. Delineating between pre-registrations and new car sales is key top proving/disproving Barrie, and I don't think I have done this yet. However, what I HAVE done is learn that lockdown didn't seem to slow down used car sales as much as I expected it to. Hence the "Incidentally" at the start of my post. If a clever person/insider has access to data that clearly shows new car SALES as well as new car REGISTRATIONS, I'd be very curious to see it, particularly if it can delineate between EV/ICE & hybrids.

Incidentally, I've been watching Barrie Crampton videos and have been looking for data to confirm/deny his claim that there's some sort of EV sales bubble going on, due to pre-registration of EVs, which he claims are a deliberate attempt to artificially boost sales to meet EV sales quota targets. I found myself on the SMMT website which provides the following data. https://www.smmt.co.uk/2024/08/used-car-sales-q1-2024-2/ I popped the data into Excel, applied a little conditional formatting colour magic, and below is the result. The low figure for red shading I used was 100,000 and the high figure for green shading was 1,000,000. So the lower the sales are in a given month, the more red the sales box is shaded, and the higher the sales are in a given month, the more green the box is. I expected to see a greater impact on car sales in the UK in 2020, especially when you compare them with sales in 2022 when there was no lockdown. (Lockdown timeline https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/sites/default/files/timeline-lockdown-web.pdf)

Is this the site you mean, Graham? https://waqi.info/

Hello! Well let's look at that, shall we? The worst case year was 1971, which looked like this. 11.1t per capita UK 1.1t per capita China. The UK population in 1971 was somewhat under 56m. (https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/GBR/united-kingdom/population) That gives the UK's output of CO2 to be 55,875,903 * 11.1 = 620,222,523.3t (a precise rough figure IMO, but I'm running with the available data.) The population of China in 1971 was somewhat over 843m. (https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/CHN/china/population) That gives China's output of CO2 to be 843,285,424 * 1.1 = 976,613,966.4t (another precise rough figure) So even when the UK was at it's worst in terms of CO2 production, China was nearly 1.5 times worse. So how are things today? From the same source, the 2022 (the latest data for CO2 is for 2022, so I've used the same date for population) UK population is now 67,508,936 people, with a CO2 output 4.7t of per capita. Meanwhile the population of China in 2022 was 1,425,887,337 people with a CO2 output of 8.0t per capita. So UK's total CO2 output from the last available data was 67,508,936 * 4.7 = 317,291,999.2t China's total CO2 output from the last available data was 1,425,887,337 * 8.0 = 11,407,098,696.0t China is now nearly 36 times worse than the UK when it comes to CO2 production. I don't care about that, and I don't think you should be trying to muddy the water with that sort of Marxist waffle. What next, CO2 reparations? I think you've inadvertently tipped your hand here. IMO a large part of the "climate change" agenda is far more about so-called 'social justice' and 'wealth redistribution' than it is any actual concern about the planet.

I watched this recently, and I found it very interesting. The point the guy was making, is that water contamination in oil is inevitable, but it is not normally a problem, as when your oil gets up to temperature, the water in the oil heats up and disperses. The oil has additives which trap water and hold it in the oil without permitting emulsifying, until the oil is hot and the water can leave the oil. (There's info on demulsification additives in crude oil here, but not much on demulsifiers in vehicle engine oil knocking about online. https://www.biolinscientific.com/surfactants-and-emulsions/demulsification There's more in this video here, but it still left me wanting more. However if you run a hybrid, he says it is possible that your oil does not often get up to full temperature, if you mostly do short runs. I suppose this goes for any other type of car that does a lot of short runs and the oil doesn't get hot. So there comes a point where the "demulsifiers" in the oil are overloaded with water and simply cannot cope. (This will also happen with a water leak into the oil, as you know). At this point, oil emulsification (engine mayonnaise) can occur with the associated loss of the oil's lubricity, which can lead to premature engine wear. So the moral of his story seems to be, make sure you drive your car in such a way so you get the oil up to temperature to allow oil-trapped water to leave your oil and prevent oil emulsification in an otherwise healthy engine. The general gist of what he's saying makes sense, but I've never seen anyone mention demulsification additives in vehicle engine oil before. Does everyone else know about this and it's just something I didn't know, or are these demulsifiers a new thing?

