J.R.

My 105E never had windscreen washers, sometime in the 70's they became a legal requirement and there were loads of retro-fit kits on the market, I'm not sure if older vehicles had to be retrofitted for the MOT or whether they sold because of peoples desire to keep up, certainly seat belt fitment was not enforced on older vehicles.

They never did make them, just like they dont make the majority of the parts that are delivered to their assembly lines by OE manufacturers. They no longer stock the CV boots and other such parts that they never made in the first place, as they are a consumable item there will be no end of aftermarket offerings, for something more specialised say a gear selector cable they have to stock the items for I think something like 8 or 10 years from last year of vehicle production but for consumables in abundant supply they would not have to, a silly example would be that no vehicle manufacturer holds stocks of tyres amongst the parts department supply chain (unless specialised) nor would they have ever made the original fitment tyres.

I drove maybe 3 miles to a resto last night, enough for the heater to start putting out heat and the water temp to just begin to climb, on arrival 1k RPM tickover, was expecting a regen but no fans, car has only done similar short journeys this week once with rear screen heater on. The battery was not discharged (I have a voltmeter), I think because of the cold weather the initial high tickover at start up was prolonged.

Excellent, I really enjoyed those interviews, thanks for posting them.

I want me one of those pullers!!!

I really enjoyed that and am really pleased to have seen it. I cannot stand his on screen persona but had always had an inkling that in person he was a really decent down to earth chap and he certainly seemed to be on there, his choice of keepers also said a lot about the real person. But the big question is, does he wear a syrup? 😆

It makes absolute sense to me. Firstly forget believing what the system is telling you is happening, start thinking about what sensory inputs it is recieving, namely the DPF diff press sensor, at idle there is little volume of exhaust gases flowing, little back pressure which the not so intelligent system equates with low soot value (it really should have an airflow correction), like any obstructed exhaust system even a potatoe up the tailpipe the back pressure only makes itself known when the engine is revved higher, at that point the DPF DP sensor shows a markedly higher pressure to atmospheric which the system interprets as the DPF having 15G+ of soot, it will not think it is actually blocked with oil ash as it has swallowed the lie it has been told that the DPF is a new one.

I was thinking about a bicycle pump on the open ended ambient pressure pipe. Look back and you will see my sneaky edit!

It absolutely sounds like the DPF is significantly obstructed. I chose my words carefully and did not use clogged or severely, I suspect that they are configured so that even when at their service limit they don't reduce performance or exceed the far more important (to them) fuel consumption and emissions parameters. You could probably drive your vehicle for many more thousands of miles without noticing any loss of performance or decrease in economy if only you could stop the regenning. You could try a partial shunt pipe (a bypass) across the DPF like someone cheating their electric meter but you would need to weld bosses on and there probably isn't the space to do so. Maybe a pair of banjo fittings piped across the sensor bosses? Editted, there would be a slick way of doing it, you would need to do an adaptation of the DPF differential pressure sensor with an artificially increased atmospheric pressure on the free port, you would then get negative values at idle and plausible ones when driving, that might cause a fault code for implausible readings. I mean what is the worst that could happen (written from my time machine 😆)

Yes I was inspired by his videos, there is very little speeded up or editted out parts so he really does do the job almost as quick as the videos. I did not use an impact driver, it would not have saved much time. I would do the job (reluctantly) on my back if I had to do it again and there were no facilities, high stands would be needed to extricate the transmission but they would be too high for working and you arms would be overextended, there is no need to actually remove the transmission from under the vehicle but working from a pit I did so for safety reasons, I dropped it onto some loading ramps placed sideways across and then had to jack one side of the car up really high to slide it out. The safest and most progressive way of removing and reinstalling the transmission is to use ratchet straps around the engine support beam and a very trusted experienced helper to operate them while you are aligning things underneath, by the nature of the things it is safer replacing it that way than removing it but by then you will have already learned the lessons the hard way!

Still £1500+ profit on an afternoons work though. I did mine in a leasurely day never having done one before and lacking the proper facilities for supporting and removing the 68kg 4x4 transmission unit I took it very slowly, I was working in a small inspection pit and not under a ramp. The LUK DMF and 3 piece clutch kit cost €308 delivered from a Spanish seller. I could do one in an afternoon now but hope not to have to. £1800 or £2700 sounds like an awful lot of money to me.

I never knew that there was a measuring block for battery resistance, is it reliable? et will be quicker and easier than using my electronic battery tester which I find gives pessimistic results if the battery is still connected to the vehicle. Using VCDS will be quicker and I wont lose the clockand window settings etc.

