J.R.

OCD! 😄

Thanks for that, I did look but their profile did not show the age of the vehicle. Mine was 2006.

I bet the T&C's would not cover "I have lost one of my keys" Losing your keyring away from the home, having to call out a breakdown service which could not start the vehicle, the cost of a hotel and train journey or hire car home would be covered but it might even have a clause saying that you should have 2 working keys, otherwise they would pay for one replacement key from the manufacturer.

I've been driving VAG diesels for more than 25 years and aside for the aircon never once have the cooling fans ever come on in any of them, why would you expect it to when the coolant is at the correct 90°c?

I thought perhaps I had not quoted the words "in my case a small car will not fit me or my family " Are you really saying that a small car would not fit in your garage? My 1960's garage door has a 2.4m clear opening, the one on my last house built in 1958 was the same, any small car could pass through that and the garage behind is always considerably wider, the Skoda Superb is 2.031 metres across the door mirrors leaving plenty of space even with them not folded. Length of a standard garage is 6m or longer so again no problem with the Superb. It sounds like you want to park in front of your house to stop anyone else doing so, which if they have a large van & your front garden is not long I can understand in terms of blocked light.

Had you checked the tread depths when the tyres were only say 25% worn you could have changed your inflation pressure then, that is what I did because the recommended figures may not suit my vehicle, the tyres fitted and my journeys (often loaded) but also critically I do not know that my guage is 100%accurate. Its still not too late for you to gain a few more miles but at 2mm in places, visible ones! you are probably going to replace the tyres soon anyway. My reward for my efforts which included rotating the tyres was to have 4 tyres at approx 3.6mm tread after 45000 very tough miles and the tyres were not new when I got the vehicle. Most people will not have noticed what you have as they change their tyres well before that point, usually because of scrubbing, my Yeti having the supposed "Offroad Package" sits high with small wheels in large wheelarches so the full tread is visible to anyone looking, I am getting fed up with idiots many of them friends telling me that my tyres are bald when they have not yet even reached the tread wear indicators and are more than double the legal limit, a situation that I have worked hard to achieve, they have probably never seen an evenly worn tyre and theirs must be replaced well before the TWI's are reached.

Why replace the functioning key unless the lost one was a clone? I don't think you can delete a key that you do not physically have, but VAG can so it can be done but I think its beyond the devices like VCDS available to you and I. Happy to be proved wrong. No vehicle insurer is going to pay out on a supposed single lost key claim. Happy to be proved wrong again.

Not if the battery discharges. Do you feel lucky? 😆 Or you could look at the can gateway controller and read off its part number and suffix and check compatibility on the Gendan site, VCDS would give you the info without grovelling in the footwell.

But it would fit in your garage or on your drive. Get one of these: https://www.carandclassic.com/car/C1343586 Big enough for my parents and 3 children, and my Grandfather & Uncle before them who I would reckon were as tall as if not taller than you, it would be swallowed by a standard garage. Standard garage sizes havn't changed since then but vehicle sizes and peoples expectations have, modern vehicles are catastrophic from the point of view of space utilisation, for all their size even a small person wont be able to move their knees or elbows sideways more than a couple of cms yet all these vehicles regardless of their size can accept an overweight 2m high adult in the drivers seat or passengers seats. Regulatory car parking space size and the distance between opposing rows hasn't changed either.

The alternator will have already fully charged the battery like 99.99% of the 1.4 billion vehicles on the planet.

Probably everyone fitting one to a MK2 Octavia, you will need to budget for changing the Canbus Gateway for a later revision number and VCDS to program the new one. I have had 2 Chinese head units and reversing cameras, they have all worked well.

You can, park on your own drive! Your multi-car and van owning neighbours may have a different view of someone who has a drive but chooses not to use it. Is there a garage beyond the drive? I sympathise re the tree, that will affect many of you, I have just finished clearing my land and am leaving 2 mature trees (one a dead tree living) that in a previous life I would have felled, the shade is welcome and I accept the poop and leaves.

Don't hold your breath! If you were an insurer would you want to cover a claim where someone wants an extra key for their vehicle? Keys stolen during a house break in or in a handbag stolen on holiday might be covered on those policies but not your vehicle insurance. If you genuinely have lost your second key then your preoccupation should be to get a new one via VAG ASAP so that the old one will become disabled.

I think the Ambulance chasers fees were capped to a very (un) reasonable £600 or so per claim and the claimants recieved around £1.9K You can google it for precise details.

On what basis do you make that unequivocal statement? Has the vehicle been scanned for fault codes, measuring blocks for the DPF calculated and measured soot and oil ash loads, DPF differential pressure readings etc?

Is that a true story Truestory?

Indeed they were, £2.6K rings a bell, I was as sick as a dog for having criticised others for signing up, more fool me. Too late now.

Are you kidding? How could anything be quicker? "All the way" as you put it is just a partial twist of the wrist. Talk about a first world problem 🥴 Perhaps going through menus on a touch screen, loading and using an App? 🙄

In a FWD vehicle? I think not. My reaction to the comment was the same as yours though, these vehicles but for the electronickery are way too heavy and powerfull for FWD, were the OP have done the same with the systems inactive it would have taught him a valuable lesson. It's a shame that new drivers are getting into computer controlled rocket ships instead of learning how to control a vehicle and what the results are of unconsidered control inputs by driving a wheezy ratty RWD vehicle with drum brakes and skinny tyres, if they did they might look at the road a bit more to judge the conditions and less at their phones.

First world problems but something that VAG really should not have allowed to continue.

They are called flakes of oxidised aluminium you can make your own by leaving a piece of bare aluminium outside exposed to the weather and atmospheric pollution but the fastest method is to buy any electrostatic painted or powder coated external VAG component which will give you both ferrous and aluminium oxide flakes in no time at all with the added bonus that you wont even need to leave them outside or remove them from their packaging 😆 Brake disc backplates, suspension arms & crossmembers, roof rails wiper arms and the lower part of Yeti doors would be my recommendation!

Yes that what I thought you meant, I wasn't being pedantic or anything just eager to learn if there were any more components that I was unaware of, for the moment its one of the vehicle systems that has not become overly complicated although the controls, flaps, servo motors, encoders etc certainly have the basics remain basic!

Would you care to explain that or did you mean in the refining of petrochemicals and fuels? If so that is hardly Fords concern and as for vast amounts, it doesn't even register compared to the consumption of the EV battery industry. https://www.cobaltinstitute.org/about-cobalt/cobalt-life-cycle/cobalt-use/

Thaks for the response, is this Climatronic only or does it work for Climatic? - I think thats what my manual system is called. The bypass solenoid being the one on the pump? If so then there are no stops to monitor but I can understand it measuring the system pressure against the solenoid frequency. Are there any benefits to carrying out the procedure on a functioning system?

Wow, you really know some detailed stuff! What does the procedure actually do?