J.R.

Dont poke it too hard with the end of that putter! 😄

What sensor????????????????

AliExpress, dirt cheap and usually genuine local market VAG parts.

ECON

He has to to remain in business and put food on the table, car dealers like any other business are not charities. Why did you not ask for a PX price against the £55K Merc you were interested in? That would probably have had a margin built in to pay an unrealistic PX price for a much cheaper vehicle with in being moved on in the trade at no margin or even a small loss. A good example, with that they would be offering a loss making PX. You probably could have got close to that against the £55K Merc if it had been priced that way.

Do you mean you prefer the look of them? If so then preventative maintenance is the price to be paid. Because standard plastic valve covers have a built in sealing ring (as do the AC port caps) and do not seize with corrosion.

It looks great and I'm heartened to hear that you are leasing it before your retirement, you know what its going to cost you and you won't be faced with a huge hit if/when you came to sell it, so with that in mind I hope you get to see it hit by massive depreciation! Only a couple of years ago both our lives were turned upside down and you were left with no employment, no income and no state support, really pleased to see that things have turned around for you!

Too late now for me to say but there was less than zero chance that any of the fixings would have been a left hand thread.

The Mong is still waiting to learn what law would be broken by disabling headlamp washers.

Versus 17 posts, 8 of which confrontational. That's what is great about this forum, there is both room for and tolerance of either.

If you open the door in the morning to pen the bonnet to take a voltage reading from the battery then most things will have been woken up and 11.94 volts is actually a very healthy reading especially if its a start/stop vehicle. My parasitic drain is 50% more than it should be because of the towing relay, it's not caused a problem to date but I hav a visible voltmeter in the car so I can see from outside without waking things up what the actual resting voltage is, if it is too low after not driving for an extended period I prefer to charge the battery than try to start the car which might damage it and reduce its life, of course the voltmeter also increases the parasitic drain! The old voltmeter broke, the new one has a red/orange/green LED array with the corresponding voltage written beside them in type too small to read 😒lets say there are 8 leds, when driving it will be within the last 2 green leds, at shutdown it will drop one more, after an hour or so it will have dropped to the highest orange one as the battery cools. The next morning it will still be on the highest orange LED but as soon as I use the central locking it will drop to the lowest red one and were I to use my multimeter the battery would read less than 12v with the volt drop from the Canbus controllers yet the starting will be instant and the battery could crank the engine for 10 minutes or until the smoke leaks out from the starter wiring (already been there!). When you disconnect or reconnect the battery you get a huge spark which illustrates jut how much current is being drawn with the ignition off.

I've said that too many times over the years and meant it sincerely, however my best intentions don't seem enough to overcome the way I am wired, if I have time to think I know I make better decisions but we often don't have that luxury, thankfully the split second ones have to date mainly been the correct ones. Today due to an accident on the main road I had to go to the dump towing a large trailer on a very narrow road that I cycle, its a hollow with tree foliage that meets overhead so quite dark, right at the bottom there is a blind hairpin where many a time I have met a car on the wrong side of the road, today something inside told me to put on my headlights and to high beam together with hazard warnings and to slow to a crawl hugging the RH verge, the outside of the bend, sure enough I was met by someone driving far too fast on the wrong side of the road to avoid the hairpin he locked up and skidded not hitting me thankfully, not only that he was followed by at least 6 other cars nose to tail who all had problems stopping, they had just been diverted from the main road onto a B road and then onto this narrow one only wide enough to pass at a crawl. A few years ago it would have been a head on with probably both of us over the centre of the road.

Well said Mike. I hope things go well for you DieselVRS 👍

Says the guy who overtakes in a very dangerous situation exceeding the speed limit and then posts a dashcam video of the event on the internet editted to not show the oncoming vehicles. If you really are ex-job then it makes it even worse.

Would you mind quoting what the law is you refer to please?

Absolutely not true, I have done 40K miles without any EGR on my vehicle (I fitted an emulator/simulator) and the DPF is healthier than ever especially since I had the emissions "fix" rolled back, I'm lucky if I notice one interrupted regen per year. DPF's do not clog due to soot (unless they are unable to regen), its the oil ash that does for them eventually.

£30 and a 24 hour turnaround when I had the crash data reset on mine. Couple of firms doing so on Ebay. You may well have unseen chassis damage, it takes a lot for the controller to deploy an airbag, often the resultant damage is not visible which was the case on my vehicle.

