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It's difficult to say, @robs12, as it depends. There's no reason a competent DIYer can't service their car to a high standard themselves. The problem arises when you have confident cretins who have a crack at doing their own servicing. There are a surprising number of people who have the mechanical sympathy of a chimp with a rock, and seem to perform maintenance on their vehicle in the manner of a rock-equipped simian. Even fairly bright people can, in innocent ignorance, do some surprisingly stupid and damaging things to their car, in their attempt to service or maintain it. (Example: I managed to obstruct my curtain airbags when I "cleverly" fitted my reversing camera. Fortunately, I'm bright enough to know that I had to put that right, and not take the "It'll be alright!" attitude, that is unfortunately prevalent with a lot of people.) Beyond that, there are "clever" people, who know better than everyone else, and ignore OEM specifications and use a different grade of oil, grease, whatever, as it's "better", as they see it. There are the "Nah! You don't need to bother with that!" people too. Have a look on here, and you'll see people who swear blind you don't need to change your brake fluid every 4 years. "You must", "you should", "you could", "you don't need to" are all approaches that people can take in regard to an aspect of car servicing, particularly when it's annoyingly expensive and seemingly trivial things like replacing the coolant. "It's still pink, innit? So it's alright!". As a car buyer, when people hear that someone did their own servicing, they don't know if they are dealing with a clever and capable person who has meticulously serviced their car, or a rock-wielding chimp who's just topped the oil up when it ran low on the dipstick. I think it's particularly risky when someone gets a "mate" to service their car. They get all the benefits of bargain-basement servicing, and none of the accountability for poor servicing, as they can blame their "mate" for anything that is not as it should be. Any questions about servicing can be shrugged off onto their "mate" who has no liability for the quality of the servicing and is invariably going to assure you everything was done to the same or higher standard as a main dealer. Personally, I would never by a car from someone who's had it serviced by a "mate". People take their car to a garage to be serviced, because they lack the time, skill or inclination to do it properly themselves. (Incidentally, it's also perfectly possible to have your car serviced badly at a garage, because you instructed the garage to only conduct very basic servicing, only fixing things when broken.) The number of people who have the time, skill and inclination to service their own car correctly is relatively tiny, so when I hear of a DIY-serviced car, I am seeing a load of additional risk associated with my purchase. I doubt you've devalued your car, but you might have made it less appealing to some cautious buyers. You could mitigate your risk by a full service at a garage just prior to sale, which I think would put a lot of people's minds at ease. They could reasonably assume "Yes, he might or might not have serviced it poorly, but it runs alright and it's just been serviced at a proper garage." Perhaps the best thing to do is ask one of the professional mechanics on here what their instinctive reaction is when they hear a car has been DIY serviced, and how often they are called on to remedy issues instigated by DIY servicing.

There are various sites which offer a VIN DECODE service, some of which used to be free, many now expect you to pay a fee now. (Nothing massive, but it's a bit cheeky, IMO.) You only need to do this once, and once you have the information, you have it forever. (I used this website https://carinfo.kiev.ua/, and when I just checked, they still have my VIN decode details on there, but I don't remember the site being in Russian!!) The VIN decode is about 7 pages of 3-digit codes, and the explanation of each code. It tells you all the part options and configurations for your vehicle. So in my instance, for brakes, I see: 1KS Brake type in rear: Disc brakes in rear (Geomet D) 1ZA Brake type, front: Disc brakes in front I can then go the the thread that @HappySam helpfully linked to "Skoda Octavia MK3 5E brake pad sizes", and see the following choices for my VIN decode codes, as provided by @Carlston in that thread: Octavia MK3 Brake Pads and Brake Discs TRW Front Brake Pads 1ZF 276x24mm TRW GDB2080 1ZE 288x25mm TRW GDB1956 1ZA 312x25mm TRW GDB1956 1ZB 312x25mm TRW GDB1956 1LG 340x30mm TRW GDB2114 TRW Rear Brake Pads 1KD 253x10mm TRW GDB1330 1KS 272x10mm TRW GDB2042 1KT 272x10mm TRW GDB2042 1KW 310x22mm TRW GDB1622 ATE Front Brake Discs 1ZF 276x24mm ATE 24012402581 1ZE 288x25mm ATE 24012501451 1ZA 312x25mm ATE 24012501581 1ZB 312x25mm ATE 24012501581 1LG 340x30mm ATE 24013002251 ATE Rear Brake Discs 1KD 253x10mm ATE 24011002771 (pre-facelift model) 1KD 253x10mm ATE 24011004201 (facelift model) 1KS 272x10mm ATE 24011003561 1KT 272x10mm ATE 24011003561 1KW 310x22mm ATE 24012202191 For front disks for my car, I could choose brand TRW, 1KS 272x10mm TRW GDB2042 or brand ATE 1KS 272x10mm ATE 24011003561. For rear disks for my, I could choose brand TRW, 1ZA 312x25mm TRW GDB1956, or brand 1ZA 312x25mm ATE 24012501581. I can then go to a parts supplier like AUTODOC, https://www.autodoc.co.uk/ enter the part number, example 24011003561, and get details of the part and the cost of parts associated with that parts number. https://www.autodoc.co.uk/spares-search?keyword=24011003561 Hope that makes it all fairly clear and straightforward.