Hats off to you for discovering this and for resolving it, I'm sure it must have caused many owners no end of grief and cost and resulted in many ending up offloading a troublesome vehicle by PX when it was not in reality needed. What would have been the result if you had simply replaced the battery with a similar new one and not recoded at all & then discharged it in the same manner? It will be ironic if people have been influenced to pay someone to recode the vehicle for a new battery only for them to have actually stuffed things up if doing nothing would in hindsight have been a no risk decision.

Interesting to know, thanks for that. I reset mine because.............................., well because I am too curious for my own good 😆 I didn't notice any difference but the DPF was not blocked. I have since had the emissions "fix" rolled back to a prior software release and it's very very rare now that I am awareof a regen in progress. What you have discovered is a way to offload an afflicted vehicle to an unsuspecting buyer or PX to a dealer.

It must suck to have bought a vehicle specifically for towing only to find that for whatever their reasons were VAG had not put a towing weight on the homologation papers. But not in my world thankfully.

No actually, I had never heard the term used until fairly recently, allowing for my distortion of the space/time continuem say in the last 5 years and then only on probably this forum. But, and perhaps it's relevant, I have not lived in an English speaking environment since 2003. Before moving to France I had never known nor heard of anybody changing their tyres for winter, in Picardie we had only 2 really heavy snowfalls but the infrastructure was such that if you were stranded say 5 miles from your town and 10 miles from the next you could well die of hypothermia waiting for assistance, I once spent the night in the car after doing under ice scuba diving, I had forgotten my neoprene diving boots so had to dive in the hiking boots and socks I was wearing, so my feet were soaking and freezing even before running out of diesel and spending the night at minus 5°c. Despite that the only person that I knew who fitted wither wheels and tyres was a friend who is a very nervous and jerky poor driver, I was passenger with her in the snow and she was very dangerous, her husband was wise to get the winter wheels & tyres and as she worked at theLycée pro that I did she could get them swopped over by the apprentices in the workshop. Where I am now I have fitted winter tyres but have not noticed other people doing so, my friend has all season tyres because they have a getaway apartment in the Pyrenees and its a requirement to have either them or snow chains for certain months there, generally people just dont drive unless absolutely necessary during snow and icy conditions, the sensible ones that is.

There is and never has been such a thing as "Summer Tyres", the phrase was coined by the manufacturers to try and persuade people in warm climates to buy their "Winter Tyres" when they rebranded them from M & S (mud & snow) tyres. Well meaning people now do their dirty work for them on social media. The tyre manufacturers have been lobbying governments for decades to try and make the change obligatory, you would not believe the misinformation and downright lies put out in my country by a media that does not seem capable of asking themselves, am I being had over here, am I propogating untruths? I changed to my new winter wheels this very week, the ones I had bought before in Kent, an urban area that has little or no need of them were absolutely lethal, absolute ditchfinders, I had more grip racing a Caterham during a cold November deluge on slicks.

Would you care to share his wisdom then? There are no laws in my Dodgy Geezer world, just people that like to tell me I am breaking the ones of their imagination!

The ideal vehicle really for that sort of journey profile, it would beat the hell out of an ICE and its particulate filters, maybe discharge the battery (no difference there) and you would not see any heat from the heater. I am about to do one of those journeys myself but will extend it by going on to do some food shopping.

Could you ask your good buddy then?

Its a cover for a rear anchorage point for a child seat. Usually found on the rear face of Christmas Trees and Ornamental Cherrys 😆

I GAF. 👍 What law were you referring to that the fitters in question would have broken?

I doubt that it's anything more than a relay or relay timer inside, looks to small to contain the PWM circuitry, I would have to see a wiring diagram to be sure but its unlikely. To my knowledge they are all relays but have different numbering and usually different pin polarisations to prevent the wrong type being fitted or put in the wrong location. Often the coild and contact(s) pictogram is on the side so you could compare, otherwise I would trace my way through it with a multimeter to find the coil contacts, the common, NO and Nc contacts and compare the two. I have often fitted a standard relay when a specially numbered and polarised VAG one has failed using male jumper wires with male and female connectors. They only make them different and call them different names to make you buy the relay from them, some are indeed special relays, I am thinking of the one for the fuel injection pump on an old XR3i Ford that would only energise when it detected high voltage transients from the spark plugs, a safety measure.

I bet that has towbar fitters quaking in their boots! What law would they have broken? Who would prosecute them and what could the penalties be? Same questions for someone fitting a towbar to their own vehicle? I am not asking about the act of using a vehicle to tow which does not have the appropriate approvals but the act of fitting a towbar to one.

DSG thermostat.