J.R.

Thankyou for confirming that contrary to your posting there is not a defined procedure to look closely for a dodgy bolt. Replacing the bolts makes absolute sense and I agree with you that VAG should have a recall to do so on all affected vehicles in all markets.

You believe in the USA there is a procedure to visually identify a "dodgy" bolt before it fails?

A bit of a difference between the two reports! It is indeed the idle stabiliser (anti-stall) system, normal idle RPM will be around 850rpm, during a DPF regen it will be higher at around 1000 rpm, as has been said you really should not be driving the car off throttle at such low revs in the higher gears, in some ways its a shame it has the anti-stall system because believe me if it were to stall at 20 mph it would be very traumatic for you and you would instantly change your driving style to make sure it would never happen again. When a diesel engine stalls it is always a horrible experience for anyone with mechanical sympathy, it happens to all of us once and nobody would want to repeat the experience.

If when EGR is commanded the mass airflow sensor does not register a corresponding reduction in flow of the filtered fresh air then the engine will go into LOS (limited operating strategy) and bring up the MIL light. Sending the gases to atmosphere instead of into the intake tract or blocking off the pipe will result in the aforementioned. There are animal cruelty laws with severe penalties for much lesser acts than that, my fathers pro tennis racket had cat gut strings but that was pre WW2.

I am competent to undo the lid on a food jar but it can still often defeat me!

You can check the level. The reservoir is transparent, there is no need to remove the cap to check the level. It sounds like this is the first time anyone has tried removing the tight cap, you will get more grip wearing a rubber glove.

Darned stupid, it is actually flashing the rear number plate light as well 🥴

They were indeed and word of mouth brought them thousands of new customers previously loyal to other makes. But they also had superbly reliable vehicles back then, when a problem occurred they went out of their way to fix it further increasing their brand loyalty, I took a 2001 Octavia 1.9 TDi to 325000 miles over 14 years and only needed to look at this forum twice during all that time (coolant temp sensor and door lock microswitch) compare that to the K-rap that owners of new vehicles are having to put up with from a manufacturer that no longer gives a Four X, the joke reputation that Skoda unfairly had in the 70' and 80's is well deserved today.

At the top, not the bottom. Well I cant say that with 100% certainty from the photographs as the bottom isn't shown but they are a rigid shroud and not a bellows and could not be attached at both ends. You would equally not be able to lift the shroud as it is not a rubber bellows but would have to lower the suspension to its limit. Does the rear have transport blocks fitted? I have never seen one and if the dealers did their job none of us would have ever done. Interesting that they have used marker paint to indicate any movement, also that the shrouds are no longer attached to the foam bump stops, that is a much better design.

Not according to the letter from VOSA which was posted on here yesterday in response to exactly that, no danger, nothing to see here, move on.............. That was aimed at VOSA and not yourself I hope you understand!

The Ethanol content in Diesel fuel I believe has risen considerably since your vehicle was manufactured, perhaps others ca confirm. It is unrealistic to expect any fuel hose to last 30 years even without the additional Ethanol, granted many will but many wont hence the MTBF measure (mean time between failure) 7 years is not that premature, all cars will have had a few items fail in that time which go on for years on other vehicles, all of them would warrant someone (without an understanding of MTBF) saying "this should not fail at this age/mileage", you read it pretty much every day on this forum. Thanks for the heads up though, I had not heard of it before, yours might be the first of many, I will give all mine a precautionary squeeze at each oil change.

My thoughts as well.

Did the engine get rotated backwards even half a turn not long before the chain jump? It could have been a stalled engine on a hill, pushing the car backwards in gear etc or equally the garage rotating it backwards when setting the valve timing although I would have expected the failure even sooner.

Who told you that the chain had stretched in 3 weeks from new? If it's the garage who now have your car get it back ASAP and treat everything else with suspicion. I would say there has been a failure of the tensioner from what little you had said prior to their strip down.

No way would that tatty thing ever find its way under the bonnet again, even when my battery dies from overheating I will still be able to stare lovingly at the plastic box and cover 😆 Thanks for the part number, I will consider it if the battery fails prematurely, it has already survived some 44°c days this summer. Nothing (almost) can any longer be found on the many auction sites now that I am permanently in France I'm afraid, it's back to begging at main dealers that don't even have parts people any more, oh for a TPS! but only in my dreams

It probably is I think its a Bosch Blue, the more expensive series, same I think as the Varta silver, the plastic case is probably giving more insulation that the felt with a gap round the side and no cover at the top although maybe that is to allow the charging heat to dissipate.

