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That has knock-on effects though. You can buy a dongle that connects to the S/S switch and gives persistence to the last setting. So once you switch S/S off, it stays off until you switch it on again. Fooling the ECU about battery charging is not a great idea, IMO.

Hello there and welcome! Well this isn't quite as straightforward as some might think. (There's a bit of debate on the issue, TBH.) I think it's worth doing a test. With just you in the car, drive then come to a halt and stop the car with your foot holding the car stationary on the brake, with the gearbox in Drive. Hold stationary a couple of seconds, and then put the DSG into Neutral. 1) If the car relaxes back, as though you've just lifted the clutch of a manual gearbox from light biting point to completely off, then IMO, the time to put your DSG in neutral is whenever you come to a halt for more than a few seconds. Frankly I put my car in neutral EVERY time I come to a stop. I do it without thinking now, it's just an instinctive thing. 2) If you can feel nothing in the car when you put the DSG into neutral, then the time to put the DSG into neutral is when you shift between Drive and Reverse. Beyond that, it's not strictly necessary. (I'd still put it into neutral if sitting stationary for ages, though.)

The DSG can seem to be a bit dim at times, however it's just trying to guess what you want from it. It's possible to wrong-foot the DSG inadvertantly, when it thinks you're planning to sit where you are for a while, but actually you want to set off, and you give a throttle demand that the DSG doesn't quickly respond to, then the revs rise, the DSG seems to dump the clutch and "Yoink!" off you go with an uncomfortable lurch. I have found I need to think slightly further ahead, release the brake, feel the clutch engage, and then hoof it. However as I always put my DSG in neutral when I come to a halt, my putting the car in gear from neutral lets it know what I'm up to. Sometimes, I switch from neutral to drive and back to neutral again, if the gap to enter traffic isn't quite right and I need to skip a car or I'm having a senior moment, and that will usually confuse the DSG and I get a lurchy getaway as a reward.

Good as my word, here is the rusty part in question. I think it's the crash bar behind the bumper, but it's not at all appealing. I've painted it with some Owatrol to keep the worst of it at bay, but I didn't take off the bumper, so access was limited but I got what I could see plus a bit more, which will have to do for now. Additionally, I sprayed Dinitrol in my sills and subframe cavities, so I've got that job out of the way for a bit. Incidentally, I'm always amazed at how rigid the Mk3 Octavia. Jacking my car up on the front jacking point will raise the back wheel as well. Very impressive, IMO.

I hope you get an answer, Simon. All too often people document a problem and fail to document the solution. 🙄

Yeah, I noticed the evolution didn't stop at gen 3B but once I understood my car, I lost a little interest but haven't really looked into it. He's what I found with an A.I. search.

The Gen 3B is an absolute belter of an engine. Even tuned, you can still get crazy-good economy. My 2.0L Octavia gives noticeably more miles per gallon than my 1.6 Fiesta. (The Fiesta wins on smiles per hour though.)

Didn't you already make a "Goodbye Cruel World" type thread about quitting Brisky? By all means keep or stop posting as you see fit, but there's no need to be a drama-queen about it. Incidentally, I have to wonder just how much "bigger and better" your other forum is if you're back here moaning about Briskoda.

Firstly add coolant, not distilled water. Secondly, I'm not sure coolant has anywhere to evaporate to. If it disappears, I suspect it's leaking. Either to the outside world, or more worryingly into the engine somehow. How much water have you added, do you think?

As @skomaz says, get it in writing, explicitly and pedantically. TBH, it sounds like you're not entirely happy, so if you're getting a whiff of doubt now, I'd listen to your gut feeling on the decision.

As @Ootohere says, use what the sticker says or if you want to change, try 0/30. 5/30 would be a bad idea IMO. It's a complicated business, choosing an oil. Manufacturer-specified oils may not be best for the health of the engine, but may prioritise low emissions and fuel economy.

That's a reasonable answer. I'm trying, but it ain't easy. 😄

Timing! 😄 I spent a few minutes composing my post and by the time I'd posted it your post was made and I look like I've just totally ignored you. Yeah, fair enough. Incidentally, given your determination to get to net-zero/carbon-neutral etc., what is optimal global CO2 level, @wyx087 ?

