J.R.

No, it was almost certainly a different engine but for most of the diesels with the alternator at say 14.00 and the AC pump at 17.00 the run is similar, the best explanation that I can give you is the one I did before:

Oils is the new religion/politics!

If you say so.

You make a lot of assumptions without asking what the OP's typical journey profile is. It could be simply that the attempted regenerations are being interrupted and not allowed to complete he has already spoken of such. As for being certain that the DPF is part clogged, speaking of a forced regen (why?) and that it will never be successful and back to square one in 1000 miles you dont even know how many miles the vehicle has done. What "other filters" do you believe would prevent a DPF, probably a healthy one at that, from (re)clogging? Or have I missed something? Editted, my posting overlapped with Rooted's, looks like he and I are on the same page.

Absolutely, especially the bit about global warming raising sump temperatures to boil synthetic oil, that was very satisfying, I should point out that I did not demand satisfaction but nonetheless am very appreciative to have received some.

I do believe he was. The more of the old banal everyday cars unloved today that are allowed to be scrapped the greater the future value of original unrestored and restored examples will be. I have a friend, a retired French industrialist who has an aircraft museum, he stores my Lotus Elan, he has an enviable car collection worth a lot of money now because of such rarety, the majority of them are vehicles he owned and drove and could not bear to part with including his honeymoon camping holiday vehicle. I suppose he was lucky in having somewhere to store them and not needing to sell them to buy the next vehicle but they were still pretty much valueless when he restored them, he did it through love and nostalgia and it realy pleases me to know that most are now good investments, all of them were everyday vehicles, no exotics although he has bought a few more interesting veicles over the years includin Edith Piaffs hearse! My absolute favorite is an original, patinated and unrestored Amilcar still used regularly and driven very spiritedly.

Unless you are going to buy the alternator from Skoda or TPS, you are going to end up with a much less reliable unit produced for the minimum cost, even from Skoda or TPS it will be likely be an aftermarket product unless the vehicle is a current model. Far better and far simpler to replace the pulley and auxiliary drive belt (as a precaution). I have just recieved a new tool from Temu (I cant find my old one) and it cost only €3.48 including delivery from China in 7 days, to but the same in France would cost €15 in delivery alone and I could be waiting weeks.

Assuming the old one has not leaked and destroyed the PCB finding a compatible battery will be your challenge, I think some smaller ones exist but may not have the same pin out. I bought a cheap AliExpress one for my MK2 Octavia, it looked OK and may well have been a local market produced OEM unit (it had the VAG part number scratched out) but the vehicle could not establish comms with it so it was a waste of money.

As it cant communicate with the PCM then its safe to say that the U0100 code has not been read from that module and so does not require resetting, it would be more correct to display "cannot communicate with ECM/PCM" than give a fault code which may well not be stored within the module. It could be that VCDS cannot communicate either in which case you will have to do some old school faultfinding to re-establish the can bus communications between the ECU and the OBDII socket and most likely between all the other modules on the Can network.

Either buy VCDS or a higher level fault code reader that can communicate with the individual modules, read more than just generic OBDII codes from the main ECU (which your says it cannot communicate with) and can delete them. It will also allow you to run output tests and live data readings of any suspect actuators and sensors. "Pending fault code" is a good enough indicator that the manufacturers are just copiers and have no clue, I don't believe there is such a thing as a "pending" fault code, they are either logged or deleted.

But not one he is willing to explain.

Yeah right! 😄 I forgot they used warp drives lubricated by magnetic repulsion.

The 8à's were the period where manufacturers had generally perfected chassis rail and floorpan sealing but not windscreen and door sealing, first thing to do on most of the vehicles was remove the tooling hole bungs (drain plugs) from the floorpan or drill several largish holes. Once they started rusting it was no longer problem. Skodas with panoramic sunroofs give their owners an authentic 80's experience. Anyone had to drive a car where their heels were sliding around on an ice rink of a flooded footwell?

Underappreciated workers at Leyland and their suppliers, that made me chuckle. Red Robbo, now there was an underappreciated guy if ever there was one 😄 I had a Marina, it didn't have much if anything going for it other than it was very cheap and meant I could drive around in a relatively new car looking (or so I dreamed ) like I had some money which was important to me then. It was no sh*ttier than any of the BL offerings whose instant rusting paid my rent and put me through college from 16 years old without any family support. In fact in hindsight it rusted far less than most of the other models, probably about the only kind thing I could say about them, the president of the owners club was a nerdy schoolmate of mine. 1.8 TC's redefined the term "axle tramp" and took it to a whole new level, the only car I have ever seen that could not make any forward progress on a flat and level frosty car park, even when myself the self proclaimed "Mr Traction Control" could not coax it forward, it was like someone had removed the propshaft.

