J.R.

Have you had the conversation with yourself where you say "how did I manage to do that?" It could well be that you have a faulty door closed microswitch on one of the doors. Best to get that sorted before a possible recurrence.

Battery retaining clamp, not a safety latch, not a latch at all.

I worked on the revamp of the original development 6R4 to create the group B vehicle in around 1985. The original looked pretty much like a standard Metro, the tyre manufacturer announcing that they would only be producing a limited range of compounds in the then 13" (I think) for the following season prompted a frantic redesign to accomodate the larger wheels and lengthen the wheelbase, it ended up looking like it was on steroids. I still have some A0 dyeline prints of the original styling sketches.

Very true, a regular occurrence.

I have never known an O ring to be anything but toroidal hence the name. Aircon ones should be a specific rubber type, usually coloured green but that does not guarantee compatibility with the refrigerant and PAG oil unless you know the source, they are also usually imperial sizes and not Metric.

You could have used a multimeter or simply read the instruction manual, the latter for me being against the law 🤣 Yes, several hours or the day after charging that is about right, a battery that has suffered damage from discharge but still useable will be at say 12.4-12.5 volts, same for an older aged battery. That is correct but it depends on what you mean by completely discharged, without the no load recovered cell voltage the term is meaningless, 10.5 volts is classed as completely discharged, beneath that sulphation occurs which is why I dont like the recommendation to discharge to 7.5v to use the recondition function. I'm hoping that someone will explain that sulphation takes days or weeks to occur and discharging rapidly to that point then putting on the charger in pulse mode will do more good than harm.

Correct, and the instructions posted state that. My Diddlydaldi charger has a pulse charging desulphation mode but the battery has to be at less than 7.5v for it to activate, its no doubt the same for the CTEK, but if the voltage is much less than that the charger wont spark up anyway without jumping from another charger or battery, I did get it to enter that mode with a neighbours battery that was down to 8v so I dropped it a bit further, a load test before showed 25% remaining life and after the treatment its now showing 65% life, I know that its a stupid name for the measurement of the internal resistance but the numbers can be used as a comparator. I would not have expected it to recover so well from a standard charge. My concern about following the Ctek instructions for the so called reconditioning charge would be the damage done to the battery by discharging it first to 7.5v, if it has already happened by neglect etc then great but I would not choose to do so having seen the effect on several batteries from leaving parking lights on unintentionally. OTOH my caravan leisure battery has a different composition that supposedly copes better with deep discharge, the previous owner had bought it instead of attending to the problem of the non functioning mains transformer which should have kept it charged, it was only a few months old but completely flat, zero volts, only through giving it defibrillation with a truck booster starter pack could I get it to start charging on my 50 year old charger that has no minimum voltage, from there I passed to the Diddlydaldi one, after a couple of days it finally was fully charged and to my great surprise my tester showed it had 97% life, I have never managed to successfully recover a car battery so completely discharged.

Surely you dont mean to put the bolts back in loosely? If the securing bolts referred to are those holding the clutch cover on then its no big deal, if they are the flywheel to crankshaft bolts then its a very big deal and would cause significant damage in a very short time indeed and sound like all the main bearings had run, frankly I find it hard to believe, you would likely need a new crankshaft and flywheel were it the case.

I can see uses for it though especially on standby batteries, my caravan lead took on water during these biblical rains and tripped the RCD switching off everything in the house including the freezer, I was unaware in the caravan because everything is 12v, the only warning I would have got would have been the computer battery getting low, the battery was still at 12.3v so no damage was done but it could have been expensive, that device would have been a good thing to have.

Good to know. But 1ma only for remaining in standby waiting for a Bluetooth connection and also when communicating data sounds implausibly low for a mobile phone comms device. The original LED voltmeter I had took IIRC 3ma but it had an on/off switch which I would use if I knew the vehicle was going to be left for a long time. It was shonky though and the soldering holding the USB socket to the PCB fractured and was irreperable, the new one has a circular array of red, orange and green Leds with some tiny illegible markings of the corresponding voltages, I think the fag lighter feed must go through a diode as the indicated voltages are always between 0.7 and 1.0v less than the actual battery voltage. The unit sounds interesting for those who never look up from the screens of their mobile phones, I just want to see the voltage by looking through the window, if its too low then I charge the battery before starting the vehicle, I have regrettably shortened the life of my current battery by cranking once when the voltage was too low after leaving the sidelights on, this was when the voltmeter was broken.

