EnterName

Just a thought, but are the rear brake calipers working correctly? Brake calipers can get stuck (though it would be unusual on such a recent vehicle) and if they're not working as they should, you might not notice in normal driving, but the brakes wouldn't clean the disks. A pic of the disks would help. @cheezemonkhai's idea of careful emergency stops sounds sensible, as the effort of hard braking should shift the caliper piston if they're a bit reluctant to move.

I think the silica bag is the least of your worries on this issue for now. That said, if the bag splits and leaks silica into the coolant system, the bag would still remain in the coolant header tank. (Note, the silica containers come in a variety of shapes and types.) I've no idea what's going on here, but it doesn't sound good. I'm alarmed that the car was returned to you with over-filled black coolant, unless there's some sort of catastrophic failure. Does the new dark coolant smell different to "normal" coolant? My instinct would be to ask the garage that did the work to explain the issue, but I'd be very cautious about letting them work on the car unsupervised. I think you need to get this looked at quickly by a competent mechanic.

I'm amazed infotainment system issues aren't a higher percentage of problems with the Mk4. I tend to buy cars right at the end of their production life-cycle. This gives a double bonus of having most of the known issues solved, or at least a known solution established, and also a drop in the purchase price to encourage people who might be tempted to wait for the new model to buy existing stock of the old. Has worked out pretty well so far.

Never used PCP to buy a car. When I was young and foolish I took out loans or used HP, then I wised up and saved up for them. (Probably why I only change cars every 10 years or so. 😄) But to answer your question, this web page has a lot of useful info on PCP purchases. Good luck! https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/loans/personal-contract-purchase/ I would hedge your bets and take a couple of recent payslips in, proof of ID, and proof of residency at your stated address, such as a utility bill. I would also look more into your PCP T&Cs to make sure you fully understand what you're getting into. There's a lot of opportunity for smoke and mirrors financial malarkey with those things, IMO.

Cue Sid James laugh. 😄

I have a different engine/gearbox, but mine moves off in 1st gear and quickly changes itself to 2nd.

The high RPM in that 1st to 2nd gear change does seem odd. Hmmm.

Just a thought, and unfortunately it's a PITA to track down, but I wonder if you could have a poor electrical connection somewhere? I had a problem with a Seat diesel some moons ago, and it turned out to be a poor crimp on a connector that would lose briefly contact over some bumps and cause a drop in power. (I remember it as related to the throttle: When you lift off it detects no throttle input and shuts off the fuel, and this fault was thinking the driver had lifted off the throttle and shut off the fuel, albeit briefly.) It took flipping ages to track down as it was an intermittent problem and of course in garage conditions it never played up.

Hello and welcome! I too had a lovely Ibiza FR TDI 130 which my wife wrote-off and I never quite forgave her for.

I keep a few emergency blankets in mine, just in case....

At what RPM does your car change gear during normal driving, @Vlady?

Hello! I'm glad you're enjoying your new Octavia.

Thanks for clearing that up. Ironically I was actually told I'd be getting the space-saver when I ordered the spare wheel kit as they thought I had 18" wheels, but mine are 17". I insisted on the full-size spare, which seemed like a good idea at the time.

Can the 16" full size spare wheel be used in conjunction with the 340x30mm front brake discs, or would the space-saver wheel need to be used as a spare?

Hello and welcome back!

Hello. Nice wheels!

Hello and welcome! Any chance of some pics of your stalwart Octavia?

This is a very good point, and I can understand why tuners would not declare that they disregard some of the emissions concerns to get improved efficiency. If you add @Gerrycan's context to Superchips "How it works" explanation, you can certainly get that impression by reading between the lines when Superchips talks about "...eliminating those 'performance compromises'.", https://www.superchips.co.uk/HowItWorks "Superchips invests extensively in development and testing and we bring over 30 years of experience to the job. We arrive at the optimised settings for your make and model of vehicle, ensuring that each remap is as individual as the software inside your ECU, safely eliminating those ‘performance compromises’." (Incidentally, I have no particular inclination towards Superchips, I've just used them for the purposes of this thread. I've never had a Superchips remap.)

I don't know whether the accuracy of the fuel computer is adversely affected by a remap. I don't know if (but I can certainly believe) the accuracy of the fuel computer is affected by a tuning box that "tricks" the ECU into delivering additional fuel. I suppose it depends how MPG is calculated by the fuel computer. If anyone who knows how MPG is calculated by the car can explain how it's done by the car, that would shed some light on this.

The air con service seems deliberately contrived to be as expensive as possible. I asked my mechanic about it and his advice was to use it and only mess about with it if the air conditioning performance declines. I leave mine on "AUTO" all the time and let it get on with it.

I think the problem is that a significant number of people in the UK only have a very basic grasp on English, and so the language has to be simplified to accommodate them. The trouble is, it's been over-simplified to the point of ambiguity at best, and downright wrong at worst. The police should not be making basic mistakes like that, but sadly to reflect the new diverse society the UK has been transformed into, the police has to reflect the general population so everyone feels "represented".

I wouldn't write back to them about it, but I share your frustration at the hopeless standard of written English by institutions who really need to be able to state the facts of a matter precisely and unambiguously.

This is good advice. I know it's easy to be critical of Ed's feelings regarding this, but I understand his irritation. (Especially at the cost of the phone call.) Unless you have a cynical old so-and-so with you, ruining your car buying experience by pointing out all the problems, it can be easy to get carried away and sign-up for one of the plethora of cash traps Skoda dealers lay for unwary customers. Sometimes the optional extras give good value, sometimes they don't. Personally, I don't like service plans, but that's just my opinion.

Hello! Give your local Trading Standards office a call and see where you stand if you bought the car on the basis it had a full service history and it turns out there is no evidence of the car being serviced. After that, it might be worth phoning up Enterprise saying you're looking at buying one of their cars but are concerned about whether the cars are serviced correctly. If Enterprise say "We have our cars serviced by the appropriate local dealer", then you at least know what should have happened, and if what Skoda told you is correct, it hasn't. If Enterprise tells you have their own garages who do their servicing and repairs, then ask how you as a potential customer can see the service history. Tell them you'll need evidence of the service history when you come to sell the car. See what they say. Basically, you're looking to arm yourself with evidence that the car hasn't been serviced and you've been lied to, in which the conversation with Trading Standards will have primed you for the next step, or evidence that the car HAS been serviced and Enterprise can provide you with a service history. At the moment, because you're not sure how Enterprise operate, you don't know exactly who should have serviced the car, so it's hard to pinpoint who to chase up about whether it has or not. Good luck!

It sounds like the remap sorted out a poor map with excess fuel delivery giving that lump of torque. One of my tuning boxes has a very on/off power delivery around 70mph and it was a right pain. Yeah it can, if it delivers less fuel for a given throttle demand under the same conditions. The fact that the power improvements are given in pretty specific figures, but the MPG increases claimed are usually very vague tells me the claimed fuel economy improvements cannot be relied upon. If anyone has some before/after MPG test data under controlled conditions, I'd love to see it.