You know George, you seem very curious about me, even to the point of wanting to know what sort of school I went to. Conveniently, your (and indeed some others on here that have problems with my posts) focus on my identity, marks you out to be on the political left. Whereas I am far more interested in what is said than who is saying it. Which marks me to be on the political right. You can see this is practice on Briskoda. I am far more likely to quote people when I disagree with them, and pick apart what they say, whereas all too often, the people I disagree with (@wyx087 gets a mention and a pass here, because I don't think he's ever pulled this crap on me) try and target me, rather than what I say. You can extrapolate this all the way up to cancel culture, whereby people (usually on the Left) do their utmost to "shut down" opposition, and contrast it with the opposing "free speech" movement on the Right. (I say usually on the Left, but the right have recently learned that trick and are also playing that game these days. Don't hate the player, hate the game.)

You're triggering my pedantry, @Ootohere . 😄 You can't claim to have a photographic memory of everything you've ever written posted or read when you've just needed reminding how much my gearbox service was when you obviously read that information less than a month ago. 😋 Perhaps your memory isn't as infallible as what it once was?

I've dug out some definitions for you, @Ootohere . The political left advocates for social equality, collective welfare, and government intervention to promote progressive change and protect marginalised groups. The political right emphasises individual liberty, traditional values, limited government, and free-market principles to foster personal responsibility and economic growth. People can quibble about the precise definition, but those definitions generally hold water, IMO. If anyone wants to pick them apart, please do. I note that policies "they" (and "they" can be deep state, global overlords, big business, CIA or whoever you like) want to impose on the world, try and take a little from both sides of the political spectrum, to appeal to as many people as possible. For example, with Climate Change, the benefits of lowering global CO2 to some utopian percentage, which has never been defined but will always different from what we have at the moment, include an appeal to the Left's protection for marginalised groups in the developing world, and tickles the Right's ears with the promise of economic growth. (Oddly enough, the same twofer is performed for mass immigration. The Left believe "We must look after refugees at all costs!", which ticks the Left's protect marginalised groups box, while the Right are placated and possibly inclined to salivate at the prospect that "Immigrants raise our GDP!" which ticks the Right's economic growth box.) I suspect you could analyse any political policy and test it against the two definitions, to see whether the policy is in line with the principles of the governing party, or more in line with their political donors. Of course if you have politically aligned donors, there should be no conflict. Which I assume is why people make donations to the political party most aligned to their interests. 😉 It also explains the outrage of political donors when the party they donated to implements policy that is not aligned with their supposed political principles.

I don't think so, I took it as a general observation on the reliability of DSG gearboxes in general. At the time, the general perception was that wet DSGs are less problematic than dry DSGs, which I think was a reasonable thing to say at the time. All the advice I saw on DSGs said wet boxes tended to be less troublesome than dry DSGs. I think that sort of advice is still knocking about. As more driving data has been gathered, it appears the wet DSGs have different problems to the dry DSGs, though I wouldn't risk opining on whether wet DSGs are still more reliable that dry. Certainly there's a lot of fuss about wet DSGs at the moment, but I think some of that fuss is annoyance from owners that the supposedly reliable wet DSG in their vehicle has just landed them a four-figure repair bill, despite them exercising due diligence prior to purchasing a DSG-equipped car. You may be surprised to learn that you are not the first to make this observation, @Ootohere . 🤭 But it did amuse me, given your repeated Corporal Fraser-like foreshadowing of DQ381 gearboxes failure, to find a quote of you declaring very few reported issues with wet-clutch DSGs, which is why I included it in my original post. I can imagine it triggered a "I don't remember saying that!?" moment. 😄

It's all here. At the time you even remarked that Ken was unusually cheap, though I think you were suggesting he's suspiciously cheap. Having watched it done, I'm inlined to believe that most people servicing DQ381s are suspiciously expensive. 😄

