J.R.

Let me guess, another vehicle sold new with silly large wheels and skinny rubber band tyres?

I can tick all those boxes with my vehicle. I call mine a Category S because thats what it was, the salvage yard said it was a fleet vehicle, self insured by the company and no claim was made, that it would not be recorded............. It made no odds to me because once re-registered in France any salvage markers are lost but the V5 did indeed carry no salvage marker. I got second hand airbags, a reconditioned dashboard (the airbag ruptures it) seat belt mechanisms with new pyrotechnic charges as a kit from an Eastern European guy, most of the written off vehicles were going over there to be broken, mine would have too, when Mike went and inspected it for me he saw a transporter packed full of wrecks about to leave for Poland or Romania, there were 2 or more every day from this yard alone. So the RHD vehicles go to Eastern Europe, some are repaired and return for resale, others the parts get removed, refurbished in the case of the dash and seat belts etc and then return to sellers like this guy who can undercut any of the domestic companies offering the same service, or at least he could, he was very concerned about Brexit. All bar one or two of my vehicles have always been bought this way and put back on the road and then used by me for many years ,one even got written off a second time and I retained the salvage from my insurers, repaired it again and they re-insured it!

Will Kerr is his nom de plume, his real first name is Wayne 😄

Most purchasers of said item would be delighted with what you are complaining about. Ah the penny has dropped, it only lasts for 15 seconds so you cant go cruising around annoying the heck out of people! Maybe change it for one of the dump valves that sounds like an owl howling or a popcorn rev limiter? All tongue in cheek by the way, I've reached pension age before growing up and spent 4 decades with straight through exhausts on 7's latterly revving to 11K with motorcycle engines, now I get wound up when I hear younger versions of myself hooning around and realise what many people must have really thought about me.

What consumption did you get on the warm laps of the Nurburgring? I did 12 hot laps of the Circuit de Croix en Ternois in my MK1 Octavia with 3 passengers showing them the lines and the techniques to maximise the hairpins and the consumption was 19mpg. That circuit was full throttle acceleration or maximum braking, pretty much nothing between the two.

If it feels dangerous on a basic corner (whatever that is) at any speed then what did you expect would happen giving it plenty of gas in 2nd gear on a roundabout?

No I cannot and will not assume that so no point telling me to, industry in the 21st century has moved on from people throwing buckets of unlabelled compounds into the mixing cauldron over a fire. I doubt that many drivers would feel the difference between the same tyres at either end of the manufacturing tolerances or even rejects well beyond that I would attribute the variation in comments to the variety of life, different people having different perceptions, different biases and agendas. I cant recall the exact analogy from when I was studying QC for an MBA so I am paraphrasing, a chocolate teapot or a cup with a hole in the bottom can both be perfect quality products, as perfect as a china teapot or a cup that holds water, quality is defined as conformity to a defined standard, a tyre that grips better or lasts longer in no higher a quality product than one that has little grip or short life.

If you use the hot melt type you can split it lengthwise and wrap it round the cable, secured with some lockwire before heating and setting, choose a larger size to get a couple of layers. It is too late to preserve the material that has already decomposed and I doubt the insulation is rubber

Its conveniently half desoldered itself for you. Its name might have been Freedom Fry!

Only if the boots were greased with expanding foam.

Heat shrink tubing, preferably one with hot melt glue liner. My Philishave charger has done the same thing, only 15 or so years old, young for one of them, they dont make them like they used to!

It's most likely them that did it, did you have any work done in that area?

I am very confident that is exactly what it is, the question is why? Removing it will likely give you the answer.

I check my vehicle very often, the Yeti struts are visible through the wheelarch, I have had the suspension apart to replace drop links etc, never any misting or leaking, then during one of my mammoth towing journeys last year I realised the overladen trailer was making the car porpoise and the oscillations did not seem to be damped, the suspension is so stiff and with a short wheelbase its hard to do a bounce test, the bonnet and wings are not strong enough to push on without denting them, I did it on the slam panel and was shocked to find I had zero damping on the front end, it really was not apparent on normal driving. Both had leaked out a lot of oil and had done so in a very short time period at probably 105K miles.