Have you driven a car with lane assist before?

Absolutely get those oils changed. 👍

IFAIK, there are several factors at play that ensure a good gas seal, and not all rings are fitted to do the same job, they can have different purposes and profiles. 1) There are several piston rings which are normally staggered when fitted, as @Warrior193 said 2) The gap in the piston ring closes somewhat when the piston is fitted (squeezed into) into the cylinder. (Otherwise you wouldn't be able to fit the piston without risking damage to the cylinder.) 3) Thermal expansion takes up a bit of the gap too. 4) The oil film also helps the gas seal. 5) The pressure of the combustion also contributes to forcing the rings outwards to form a tight seal against the cylinder wall. The sum of those factors results in a good gas seal for effective compression and power stroke.

Is it better, worse or no different from a cold start? It's concerning that it's an intermittent fault. Even if you can't actually attend a gearbox specialist, there's nothing to stop you phoning one up and asking for advice. You might be lucky if you find a helpful one, they may be able to diagnose your problem by talking to you. https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=DSG+gearbox+experts+UK If you really hit it off and have confidence in the tech, it might be worth driving some distance to get the problem sorted once and for all.

You really need to look more at data and less at shrieking headlines. https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/china

Post-mortem To answer my question, no, it does not. It is bonded together by some sort of weld or melty adhesive. It is this "weld" that fails and allows water ingress. I now know I would have loosened the reflectors inside the lamp unit and quite possibly fubar'd my rear lamp cluster had I done this. So "bottling it" should perhaps be changed to "Came to my senses and avoided a horrific mistake due to not having a clue what I was doing.". 😄

People hide an awful lot of bad behaviour in vague terms and comforting-sounding phrases. This garage sounds like they could be fobbing you off with vague waffle. The trick is to pin them down to specifics. Ask more specific questions. Forget asking about your "service". Ask "When my car was with you, was the engine oil and filter changed? Which oil was used? Was the air filter changed? Was the fuel filter changed?" etc. Ask them WHO performed the work, get a name. Then ask for the paperwork confirming all this. If they fob you off and tell you it's all been done and you have no need to worry, without providing details and evidence, then maybe you have been mugged off. Make allowances for dippy reception staff and busy service managers, but be persistent. Don't encourage the idea that if they just keep fobbing you off for long enough, eventually you will go away. I'd be looking for another garage for the next service, as you clearly don't trust this one.

Or what?

The service history is easily checked by a Skoda dealer or by a decent independent with access to the Skoda service database. Have you checked to see if a service was recorded as being done on your car the day before purchase? Yeah, engine oil in diesels is like that. Pretty hard to judge the condition of it by just looking at it. Where did you get it serviced, Harrods!? Might be worth giving trading standards a call about them. That, or drop them a line. 🤐 I'm not a diesel owner because I wanted to avoid this, but it's not a deal-breaker if you know the foibles of DPFs and work with the DPF rather than against it. I'm not prepared to change my lifestyle to suit my car, so I understand your frustration. <ding-ding-ding-ding-ding> We have a winner! https://www.moneyhelper.org.uk/en/everyday-money/buying-and-running-a-car/your-rights-if-something-is-wrong-with-your-car To summarise: Less moaning and feeling sorry for yourself, more proactive action on getting a satisfactory resolution. 👍 In future, it might be worth running a check on who's running the business you're making a big purchase from before you hand over any money. The MOT history looks pretty ropey, for that car. I think it's been used and abused. It's always a red flag if a car has advisories on its first MOT, IMO. Good luck! 🤞