No, its a poverty spec with no bells & whistles, no LCD displays of any kind. Less to go wrong.

Why not ? Unless you cannot back it up, if its just your belief then thats fine, as I said earlier any decision that you believe in is the right one for you, semi-synthetic seems like a sensible compromise. When I was racing motorcycle engined Caterhams I found that synthetic oils were a problem, they were great for the engine as it hit very high oil temps on endurance races on short circuits, fully synthetic oil made the difference between bearings running at 170°c and remaining intact, the problem was clutch slip (multi-plate wet clutch) caused by the friction modifiers, eventually I had to settle on Castrol Superbike oil as it was then. I tried other oils that claimed different formulations against my baseline test for the Castrol oil against the Comma fully synthetic I had been using, gripping an oiled spanner in an oily hand it would slip through my fingers with the friction modifier containing oil.

Yes I do but by now I know just how many miles to expect from a tankfull according to my journey profiles, local, towing, autoroutes, autoroute towing etc. When I refill the optimistic range showing lets say 650 miles is pretty much spot on if I maintain the same journey profile for the tank of fuel, down to half a tank it remains truthfull at say 325 miles beneath that it starts stealing range to create the "virtual reserve" capacity of 5-7 litres so it will hit zero miles remaining after a further 250 miles and I can safely drive another 60 miles beyond that and most times do. I dont push my luck quite so much with this one being a Common Rail Diesel as running dry could wreck the pumps and injectors. The 60 miles I quoted was for local journeys, if towing or on the autoroute it would be less and I can judge by how much by how fewer miles I did before the display showed zero remaining miles. I always ignore the fuel low warning light, if you fill up when that comes on you will be filling up 8 times instead of 5.

Speak for yourself!!!

I do on every tankfull, my closest call was a couple of months ago on the autoroute having travelled 100 kms after the "miles remaining" display read zero and then deciding to go one junction further to get to a lower cost filling station, I got 59.8 litres into a 60 litre tank, normally it would be 57 to 58 litres. I've been doing that for close to 20 years and the only surprise I have had is running out of fuel a couple of times when the fuel sender was playing up.

Dont forget Cliff Michelmore and Woofter Woolard, oh to be back in the simple days of "the gearlever falls nicely to hand" instead of the poncy lifestyle ads of today.

Maybe you should consider changing the title of the thread to something more appropriate than The truth about electric cars? I think that is what EnterName was referring to. It has evolved into a place for links to clickbait and other commercially motivated videos, most seem to agree the thread OP included that many have opposing agendas to push, they cannot all be the truth. I have enjoyed and been informed by many of them, many of the presenters I cannot stand the style of but thankfully there is a J.R. health warning on the title screenshot or whatever it is called, the ones I dont like all seem to be standing in a weird way in front of the vehicles pointing with a dramatic expression on their face and equally dramatic hairstyle, the colours and fonts of the dramatic messags and captions are always similar.

She is in training to be a Doctors receptionist!

I completely understand, often the priority is to affect a repair using whatever means as opposed to waiting for the correct materials and/or tools. I once overcame a problem with the Thermo-time switch on my Scirocco (it was not operating the 5th cold start injector to start during the winter mornings) in my lunchtime using only materials from my desk and in the car. I ripped out some speaker cable and hot wired the injector via a switch dangling under the dashboard made from a erasing rubber and 2 drawing pins, it worked a treat until I could order and recieve the new thermo-time switch.

You will be fine, the vehicle effectively runs in 2WD mode unless more traction is needed or pre-emptively thought to be needed, even when its 100% engaged it periodically disengages momentarily to prevent any transmission wind up. Having different diameter tyres on either axle is compensated for by the relevant differential, if you are concerned about the front to rear difference which you should not be, then changing only one tyre will create less imbalance than changing both. All irrelevant anyway because as soon as the vehicle trajectory is anything other than straight ahead there will be a front to rear imbalance

Given the requirement to be reasonably competent I am surprised you say a new starter is required, there are several possible faults all of which could be resolved with zero expense by said reasonably competent person.