I agree with your last sentence, what I wrote above was diametrically opposite to how I am but if you are dealing with recalcitrant muppets who are not honouring their obligations then you have to swing to the other side, MOT fail = unsafe to drive on road = fix it you *****rds or I'll get it done and the court will make you pay.

Muppets, they are dumb enough to put their stupidity in writing! All the better for you though, ask an MOT tester and if he says its a fail pay him to test it to certify that, ask him to really scrutinise the vehicle closely because he might identify other stuff that you can force them to pay for, you might as well add them to the court claim. I think I would pay an independant to do the work and not trust those jokers to do anything other than tell lies, they may even believe the K-rap they are being told to trot out but it doesn't change the facts.

Wise lady.

Definitely expanded foam and from a DIY aerosol and not a pro gun judging by the collateral splatter. That also looks like a tywrap above it. I reckon its a bodge to stop something vibrating and rattling so have some sympathy and understanding, I have several guns with different compounds on the go at all times, by multi-purpose bodging tools of choice!

Is the photo of the LH suspension strut taken from the front?

They are shot, your observations re Skoda are correct, VAG even created a BS document speaking of "misting" from vaporised damping fluid conveniently being blind to the boiling point being around 300°C. Try trading it in towards a newer model and see how their tune changes! The one photo'd is an MOT failure and by extension the vehicle is not safe to be driven, I never make these kind of alarmist projections (wrong word) but in your case you need some leverage against the crooks, I would give them one more opportunity to reconsider their position before you pay to have the urgent repairs done and obtain a judgement against them in the small claims court. Heck the BS document even has photos to show what they claim is misting and what is a leak, the latter is far less than yours so by their own admission they are trying it on. Hopefully someone will link to the document.

Its inconcievable that all of the backlighting Leds will have failed, maybe a dry joint somewhere which you reflowed when replacing the leds. The car drives fine you say, did the warning lights go out? What you described is completely normal after a battery disconnection. If the only problem you have is not being able to erase the historic fault codes that is because you only have a basic code reader and these are safety related systems requiring access to the individual controllers. Try an ABS stop in a safe area to be sure the system is operating.

Not required, only a little patience, if you try putting one in when prompted it may give you no end of grief. Editted I see you mentioned this for later cars, AFAIK all the MK2 Octavias have the radios paired to the vehicle system but they can still ask for a PIN, it should be ignored! Suppression capacitors are not for storage of power, I think you may have meant electrolytic capacitors and even then their function is not to provide current to the modules during a battery change, they would only supply enough power to VM (volatile memory) for less than a second in any case, quite simply other than the electric windows and possibly radio presets there are no VM settings to lose. When you get a instrument display full of warning lights they are all secondary system warnings caused by the steering angle sensor needing to recalibrate itself, they all go within 50m of driving.

I dont have either to lose!!!!! It would not be the end of the world for me if I did and lost them. I have not found a French radio station that does not drive me round the bend within 10 minutes, constant eeuhing and repeated adverts for the same couple of supermarkets with either voix mielleuse woman or cheeky chappy cretin guy.

AKA make it ave it!

The spike if there would be one would be from the alternator. You are right, although it does not say to disconnect them on reflection I agree with you that is what they meant and how most inexperienced owners would read it, it suggests the jump start because you have a flat battery not as a means of maintaining the 12v during the swap. Your battery should have a clamp, many go missing because fitters have fat fingers and little patience! Your radio is paired to the vehicle, if it asks for a code just ignore it and wait a few minutes and it will sync and start working again, I didn't know this and gave myself no end of grief trying every number I could see written down in the handbook, eventually it locked out after too many wrong codes, I went to bed grumpy blaming the previous owner etc (anyone but myself!) the next morning the radio worked when I started it! I never bother with maintaining the voltage on these vehicles now when disconnecting or changing the battery, the radio sorts itself out, the dashboard looks like fault code city but they all clear within 50 meters of driving, I might have to reteach the electric windows that is all, I dont even know how to do that, I just press and hold the buttons until they work properly. So to recap, nothing to gain by leaving the engine running and plenty to lose, it would probably be OK but why take the risk? - Nothing to gain.