How can an ABS control unit cause premature clutch failure? Unless I am missing something there is no connection between the brake and clutch systems other than sharing the same bathwater, the clutch is one of the few systems that is still a simple mechanical device and has no electronics. Is this yet more BS from a dealer being swallowed and regurgitated?

On my Yeti an 096 battery fitted but the felt shroud would not fit back around, the best compromise looked like Alexis Sales jacket 🤣 I fitted a plastic battery cover and lid from an Octavia 2 which is a snug fit around an 096 battery and makes the engine bay look far more "finished" its an interchangeable fit on any PQ35 platform vehicle battery tray.

I had missed that it was a DSG vehicle, they do indeed have a dual mass flywheel but no traditional plate clutch, instead each of the twin layshafts in the gearbox have an individual wet clutch, the next gear is preselected and a gearchange is effected by disengaging the clutch on the layshaft of the gear currently engaged while simultaneously engaging the other one for the next gear. Does anyone know if the DSG uses a different DMF and if it is a lot more expensive as the cost of this repair still seems very expensive. Also the incremental cost of £800 ish for the EGR replacement is very strong considering that once the gearbox is removed for the DMF (already charged for) there is very little labour to change the EGR. @Wildmoose The thing they reversed while cleaning the throttle valve & intake tract was the venturi tube for the EGR gases, this should reduce future carbon build up. I too have a rattle but working alone could not rev the engine from under the bonnet to trace it, my pal listened while I raised the revs from the drivers seat and said that my intake duct was rattling, I must attend to it to see if it was the noise I had while driving, it was at about 1500 rpm.

The old days are no longer, 90°c is the engines operating temperature and the thermostat will be maintaining that, the fans wont cut in unless it overheats which at this time of year is unlikely to happen even under load on the road let alone idling in a garage. Cooling systems these days do what they say on the tin, well that is until the Silkat teabag bursts and a dealer starts extracting money out of you.

I feel sorry for your garage, no way will a grommet (or lack of) on the front bulkhead result in the rear footwells filling up with water. You have an 18 year old car, it will have problems with leaky seals etc including degraded rubber grommets, you should start looking for the correct point of ingress and not blaming the last person to have tried to help you. The level of water in the front footwells would have the floor mats floating at sill level before the water was high enough to spill over into the rear footwells, you only speak of the rear footwells and seats, not the front.

I'm heartened that at least one person has some common sense and is not overthinking things after the lecture on thermodynamics. The moisture gets in when the vehicle is at rest and the volume of air in the headlight units cools bringing in humid ambient air, the condensation appears when the headlights heat up from the engine and/or the LED bulbs and the lens is in contact with the colder outside air also with wind chill. Some of the photos look really bad, it would be interesting to see just what is different with the new lights that have been fitted under warranty.

Think how much room you would have if the 2nd car was another Justy or pretty much any small family car of the time. That is a decent sized 2 car garage but not for anything modern and bloated, even the Fabia looks huge against it. You desperately need some more racking and storage in there but in the interim I like how you have turned the stepladder into a rack for the squirty stuff!!!! Creating more space in the garage/workshop is what I am working on at present, I have more tools and materials to bring to site for the house renovation which is not going to start until the workshop is sorted and useable with the equipment and materials in it, I have learned the hard way that otherwise you just become buried. First job after that is to double the size of the workshop to be able to work properly and have a seperate woodworking area, only then can the house renovation start. Until then I have to live in the caravan.

Road wheels are not removed during a service, if they were we would be reading of wheels falling off after servicing on a regular basis, instead we get oil over/underfilled, differential oil drained instead of Haldex and the diff seizing etc etc. They dont even remove the sump drain plug but that doesn't stop them from charging you for a new one which hasn't replaced the old one which wasn't removed. It's just as well really or there would be 10 dry engines seizing for every dry differential.

A better option and what I used to do, TBH I'm not sure now why I wrote kettle 😳, perhaps the last time I tested one in the last century a kettle was all I had to hand.