J.R.

It all depends what is tyre sizes and ratings are homologated for the vehicle, often the speed or load rating is well beyond what the vehicle is rated for but you are supposed to maintain the homologated ratings as a minimum. Insurers may refute a claim and in my country you will not pass a CT test with anything other than the homologated tyres fitted.

Yep, that would certainly turn my head away and have me squinting my eyes!

An 8 armed sex addict?

Like my pal who put in 2.5 gallons of oil when he did an oil change on his Marina having to cycle to Halfords in town twice for the subsequent ones before the engine, that right I said engine and not sump was full! 😯 And his mistake only dawned on him after he had started it, someone told him about a thing called a dipstick, he found it and removed it and oil started squirtinging out of the hole 🤣 His father left his mother when he was young, he was the oldest child so became the father figure for the family but had never had any male role models or mentors poor chap.

It could be that its a part number to replace the factory fitted rivnut if it is there, it could be that the hole is punched in the rail but you have to fit the rivnuts (no big deal) or it could be that you have to drill through both to fit the rivnuts, unlikely IMO. Drill a 3mm hole (easier to repair if you are miles out!) and have a wiggle around inside with a probe to see if you are central and if there is a thread below, it looks like a 7mm hole for a 6mm fastener so drill through with a 5mm bit biasing to correct any misalignment, if you follow that with a 10mm or bigger countersink bit it will self centre the hole, chamfer the top edge and not damage the threads although in a rivnut they start below flush so you have some protection.

The temperatures sound spot on, if it carries on behaving then reconnect the connector and do the same live data test on the hills, hopefully that will definitively confirm the sleeve is sticking. Of course that wont be definitive for the Skoda "how can we jerk around this customer" warranty repair, they will want to charge you a silly price for diagnostics (plugging in a fault code reader) which will show nothing and be pointless compared to the real diagnostics that you have done but be enough for them to keep your money and refuse the warranty claim as "o fault found" Cynical, - moi? 😂

The reason I used those words was to be as sure as one could that the sleeve had retracted and was in the non operational position before disabling it, as someone said it is possible that it could be stuck in the partially deployed position. Your live data reading looks correct to me, in the days before the water temperature guage readings were fiddled if you had an accurate guage with a 270° scale that is exactly what you would see with an 88° thermostat, did it return to somewhere around 90°c after the hill? With the sleeve disabled the engine will take slightly longer to warm up but you will notice that you have to drive a couple more miles from cold before feeling warmth from the heater, its a very good system when it behaves.

You need to connect the heavy positive cable to the terminal on the right in the photo and then connect 12V to the solenoid winding terminal, this will throw the pinion out and connect the two large terminals to power the motor. I can see from your photo exactly what your problem is though, corrosion on the left hand terminal, you need to remove the nut and the tab on then end of the braided wire, clean up all the mating faces to bright metal and reassemble it, it should work fine then. Test it as above.

A heavy car uses exactly the same amount of power to keep moving as a lighter one, drag coefficient and frontal area make the biggest difference but for the same vehicle the mass makes a de minimus difference to the power consumed to keep moving Getting up to speed, accelerating, driving up hills, all those the vehicle mass influences but not steady speed power consumption other than the de minimus frictional and tyre losses.

That was who did mine, they charged me more, maybe £250 but as I dropped in completely on the offchance with 20 minutes to spare before my stepmothers funeral and I would never be there again I am not complaining. I had their remap to (allegedly) 184hp but done through an agent in surrey, had I gone to them at Newquay they would have included the rollback for free but it was during Covid, there were travel restrictions, they were booked up months in advance, I was travelling from France to Sussex so it was impossible. I am very very pleased with the remap but I only started with 108hp, with 140 I would probably keep it stock, I think I probably have the standard VAG 170 mapping but with the smaller turbo, its a good combination.

Oh dear! And you were doing so well 😒

It has been asked several times, have you seen that with your own eyes?