I'm old enough to remember when everyone was outraged about coal mines being closed. Even in Scotland. Of course, that's when the evil Tories were closing the coal mines. Now the Left want the coal mines kept closed, the very thought of the Right opening a coal mine is madness and a threat to global climate. When the likes of Mary Whitehouse was demanding censorship, the Left was screaming blue murder about their free speech. Now it's the Left demanding censorship and the Right defending free speech. I swear these groups take it in turns to push a particular narrative and swap sides every decade or so. 😄

I remember there were a lot of failures on early dry-clutch DSGs, in fact the large number of failures gave DSGs a bad name and people were apprehensive about buying cars with DSGs at the time. I was one of them. Fortunately there were people on hand to tell me that DSGs were actually quite reliable if you got a wet-clutch DSG. So I did. But that was then, this is now. It does seem like there are one or two weak links in the chain of DQ381 reliability, though it's hard to know how each individual vehicle is driven and thus whether some driving styles impact DQ381 reliability more than others. My DQ381 has been faultless, bar the odd senior moment when it takes longer than expected to switch from neutral to drive, but I do drive it with a lot of mechanical sympathy. For me, that means no launch control nonsense, and putting the DSG into neutral every time I come to a halt. That's not just at traffic lights, that's at every junction when I come to a halt. I've had it serviced well before the recommended service event, and hopefully it will continue to work reliably for me. But you never know! 😄

When you say "adopt electrification", you mean personal solar panels, yeah?

None of those claims have any kind of measurable goals attached to them, and nobody will be held accountable if the huge cost associated with "net-zero" fails to yield the claimed benefits. When the cheaper energy, energy independence, additional jobs, and health benefits fail to materialise, then the claim will be made that "Ah! But it would have been EVEN WORSE without net zero.". I'm old enough to remember when immigration was going to raise the GDP (along with a load of other claimed benefits). Well gross GDP might have gone up, but GDP PER CAPITA has fallen. Nobody but the taxpayer is held accountable for the failure to achieve the stated goals. I have no idea what the "Economic activities" and "Technology leadership" benefits might be. I suspect they are just filler buzz-words. People being corrupted by money from "big oil" is real, but people being corrupted by money from "big pharma" to sell billions of ineffective vaccines is a conspiracy theory spread by "anti-vaxxers"? Maybe people being corrupted by money from big oil is a conspiracy theory spread by "anti-oilers"? Or maybe... ...leads to people being corrupted by money from big-anything? Be that the military-industrial complex, big oil, or <gasp> big pharma?

Ah! Now I see. But both I and the inestimable @Stonekeeper pointed out that the per-capita CO2 output of China is getting on for twice that of the UK. And as you yourself said, China has a much larger population than the UK. (Not to mention India.) It is really hard to see how the UK doing anything about UK CO2 is going to achieve anything beyond green virtue-signalling. Certainly the impact of the UK's CO2 is never presented in a meaningful way. Nobody tries to claim exactly what the benefit will be if the UK gets to "net zero". I'd like to see it in terms of what will be better by how much. Something like what they did for smoking. I dare say it's wrong, but at least they're trying to give a meaningful quantitive figure to the harm of smoking. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/dec/30/single-cigarette-takes-20-minutes-off-life-expectancy-study

Anyone got thoughts on this? Is it a good thing? A bad thing? Irrelevant? If Antarctica gaining huge amounts of ice is irrelevant, perhaps it might be possible to explain how Antarctica losing huge amounts of isn't also irrelevant? Or perhaps whatever happens globally is irrelevant in the pursuit of the Climate Change narrative. 🤷‍♂️ https://scitechdaily.com/antarcticas-astonishing-rebound-ice-sheet-grows-for-the-first-time-in-decades/

You didn't really make a decent argument that it's an incorrect number. Your objection seems to be that it doesn't support your hypothesis. I mean I get it, but that doesn't make the number incorrect. All sources and working out is provided. Where's your beef? Incidentally, it seems somehow incongruous for an advocate of EVs objecting to my use of AI. I'm getting a 'You must use advanced technology to protect humanity. No! Not like that!' vibe. 😋