EnterName

For you, I'd say Angel were a bit of a jaunt, however good they are. AFAIK there are some good tuners up north, though I can't point to any specific one to recommend, as I have no experience of them. But if you did go to Angel, I'm pretty sure they'd sort you out with a map to suit your needs, it'd just be a pain if you needed to go back and get it tweaked. (I've had two maps off them and both were perfect for me first time.) Initially I had a bit of a shopping list of what I wanted, but when I spoke with Tom, it's clear that if I told him what I want the power graph to look like, I'd probably get an inferior map than I would by telling him what I wanted the car to feel like after the map, and letting him use his skill to give me what I wanted, rather than what I specifically asked for. Do update us on what you decide to do eventually, even if it's "Nah! I'll keep it standard.". 👍

On my Octavia it's the DQ381. Not sure about @skodamota I've since had mine remapped by Angel Tuning (https://www.angeltuning.co.uk/) who I've used before with a TDCI and both maps I had from them were fairly conservative, with the goal being a bit more power without sacrificing economy. I've got a thread about my search for a remap. (It actually turned into going back to a fairly local supplier I was already familiar with and confident about. That said, there are some useful links in the thread.)

If diesel is getting into the engine oil, it will effectively dilute it. Not sure what the problem is, but it might be something cheap and simple like a blocked breather pipe somewhere, but one of the experts on here will be more use diagnosing the fault than I.

This is very true. I set my tyre pressures for going away during the day, which was a fairly warm day just prior to the heatwave. I checked them again the following morning and there had been about 0.3 bar drop in pressure, which quite surprised me. I think they're 2.5 front and back at the moment, but I might nudge them up to the eco setting, which if I recall correctly is 2.6 bar front and back.

That's relatable. Yes I had noticed that. I tend to put my rear pressure to somewhere in the middle between normal and heavy load, because I have a load of luggage, but not a load of people in the car. I'm probably one of the few obsessives who change their tyre pressures back to normal when they get to their holiday destination. (Mind you this year I forgot to pump them back up for the journey home. ) Some years ago I had a friend who'd pumped his tyres up until they looked right, which to him meant they were pretty much perfectly round. His car bounced round corners like a space hopper until someone told him you have to actually measure the tyre pressure and not just do it by eye. 😂

Very nice! I was convinced I wanted a vRS TDI for ages, but eventually bottled out due to DPF concerns and went for a petrol car. But I do miss the lazy grunt and rumble of a TDI now and then.

The obvious question here, is why isn't the higher "ECO" tyre pressure the default tyre pressure? Presumably there is a downside to the higher pressure?

A quick online search found this. Hope you get it changed okay.

Did you ever resolve your heater problem, @pj71?

How did CumbriaVAG 2022 go?

That is a VERY useful Facebook group. Thanks for sharing!

I think this is good news for EV users, but I also suspect this may have a sting in the tail. Once lower "off-peak" tariffs are normalised, I suspect it won't be too long before higher "peak" tariffs make their appearance. But time will tell.

I have to say the Ioniq5 is a very handsome car, from my perspective. I haven't seen one in the flesh, so it's hard to get my head around the actual size of the thing. My neighbour's Teslay Model Y is way bigger than I expected it was going to be. As I'm pretty tall, I sometimes mis-size things as I wrongly assume people are taller than they are. (I was amazed to learn Rishi Sunak is 5'6", for example. I assumed he was about 5'10"-6'.)

I honestly thought that was an Audi Q3 with fancy wheels, at first glance.

Hello, and good luck with your car hunting.

This is exactly the sort of post I was looking for. Thanks for sharing @WolfyWesty👍

Can you get a second opinion from another garage/independent expert?

I think it helps to re-frame the question as akin to gambling. You: "I bet £250 that the car I'm buying will break down and the cost of the repair will be more than £250." (Or whatever the warranty costs.) Dealer: "I'll take that bet, only I'm not going to cover absolutely anything, willy-nilly. I'll cover the stuff that's not expected to wear out or be replaced normally during the warranty period. Deal?" That said, I used to buy a warranty with every used car. I think I got my money out of a warranty once, on a F-reg Ford Orion. The rest of the time, I've replaced the worry of breaking down without a warranty, with the worry of breaking down with something not-covered by the warranty and wondering whether I've wasted my money on a useless warranty. I think that's pretty much where you are now. Reading between the lines, I'm guessing you don't have a trusted local garage to repair your car for a fair price in the event it breaks down? That was what ultimately stopped me buying warranties.