Agreed, they would notice on a test drive. Actual warped discs (as I said earlier its a misused term) can be detected using a dial guage and magnetic stand as can the variation in thickness which is what causes the vibration. There is another thing which causes it in probably most cases and which costs nothing to correct, naturally anyone with an interest in making money from repairs will not tell you about it and that is glazing or contamination causing a variance in the friction coefficient, since asbestos was removed from brake linings this affects all vehicles except those that are driven like they have been stolen, and that is exactly what has to be done to rectify the problem until it recurs. I bought a Galaxy that had discs scored like an ice skating rink, that juddered and shuddered and tried to tear the steering wheel out of my hands when I braked, it was slightly better under heavy braking and really violent under light braking. I resolved to replace the discs and pads as soon as I could but was working 7 days a week on a job in London travelling there and back heavily laden and as recklessly as I used to in those carefree days. After a week the vibration was a lot less and I decided I could put back the job a little longer, after 2 weeks the brakes were perfect and stopped on a dime, there was no longer even any trace of scoring, all 4 discs looked like they had just been machined.

On the MK2 glowplug failure registers a fault code but does not bring up a MIL light, or at least it didn't on mine, they are not mission critical. I doubt the MK1 even monitors the circuit.

You should be more concerned with the illumination that the foglamps provide for you and whether they disturb oncoming road users rather than how good you think they look, you cannot see them when you are driving and those who can may well think they look different to your perception.

Wait till its happening frequently then disconnect the wiring plug from the water pump at the end of a journey when the engine has behaved normally and the guage was at 90°, problem should go away, reconnect it if you miss the excitement and spontanaeity! Unlikely.

For my first decade in France people used to stop in front of my place to ask directions and it was always to somewhere a very long way away, not something further down my road or even in the area, nor somewhere big, it would be like asking in London for directions to a small village in Yorkshire! I would ask them for their map (naive I know) to illustrate as people then could not understand my French spoken with a foreign accent, not one ever had a map and not one French person I ever knew did, if they borrowed mine it would never be returned but they would claim they had given it back. Anyway back to the drivers asking for directions, after consulting my map I would start with directions to the next main town on their route and they would either stop me there or drive off, it became clear that they would stop to ask for directions in every town or large village! This happened multiple times per week every week then it completely stopped over a period of about 18 months with the introduction of smartphones. I still carry loads of maps in the car and am always adding to them, I cannot use them when driving any more and was forced to get a satnav when I lost the vision in one eye, if I still had a pair of young eyes able to focus close and far I would still not have a satnav but even I have to admit that with a smartphone if you search for say the nearest Lidl, hospital, pharmacy whatever when miles from home its much simpler to click on the map link and let the phone guide you there.

What did the rollback cost if I may ask?

I'll choose the 3rd option thanks!

Looks or mobility, your choice! Will you be buying new rims or swapping tyres on the existing rims each winter and spring?

I understand, on my MK1 it was a radio cassette with CD multi-changer in the boot, the MK2 had an even more basic radio but it was the double DIN size and compatible connectors, it may have been possible on the MK1 but I did not know of the existence of the head units then.

Exactly what I did! I think I also may have bought a new old stock VAG one, the clamps look like they will last a lot longer than the original but the original inner stainless sleeve will last for ever IMO. Its a great design, far better than overlapping exhaust sections that fuse together with corrosion.

Thanks, you were very helpful and I understood it! I was hoping to be able to connect my phone by USB cable and then use the head unit touch screen to use its functions like Google maps. I used to have a Tom Tit but the screen was very small and with vision in only one eye you dont want to be spending time squinting at a small object, you want to view the road with an occasional glimpse at an easy to read screen. It was being a passenger in a then newish Mondeo with built in satnav, reversing camera etc that made me realise the benefits despite my labelling them as gimmicks, the screen size and also the sound coming from the vehicles speakers, I was pleased to find I could fit a cheap head unit in my then Octavia and then the Yeti to get all this functionality. I could not go back to a tiny dash mounted Tom Tit but recognise that the satnav software is quite lacking and several times have resorted to using Google maps on the phone with it propped in front of the gearlever which is a backward step safety wise. There is an "Auxilliary" option on the screen menu, I think its for the USB connection as it says "no aux found" I will try plugging in the phone and seeing what happens which is usually my way instead of asking for advice or help.

That suggestion has been pretty much irrelevant for the last 30 years since serpentine poly V belts and automatic tensioners became mainstream.

VCDS being used to code a sensor on a Mazda! 😯