Maybe get one of these? https://www.amazon.co.uk/ECO-WORTHY-Maintainer-Conversion-Automobile-Motorcycle/dp/B08K3BQTNK?ref_=ast_sto_dp

Hello and welcome, Chris. 🙂

I wouldn't let the lack of a reversing camera put you off, that's easy enough to retrofit. Let us know what you decide. 👍

Nice spec! How did you get on, @Gaz?

Do you know which is the version with port injection and which is direct injection only, as that would be a decision factor for me?

The Golf R is a strong scally-magnet. I know someone near me who had one and he had three different attempts to steal if off his drive. (His was also an estate) He loved the car but got rid of it eventually as he couldn't be doing with the aggro.

Still live on the website. That's pretty slow of them. 😞

The rust isn't an issue, but those grooves on the disk strike me as unusual on a car with only 6K miles, if not particular cause for concern.

The smartphone holder was ridiculously implemented. I don't know what phone they expected would fit into that. Mine is knocking around somewhere, but it is an annoyingly useless lump of rubber.

"Not supported". Well now, isn't that peachy. 🙄 I'm hesitant to get into long coding as it seems my vehicle is quite an unusual variant, so I'll have to keep researching exactly how to turn the fake noise off. Not that it's a huge problem, but now it seems I can't easily change it, of course I want to change it all the more. 😄

2017.

Thought I'd post a link to this cautionary tale from @vrs'burks. Be careful what you wish for, especially when it's "More noise."

Ford is helping to save the planet. https://edition.cnn.com/2024/04/24/business/ford-earnings-ev-losses/index.html

I was going to say something but I figured Stonekeeper was just kidding.

I'd try white spirit to remove the glue, then Isopropyl (70%) to remove the white spirit.

If your vehicle has a sunroof, it's worth checking that the drainage holes are clear as they can get blocked and are a pain to unblock, but there are other issues that can cause sunroof leaks, so check that it doesn't.

Another issue is the dreaded silica bag. Look for "mit silikat" legend on your coolant expansion tank.

As it's a DI engine, you're starting to get into inlet valve carbon-build up territory. If it drives fine then there's nowt to worry about, but it's a problem that can appear between 50-100K miles on the TSI DI engines. The solution is to clean the inlet valves. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTV-uHv5Cwk

Yeah, I think 6 years is a trigger for down-rating the car for some reason. Be interesting to see how a nearly new car scores. I'll have a look online for a suitable reg...

Spotted this as an advert on YouTube and thought I'd give it a go as I was checking on the status of my old Mondeo which it didn't find, so I tried it with my Octavia, which it did find. The basic check is free, but there's a more involved check you can pay for to get more information if you're interested in that. The fun bit is being awarded a "score" rating for your car, based on age, annual mileage and MOT success rate (and probably other things as well). https://vehiclescore.co.uk/ Here's my score. How does your car rate? (Presumably I lost a few points for the car being nearly 5 years old.)

I tucked it under the plastic trim that covers the edge of the carpets. Can't say it was a great job, but as it was formerly in the headlining, I was just happy to get it well away from the curtain airbags.

An interesting video (certainly I found him interesting) from a proper character and not some confected e-personality.

Just my tuppence worth, but I'd like to remind you that a warranty is essentially a gamble that your car will break down. You "win" the gamble by getting a successful claim against a failure on your car. (Note, your claim against a failure on your car may be rejected, but you'll still be billed for the warranty. That way you "lose" twice.) You "lose" the bet if your car doesn't break down, so the cost of the warranty was essentially wasted other than to give peace of mind, albeit illusory in some instances. That said, in a perfect claim, a decent warranty can save you a small fortune.