J.R.

For once it was not my bad English but others misreading, I had indeed wrote:

Sorry, I meant 14 days per year 😒 Mea culpa! In respect of fitting winter tyres for say 4 months or more when they are only likely to be properly needed for less than 14 days. There was a member selling a set in recent days that lived in Cornwall, palm trees thrive there! OK he may have moved there fromcolder climes and no longer needed them.

Well called that man! 👍 You created some impressive backpedalling!

No such thing as summer tyres, I'm pleased to see even SurreyJohn has stopped using the phrase 👍 He gives a good detailed explanation as to why they choose Eco tyres as the factory fitment, it is likely that they have to fit the type of tyres that were used for the official fuel consumption tests to avoid legal claims. I doubt in the majority of the UK (I added that bit for you Root!) there has been more than 14 days per year of proper winter conditions over the last 3 decades yet the uptake of people fitting winter tyres has been quite remarkable, of the ones that I know they all fall into the poor driver category, those with an absence of connection with the vehicle through its controls, who drive without regard to or adapting to the road and weather conditions and who cannot modulate the power transmission according to the grip. It has got gradually worse since FWD vehicles became the majority yet in the correct hands they are the best vehicles for winter conditions.

Not sure if the video is jerking, if the pulley is jerking but not rotating or if its a strobe effect from the video sampling rate, 3 seconds is not long enough to be sure as my computer often shows videos jerkily. If the cam pulley was not turning then the belt has stripped around the crank pulley.

On what basis do you believe the timing belt "slipped" then "slipped" again, what your mechanic is telling you? A broken cam belt can not be mistaken, I have never known one to "slip" but thats not to say it could not happen with a tensioner failure. Does the engine whizz over too fast when you crank it compared to before?

To what level are you "topping it off"? If too high then it will expel the excess.

If only you would.

Stuck impellor shroud sleeve? Other than that it does sound like a blocked heater matrix. I had an 8mm bore radiator overflow pipe block solid from the dog turd type radweld, on the 5th lap of Goodwood the cooling system needed to vent some fluid but the blocked pipe prevented it, a radiator hose blew at high temp and pressure which was very impressive. I have often wondered how it could do that but not block radiators and heater matrixes, I guess its all to do with exposure to oxygen and the overflow pipe was the perfect conditions for it to do its stuff. With all the various metals in the cooling system and also the Silkat I think there may be some oxygen produced within the heater circuit which could cure the radweld.

Now that I can enlarge the photo (for some reason it wouldn't earlier) its definitely been bodged together, crappy welding, grind marks etc.

That would be a cloned key, if there are any doubts that the original missing key might be in the hands of questionable people then the more expensive main dealer route is the way to go.

Disconnect it and try moving it manually, then try hot wiring the actuator with the pushrod disconnected. The welding between the round shaft and the flat plate does not look like it was done in manufacture.

Difficult, perhaps even impossible to do if the microswitches are working. I locked myself in the Yeti with the alarm sounding in B&Q car park after loading stuff in the boot, I was racking my brains as to how I could have done so and how the car could have allowed me to do so with the keys outside, or so I thought........... I definitely had not touched the central console door locking button, the lock microswitches were working to my knowledge, I deduced that the key had to be in the car and I had inadvertently pressed the lock button on the fob. After a lot of searching I found the keys under the seat. I have a spare unchipped key hidden outside of the vehicle to get me in if locked out and a chipped key hidden inside if my keys are lost or stolen.

Unless there is a known fault on early revision sensors that was resolved on the later ones I would not be concerned with buying an earlier revision, in some cases such as concentric slave cylinders the earlier ones can be far superior. Revision numbers also change when there is change of design and/or manufacturing process, always driven by the constant need to reduce costs, often at the price of reliability. It's the parts suppliers that usually do this, manufacturers other than wanting reduced component prices wont have any priority for a widget unless it is failing and on a current production vehicle, a parts manufacturer will develop a process allowing them to say produce a plastic part cheaper than the current die cast one and they then get the OE order, the revision number is changed to reflect the different but compatible part, usually the other OEMs follow suit to compete for the orders.

Door lock microswitch.

Do you know for sure that the belt has not already been replaced? If there is no oil then the loose bolts are almost certainly the result of previous work.

Search link brings up no results.

Does yours have a belt or a chain? Loose bolts I believe are as a result of an oil leak from a cam actuator, if this has not been resolved the same will likely happen again

My apologies to RJVB, I had not appreciated that it was he who had made the latch comment, had I known I would not have made the comment knowing that English is his second language.

Yes, the beginning of my clutch sagas which happened on the spirited return journey from a remap, I had a master cylinder full of schmoo and ultimately had to replace the concentric slave cylinder which was allowing air in but not leaking fluid. So a couple of faults and the heat generated from the DPF was definitely causing problems with the former. I even took to hooking up the computer to VCDS to see the DPF temperature and was surprised how high it got when giving it the beans and how quickly it rose, it could be that the stock VAG 170hp engine had a different set up to cope with the heat, it certainly had a bigger turbo, mine was the 108hp engine remapped to allegedly 184hp, probably 170hp.

Does that sound plausible in todays litigious vs denial of responsibility climate? Especially a retro-fit. Hot surfaces will not ignite petrol, the distributor with rotor arm and points sparking away under the carburettor on a Ford Essex engine would though, the carburettor with a not so interference fit when the engine warms up brass fuel line spigot .

Looks like a male/male joiner, both pieces cut clean at 90° so a factory fitment?

Ditto. A latch would indicate that it can be released with bare hands like the headlights and one of the replys furthered the suggestion, yours however did make mention of a tool, not everyone would have looked at the diagram.

All a blur Toot, the original sleeper looking one had done one or two seasons then came the revamp for the Group B monster, I did find an article on the net which I posted on here, perhaps its amongst my saved favorites.

I'm really not the person to ask but for pairing a device like my energy monitor plugs you have to hold down a button till a light flashes and then the phone should pick up the device, that tells me that the phone is always looking for incoming signals perhaps at a low standby current initially then sparks up to do the pairing. Conversely when I want to see how much energy my well pump or heating has used its the phone app contacting the bluetooth device so that too must be on the lookout all the time.