It all seems instinctively wrong to me. I remember when convertibles handled substantially worse due to the body flexing, and so they had to be stiffened up considerably to improve handling (with an associated weight penalty.) Now too much stiffness is bad? I'm still uncomfortable with this. As I see it, and this is my perception/opinion, so please do disagree and set me straight where I'm wrong: Strut braces = Greater rigidity and thus consistent body geometry for the suspension to work off, an unequivocally good thing and a plug and play improvement. No trade-off, apart from increased weight. EDIT: Note, making the front of the car very stiff while allowing the rear to flex, or vice versa, probably not a good thing unless you know what you're doing. Roll-bars = Reduce roll, may cause wheel lift and thus reduce grip. Require careful choice, but basically plug and play if you know what you want. (With suspension alignment afterwards, if required.) Can involve a trade-off between desirable handling characteristics, undesirable handling characteristics and comfort. Stiffer Bushes = Reduce "play in bushes, may cause harshness and reduce comfort. Require careful choice, but basically plug and play if you know what you want. (With suspension alignment afterwards, if required.) Can involve a trade-off between handling and comfort, but handling almost always improved. Springs and shocks = Adjust ride height, comfort, and handling of care. Require careful choice and set-up, and almost always involve a trade-off between handling and comfort. (Please note the word "handling" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in the above sentences, including grip, roll, understeer/oversteer, whatever.)

I really wish I knew enough to argue my gut feeling on this, but I don't so I'll shut up and have a Google and see what I can find out. EDIT: Ah-ha! https://low-offset.com/workshop/strut-bars-explained/ Well well well! I did not expect that. That said, there's a mix of opinions elsewhere on whether they increase or reduce oversteer, so I'm no more sure of the truth of the matter. 😄

I can't argue with you on this as I don't know enough to be sure enough to argue the point, but it sounds wrong. Now stiffer anti-roll bars, sure. Any idea why a front strut brace might introduce understeer?

Two points: Firstly, forgive my cluelessness, but what is a K-Brace? Secondly, I am very cautious about changing roll-bars and associated bushes whatever as they seem to one of those mods that can change the characteristics of the suspension very well in some regards, but can also introduce some undesirable and unwelcome characteristics. I have been quietly toying with the idea of a front strut brace though, particularly after the remap as I had a bit of an "Ooh hello! What's going on here then?" moment during overtaking recently where the car felt a little off-balance (for want of a better description) under hard acceleration. Might have been a bit of torque steer, might have been traction control kicking in, might be something else completely. Dunno! My two passenger were behaving normally (One with their eyes tight shut as they don't believe in overtaking and the other contentedly playing with their phone.) so I think it was more a feedback issue than the car actually getting out of shape. It was nothing to really worry about, but it might be the approx 230PS is a bit of a handful for the bog-standard 190TSI SE L suspension set-up to deal with. I'd like to "improve" the suspension set-up, but I really don't want to lose any comfort, so I can see me doing nowt with it for some time.

I drove VAG and then Ford diesels for 20 years before making the switch to petrol to avoid DPF issues. I loved the lazy grunt of diesel and it was a real wrench to make the swap, but driving the 2.0 150TDI and the 2.0190TSI (Octavias) gives much the same lazy grunt at low revs, with a load of extra oomph at the top end. I've never regretted the decision to swap, and the only downside so far is the mid-30's MPG tatting around town in traffic. As I hardly do any miles, that's a negligible negative for me. That said, if I did the right kind of miles, I would probably be still very tempted by a 190TDI as the extra low end grunt of the 190TDI and better fuel economy would have tempted me. But the 190TSI with the DSG gearbox is a very pleasing combination as far as I'm concerned. (Even better with a remap.) Edit: The Budack engine seems to do very well on Super Unleaded, rather than standard 95RON and is well worth the relatively little additional cost IMO. (For me anyway. If I was filling up every week I might change my tune on that bright idea. 😄)

Yes, I was pretty pleased to hear it, too. Hat-tip to @roottootwho provided this chart on another thread.

Here's an animation of the Budack cycle operation. The TLDR is that the Gen3B it closes the inlet valves early to reduce fuel consumption and has a higher compression ratio than the Gen3.