J.R.

Sadly with the (lack of) competence of most garages that is where the issue is created in most cases. The front struts are concentric cylinders with zero clearance where they connect to the steering knuckle (when clamped up) so cannot affect wheel alignment. Of course many opportunistic garages will have you believe otherwise.......................

If there were no oil it would have expired by now, maybe it was run for a while before they realised and before serious damage was done like I did, yes I also made the mistake. I have transmission noise (none before the event) and have driven 40K miles since flushing and filling with oil and it has not got any worse so its not all doom and gloom.

Sounds like he fixed you and not the car, why did you accept it back? But for the fact your car is a 4x4 Scout I would not be concerned Have you had anyone check whether a Haldex oil change has been carried out and the diff oil drained by mistake? When these differentials go bang, nearly always after a garage has drained the diff oil by mistake and denys it, it costs £3-4K for replacement if you are not capable of DIY, you should never be fobbed off with accepting rear differential noise during the period where you can reject the vehicle.

Not required, you can remove and refit or replace the steering knuckle, strut, spring etc 1000 times and the tracking will never change one iota.

Sounds like condensate to me, its pot luck whether it drains during the journey or dumps a lot when you stop, it also depends on the relative humidity, it can be a significant amount and you only need a small amount to create a large patch on an impermeable surface like tarmac.

What makes you convinced that the towbars on Ebay are for the FWD variant only? Editted, I had not seen Langers response, - well spotted!

That is completely and utterly incorrect, I recently posted the worst case scenario calculations for the smallest alternator fitted to our vehicles (90 amp) for recharging after a cold start with pre and post combustion glowplug activation and even at idle the recharge time was measured in seconds, it would be recharged before you even got out of your driveway let alone 50 miles. Another contributor was inspired to test his vehicle which had been left for a long period and was at 60% SOC, he did so monitoring the charge rate using VCDS, it did not even use 1/3 of the alternators output and had recharged the battery in 3 minutes, once again at tickover without even turning a wheel. You have got to stop trotting out stuff that has not been relevant since the 1960's when vehicles had 22 amp (maybe less) dynamos that did not charge below the regulator cut in point and with Lucas Prince of Darkness electrics.

Knowing how they fit I would say no difference at all. The floorpan differences are all some way ahead of the rear of the chassis rails where the towbracket fixings are. Are there different towbars for the 4x4? If so then maybe I'm talking rubbish.

Oh dear, it looks like your car has been seriously screwed around with. If you bought it from a dealer and therefore have some rights I would take it to an MOT testing station and ask them to look for any modifications to the exhaust etc which would result in a failure, preferably not (at this time) the garage who issued the existing certificate.

I am lucky to have a Wing Man in Pete to correct my J.R.'isms and to do it in such a polite manner, I am inspired to follow his example.

No spigot bearing means the input shaft has bearings at each end which is good engineering practice, on reflection all modern FWD East West gearboxes are probably like that, my probably incorrect comment would be a hang up from RWD North South gearboxes, I have rebuilt probably 10 of them to every FWD one. I can now see in my minds eye a short stub shaft ending at the splines, I need to keep my hand in because my memory is letting me down, it was only a year since I removed my transmission to change the DMF and clutch. Strafordade. Pretty much all I have learned in life has been through mistakes, my Grandfather once said "the man who never made a mistake never made anything!" and I have taken that a little too much to heart! Did I check my gearbox input shaft bearing and non existant spigot bearing when I removed my transmission last year? - I very much doubt it!

The same colour can have multiple names over the years, probably at the whim of fashion, it will also have different names across different marques in the VAG group, the paint code will remain common to all of them.

Its possible that the wobbly bearing was not particularly apparent in service before because the shaft was aligned and located within the crankshaft spigot bearing, on reassembly the drooping shaft would not have slid smoothly through the clutch splines and crank spigot bearing, tightening up the bolts may have pushed a displaced ball against the bearing carrier and broken it. Did you encounter resistance when aligning and bolting up the bellhousing? Did you check for smooth running on the input shaft when the gearbox was removed and also the crankshaft spigot bearing? Once the cage has broken up on a roller bearing disintegration follows rapidly. I'm pleased you were able to find the fault and replace the gearbox.

This is not meant to be confrontational but you should have mentioned that when you created the thread, you made it sound like the problem occurred after and as a result of the clutch change.

