J.R.

No rubber to break between the rotating steering parts and the fixed parts to my knowledge, there is certainly no wearing parts aside from plastic bushings which would not make that noise. I appreciate you are posting in another language and there may be an error in translation, service receptionists have their own special language of garbage that they make up on the spur of the moment, you cannot really give any credence to anything they say.

Because thats how they hide how much money they are really making or indeed need to make to remain viable, a lot more than £80 per hour, another clue is the refusal of most garages to fit customer supplied parts, the truly honest amongst them would say "OK but no warranty on the repair and our labour rate will be 40% higher"

But do the double walled ones need replacing at all? I thought the whole purpose of them was so that the crystals could never make their way into the main coolant circuit, there being a sort of sieve screen as the partition and the crystals being loose and not in a bag. I cant work out what my, vehicle has, it does not have Mit Silkat marked on it I cant work out if it is double wall but its very opaque, there is no tea bag visible, however I mistakenly run the vehicle for 18 months with just tap water as coolant, at the end it came out clear enough to drink so I believe the system has Silkat in it as that is its raison d'être, to protect against corrosion if correct coolant is absent.

Unique to your vehicle and 100% due to a loose locknut. Nearly as bad is a curious choice of words, was there any wear in the threads? I'm not sure what warning you expect from a thread failure but having driven a vehicle where someone had not tightened a locknut after tracking adjustment it was plain to me there was movement and incorrect feedback from the steering, one look while someone turned the wheel back and forth soon identified the problem, and there was no significant wear on the thread, tracking only done a few days before, just the track rod flexing at the unsecured threaded joint. The track rod would not normally drop out when driving as the steering rack is behind the axle, it will happen when going from lock to centre position when stationary or slow manouevring as yours probably did. In 50 years of regularly working on vehicles I have never known a tightened up threaded joint come apart through corrosion, if only they would! I have fought thousands that have seized with rust and replaced several track rods and rod ends where the thread had worn through the locknut not being tightened or absent. Your car must be one in a million if what you maintain is true and is not something that you should be alarming all Fabia owners about, indeed why restrict it to Fabias? 99% of vehicles have track rod ends and locknuts. I hope you will accept that these comments are on topic.

Locknut will have been loose and the threads fretting backwards and forwards for a very long time letting water in by capillary action , water, bare metal, fretting movement, perfect recipe for wearing away the threads. I expect the track rod end will have been equally worn.

2nd one in as many weeks with corroded braid, easily repairable if you have the tools, material and inclination.

No, that is just tickling them, you have to do repeated full on ABS stops to a standstill from 80mph preferably driving downhill until the brakes are smoking, the pedal soft & mushy and the ABS no longer cutting in. Then you need to drive to cool the brakes and do it all over again, then a prolonged drive to cool them and chock the wheels when parking for the night and do not use the handbrake. Its not for the faint hearted as they will feel a lot worse but will be transformed when everything including the fluid has cooled down the next day. Often I would find that the ABS did not want to cut in on the first emergency stop, a sure sign that I had left it too long between deglazing. Now I do a lot of towing of very heavy trailers so the brakes get a work out and glazing is not a problem, also lots of hills around in my new location.

That is the noise of the stealers rubbing their hands together! 🤣 Clockspring and/or wheel rubbing against shroud(s). Cost to repair zero Or €3600 😒 Nice work if you can get it!

What you are saying is not plausible, unless the throttle response is binary, ie either nothing or full throttle then a tiny bit less throttle would result in less wheelspin, some degree less than that would result in maximum traction and no wheelspin, as an older driver with a history of performance vehicles from when they had no driving aids and a cable connecting the throttle pedal to the carburetor butterflies you will have been well versed in modulating the power delivery in low grip situations. I have no doubt the software upgrade has made the car more driveable and deliberately avoided terms like heavy right foot. I find the initial lag between applying more throttle and the engine reacting quite disconcerting and its more noticeable now it has a lot more power to deliver, if its for an overtaking manoeuvre then I guess it would be natural to apply more throttle to compensate, at least the first time you experience it, that could cause wheelspin accelerating out of a roundabout for instance, maybe also a turbo lag effect.

Is there not what?

I am, I did not know the wording or actual procedure hence the response (now editted) to read the manual. I'm pleased to see that others could give chapter and verse.

OK, I'm certainly not up to date on modern vehicle "assistance" systems, does your vehicle have that self parking function? That no doubt uses optical sensors.

Not produced in this century.

Thanks for the link, a very interesting read. I had a strong gut feeling about this one listening to him talk.

Optical? I thought it was ultrasonic detection. Are you talking about a reversing camera?

RTFM Editted. RTM

They dont come with the aftermarket struts or perhaps just the cheaper ones, I destroyed mine trying to remove them to swap over, I cant recall what I did in the end to restrain the piston rod shield but I found a way.

Mixes the acid with what? Gives back energy from where? (ref The Law Of Conservation Of Energy) Sounds like Caca to me, the desulphation process is the effective one but the battery has to be discharged to a severely low voltage for it to be implemented and they make no mention of that.

Yes that was a savage blow to me as well, the writing was on the wall though after they closed the very busy London Mitcham branch and moved over to an on line ordering and delivery service, they went from being the best of the best physical motor trade cash & carry outlet to probably the worst on line supplier.

Correct, a senior moment, I had thought that Brysoni232 had made a new posting today. Apologies to all.

Remove the trims and all will be revealed including hopefully the cycling relay, a good thwack often sets them straight like a defibrillator.

I've no idea, I don't have your vehicle. Its possible the one I have bought might be incorrect, c'est la vie!

Has it really taken you 7 years to get around to replacing the semi shredded belt or has the replacement failed? If the latter you should check the alternator one way sprag clutch if fitted, the diagram shows one.

But still something that should be capable of either being avoided or modulated by the driver, I appreciate that the ECU can and does do so and that yours was either defective or incorrectly programmed but surely every driver should be capable of safely controlling their vehicle in the worst of winter conditions on standard tyres with all the driver aids turned off? Or is that an unrealistic explanation from a previous generation? I do understand that modern heavy overpowered FWD vehicles on stupidly large an widewheels make the above much more of a challenge but frankly that is how one should hone their skills in a safe area away from other traffic. With every new car I have the first thing I do when snow or ice is around is to go out and play to learn the vehicles responses at its limits with the 3 letter acronyms turned off, granted its with very delicate control inputs these days.

Get it on VCDS and look at the DPF differential pressure and the measured (not calculated) value for soot, ignore the oil ash figure that will simply be estimated but at 217k it could weel be that the DPF would benefit from a professional enema. The key indicator will be the differential pressure compared to the measured soot value.