The other strange thing, but not strange to French eyes is that when you get banned from driving, and it takes a hell of a lot here for that to happen then you can still drive a VSP (voiture sans permis) a little fibreglass 4 seater with a restricted 3 cylinder diesel engine, max speed IIRC 45km/h, now the base insurance premium on them is quite eye watering. Children from the age of 14 can also drive them which is very important for those living away from home while they study in a Lycée pro etc, I have a feeling that they can either drive on the household insurance policy or the premiums are reasonable for them, the high premiums are for those that cannot pass a driving test or who have been banned, usually drink driving. If you are banned for drink driving but it could affect your livelyhood then you are still allowed to drive to and from work (if you request it of the court) but not at any other time. There is another good scheme where serial drink drivers cannot get their license back until they have given negative blood alcohol tests weekly for several months, a magistrate will then decide whether to allow them back on the road, often with a breath test controlled vehicle immobiliser.

And supply your own lube and be taxed on it 😄

Accident deemed to be your fault then I guess. In my country insurers are only allowed by law to load a policy premium by a certain amount, 50% for young drivers in their first year, 25% in their second year, thereafter they pay the same as any other driver. Maximum NCB is 50% obtained after 13 years of 5% a year reductions, if you have an accident that is your responsability your bonus coefficient (NCB) will go up 25%, they cannot charge you a centime more, if the base premium increases it can only be the general increase given to all policyholders. So in your case not allowing for any annual inflationary increase you would pay £500, a tenth of what they are asking from you. But its even better than that, say you started with the maximum 50% bonus (on a gross premium of £800) you now have 37.5% bonus, you pay 62.5% of the gross premium, you have another £100K accident, your fault, your bonus is reduced by another 25% so you now pay 78% of the gross premium for the next year = £625!!! You can go on doing this ad infinitum, after 2 more claims you pass into malus, there is a loading on your base premium so if you have accidents 4 years running you would then be paying £975 per year, this can go on until you hit 350% malus 😯 I will let someone else work out how many years of accidents you would have to get there! Then the really crazy thing kicks in, they are not allowed to increase the malus beyond 350% 😯😯😯 so the maximum you would ever pay after years of accidents would be £2800 and you could carry on crashing every year without any financial penalty!! This is half of what your current insurer wants for your renewal after only one fault accident 😒 And there is another twist, its the vehicle and not the driver that is insured, if you have two vehicles insured and have a fault accident in one, lets say you were drink driving, clearly a future insurance risk, you only lose 25% of your bonus on the policy that you claimed on, your NCB remains intact on the other vehicle. Insurance is still relatively cheap here and many people keep a second car for runs to the tip etc to keep their main car in good condition, also to use if the main one is broken down, being serviced or repaired etc. The main car would be the VRS and the spare a Fabia with cheaper insurance, you keep crashing and claiming on the VRS until the insurance gets too high at which point you sell the Fabia and change the vehicle on that policy to a VRS retaining your maximum NCB and base premium!

Glad you are OK. If the car has been taken by the insurers then its too late but a VCDS scan of the airbag control module and its coding would answer all your questions. Sounds like the drivers knee airbag were it to have deployed would have reduced your knee injury. All the airbags except the roof pillar ones had deployed on my Yeti yet it had only had a minor parking speed shunt which scratched the bumper and cracked the grille, it turned out to have been harder than it looked as the crash beam behind the bumper was distorted but I'm still driving on the polished up but unrepaired bumper and bonnet. I would have expected the door pillar airbags to have deployed at the very least.

It doesnt make sense because if what you relate is true the rear of your car is bouncing around and IMO hitting the bump stops because it has little or no damping and no longer existant bump stops. Your solution is to search for softer (your words) less damped shock absorbers which might give you a partial improvement over your current leaking damper(s) but not the result you are searching for, comfort for rear seat passengers, but quite the opposite.

This makes no sense at all, if the shock absorber has leaked enough to affect the damping then of course rear seat passengers will feel a rough ride, you dont resolve the problem of a lack of damping by fitting softer (your words) units. I will bet you a pound to a penny that your rear springs are weakened and have probably broken coils, that the rear ride height is low and give you even better odds that the foam bump stops have long ago decomposed to nothing and the suspension is hitting the bump stops when you carry rear seat passengers.

You are almost certainly right in the fault being low battery charge related but if you were to invest in something like VCDS in the same way that you have on a decent battery tester (I also have one) you would almost certainly find the fault codes, likely to be low Terminal 30 voltage and communications failure with one or more Canbus modules due to the low battery voltage and a high load event like the power steering. 5 miles should be more than enough to recharge even the flattest battery, you may have something else going on, a worn alternator or a fractured excitation wire.

But on what basis? Why do you consider that they should pay to repair your car? I guess you meant disprove and I agree with you. They did not provide a faulty car, it has since (they claim) suffered a breakdown of the BCM, things fail in life, I don't understand why so often these days it has to be someone elses fault or responsability, I guess that comes from having always bought second hand privately and accepting what life throws at me.