😯 Stop giving lifts to them then 😂

And if what he relates is to be believed the DPF has blocked a second time after being cleaned only a year ago. I am not doubting the OP's word but not blindly believing those in the motor trade he is dealing with. It does appear that his vehicle is unsuited to his journey profile. I had the emissions fix rolled back on my Yeti, the best thing that I have ever done, I have interrupted only 2 regens in the last 18 months, before it was practically every journey in fact through VCDS logging it would happen several times during an 800km autoroute journey towing a barn fronted heavily (over)laden removal trailer at wide open throttle on every incline, 800kms of the ideal passive regen conditions including elevated oil temperature yet it would actively regen 3 times during the journey and then try again on every 20km journey the following week.

It might be well above it with 1 litre added!

Someone had a very good explanation for that:

Talk about an over-complicated self defeating solution which will significantly increase the parasitic battery drain and hence further reduce its autonomy 😒 Why not have an LED voltmeter plugged into the cigarette lighter socket or a fixed one tapping off its wiring like I have? One glance through the window tells me the level of charge.

I can see and understand now why you wanted to know the engine build date, please ignore the above. For the enlightenment of others what is the critical manufacturing date?

Do you have the correct revision clockspring module that supports the new functions?

What difference would 3 months 11 years ago make to your decision to look at the tensioner? Do you think you will be safe waiting till the warmer weather next May if your engine was built 3 in May 2012? Or were there some production changes at that time?

I can understand a 16 year old or even a middle aged born again sports bike rider not wanting an indicator the size of a baked bean can ruining the sleek looks of their machine especially when a tiny but higher intensity LED indicator is very visible even in bright daylight, just look at what cyclists have now. But the idiotic pre-pubescent car stylists seem to have decided to do their best to completely hide indicators on modern vehicles and render them invisible even when flashing.

The problem is exacerbated by high level rear brake lights especially the LED ones as the current legislation still dictates a maximum wattage and not luminous intensity, they can be much much brighter than a 21w halogen bulb behind a red glass and are directly in your line of sight. Rooted, some of the modern front and rear indicators with clear lenses are so tiny that if they were fitted to a moped the flics would pull the youngster over and fine them yet they are fitted into massive LED rear light clusters that go across the whole rear of the car, its very hard to see the turn signal amongst the massive array of rear lights and with the brake lights on pretty much impossible, and thats if you havn't had to look away because of the brightness and the high level one.

After starting I connected the charged jumper battery to the auxiliary socket but the voltage equalised at 10v, still not enough for the parking brake so we had to remove the battery and fit the healthy one to drive the vehicle home.

That causes the volt drop and the comms error seems to be the first indication on most of the modules that the supply voltage is slightly down. I recently recovered a neighbours vehicle (a s**troen) with a flat battery that turned out to be a shredded auxiliary drive belt, after a jump start the engine was running but battery voltage only 8v, not enough for the power steering or to release the parking brake but I was encouraged that the engine would actually run, that the dashboard was not fault code city and the modules were still communicating albeit with the outputs like the windscreen wipers being sluggish jumpy. It seems to be a VAG thing that the slightest volt drop stops most if not all comms between modules.

I had a genuine Skoda touch up pen, same paint colour for both my Octavias and also my neighbours MK2 Facelift who has inherited it, expensive but still in service some 20 years later! Anyway it was a dual pack with both base coat and clear and one of the caps had a needle type wire brush for enlarging the damaged area to remove all of the rust, it did indeed often creep well beyond the visible damage.

With JIT manufacture its very unlikely to be any more than that, I would have expected a matter of days. To the OP, why does it matter to you?

What is it that you are referring to popping or popping out?