I thought immediately of you. As long as the oil flows is a fallacy, it needs a minimum pressure to create a hydrodynamic films seperating the crankshaft from the bearings, for pressure it needs resistance to flow, there are several restriction points in an engine be they fixed drillings, metered hole sizes in gaskets or hollow dowels with metered bores especially to restrict oilflow to the cylinder head and in your case quite possibly something in the timing chain case to restrict flow to the variable cam timing actuators, another possibility is the piston cooling jets if they were the wrong size either through incompatibility or incorrect manufacture. Other than leaving out a metering dowel and paying scrupulous attention to oil passage hole sizes in gaskets you have precious little chance of preventing the problem and equally slim chances of finding the lack of restriction afterwards. Pattern part gaskets are often the cause of pressure drop.

Having read the TPI that Varoom posted in the other (linked) thread I would say that your problem is you have overfilled the tank, this is the relevant part of the TPI but you should read it all: "If Reducing agent fill level sensor Act value [$1A73] shows 0.0mm (this is the gap between the ultra-sonic sensor and the AdBlue® level) then the system has been overfilled" It would seem that the sensor is not a plain level sensor but an ultrasonic one that can measure the distance down to the fluid level and hence know the exact quantity, it should never be beneath the fluid level, filling to just below the brim will have submerged the sensor. Read the TPI for remedial action.

No harm in that whatsoever but if you look at the bores of a 200K engine the cross hatching looks like the day it left the factory. You definitely have reason and are doing the right thing, I would say it needs to be more extreme if anything, luckily I will never have the quandary with a new vehicle and by the time I get them they are what they are. When I built race engines my preferred running in(for a road legal vehicle) was to load the car with ballast and blat up and down Bury Hill in the middle of the night on full throttle through the gears gradually increasing the max revs for an hour or so. Otherwise run in on the dyno on full load, on occasions where there was blowby we would sprinkle Ajax cleaning powder into the carb intakes and watch the BHP rise as the blowby and oil burning reduced.

I find that VAG diesels from the last 2 decades are not run in until at least 200000 miles.

The fact that one has now gone metal to metal and will be destroying the disc, probably the inner pad. Toot has given good advice, you should heed it and not become adversary. The noise could equally be the tin foil backplate having rusted and fractured at the mounting points, that corresponds more with your description, again it needs inspecting with the wheel removed not visually through the wheel.

I wonder if it's a requirement in some markets for there to be a warning light and not others? It's not as if its a paid optional feature, it does seem odd to make 2 different instrument binnacles one with the LED depopulated which i think is the term.

8T0 or 6YO Pete? You said 6Y0 earlier which I saw amongst the codes in the photograph. Editted, I understand now, code 6Y0 means without CC warning system, I had no registered the warning even after the OP had corrected me. I do now recall one circumstance where having cruise control on did catch me unawares Driving through a village with traffic lights that turn red if you exceed the 50kph (always set to less though, think yourselves lucky you dont have them yet in the UK!) I would engage the cruise control at just beneath the limit, once back on the 80kph limit at the end of the village I would accelerate and forget the CC was on, approaching a junction I would release the throttle and use engine braking and the car would surge forward a little bit as the speed dropped to 50kph.

Are you 100% sure of that? Have you compared the angle of the handbrake actuator arms on each caliper to the other? Have you looked at the compensator arm just behind the handbrake with the rear ashtray/armrest removed? If one cable is adjusted more than the other and/or the arm is not at 90° to the cables then someone has been trying to resolve this before you if you have not adjusted it. It could also quite simply be a sticking piston. I too spent far too long trying to resolve a sticking handbrake on one caliper, I rebuilt the calipers twice and had them apart multiple times, in the end I gave up (unlike me) and bought some super cheap calipers from China, no more overheating rear brake but guess what happened to the guy I sold the car to!!!! There are some springs from an earlier vehicle (Golf?) that can be fitted to ensure the caliper operating levers return fully

6Y0 - Without cruise control.

That is very severe for under a year old, even Lancia with their worst example would have struggled to beat that. Mind you by the first MOT the whole front bulkhead and subframe support structure looked like that all over!

Do you mean the green symbol beneath the km/h text? I doubt that a vehicle idling at standstill, in park with the drivers door open, seatbelt not worn and judging by the temperature guage which has not yet even moved a wheel would have the cruise control operational.