J.R.

From the video: "when you approach a reflective road sign the matrix lights dim around it to prevent you from being dazzled" Proof that they dazzle but as long as its not the driver being dazzled then I'm alright Jack! Also they show the headlight adapting and say that "the pedestrian and animal is still perfectly illuminated", dazzled would be the operative word, I always dip my headlights when there are pedestrians, cyclists etc, it's common courtesy. If you blind someone who ay already be squeezed to the side of the road or walking on the verge they may trip over and fall into your path, but hey, thats their fault isn't it!

My father became blind in one eye before they would consider him a priority for surgery on the other eye, that was years down the line so he gave up his driving licence, he died at 86 still with the cataract in his one working eye. I too have inherited the glaucoma, I too only have vision in one eye due to botched surgery and 5 incidences of detached retina, I have to use 2 different eyedrops twice a day, it is entirely possible that I am more sensitive to bright lights or the contrast of them than other people, it certainly was not like this when I was young. I recognise that people sometimes forget to dip their headlights and that when loaded they may be too high, a momentary flash from me is usually all it takes for them to display common courtesy and consideration, or at least it was until the advent of people abdicating their responsbilities as drivers, letting the vehicle systems do what they want, as long as they have better forward vision then its the problem of the oncoming driver being too sensitive or who should have there eyes operated on or stop driving, I suspect Felix is under 40, probably under 30. I have an even worse problem with fellow runners and head torches, when I was a bacpacker there was a thing called fireside or camp etiquette, if there was no lighting in camp you would use your headtorch but on minimum setting (they were not bright anyway back then) and never look someone in the face, if you spoke with someone you would bot turn out your lamps. In my old running club the local was in the brightly lit town square & our running routes were always on roads with street lamps, some idiots would come out of the locale into the brightly lit town square with high powered COB headtorches on maximum setting and look you straight in the eye, sme deal when out running, the worst were the ones worn around the chest, often you would see them lighting up the trees above but not the road in front. I would constantly have to shield my eyes from the burning lights, most people got the message but some people were either too dim or too selfish, on two occasions I had to be driven home by someone else and on one occasion hospitalised for a burned retina, the light and the flare that it left on my vision was 100 times worse than the high powered slit lamp that the opthalmogists use and exposure to those are strictly controlled, go beyond a certain time and you cannot drive home, the opthalmogist said he would be struck off if he had burned someone retina like mine had been. I can tell you that when you have lost one eye you take great care with the remaining one, being hospitalised through someone elses ignorance or selfishness and not knowing if you will regain your already compromised vision is not a happy experience. It's 2 days now since my 20 hour journey of which less than 8 hours was in darkness and my eyes still havn't recovered and daytime driving is a challenge, if they dont improve by Monday I will have to go to les urgences ophtalmologique because I am due to do the return journey within a few days. 3 years ago I would get dazzled very infrequently and a quick flash of the headlights sufficed, now it is far far worse and I try to avoid night driving wherever I can, it is LED and Matrix headlights that have made the difference.

There is a degree of perception, many oncoming headlights that I would previously have thought had been left on full beam, whilst still at a distance and before they get close enough to become a problem with dazzle, turn out to be matrix headlights which have adapted but from being on the recieving end, in my view not enough, these don't get a flash from me. Driving some distance behind a matrix light equipped vehicle especially on a slow RH curve on an autoroute I can see the beam pattern adapting in response to oncoming vehicles. Night time driving is far more fatiguing now than it was a couple of years ago, I recognise from being a passenger that the view for the driver is much better with LED Matrix lights and hence less fatigue but others pay the price. You cannot know that the oncoming drivers on your recordings were flashing at you for no reason as you were not in their vehicles, you know that your system was adapting the beam pattern, I suspect not enough as I find is the case with very many oncoming vehicles I encounter, i don't think adjusting the sensitivity will change that.

How can you possibly know that the other drivers were over-reacting and that their vision and safety was not being impaired? People don't flash their headlights for no reason. Leaving your headlights on auto despite being flashed and then reviewing your dashcam footage for validation leaves me speechless, which is probably just as well.

Thankyou for your observations on my sensitivity, I'm sorry that I am unable to reciprocate. Have you ever considered that by the age of 65 95% of people will have developed eye cataracts, or are they just being oversensitive? If the sensors fail to react to the headlights of oncoming vehicles then the matrix headlights will remain on full beam pattern which is even more blinding than traditional halogen headlights, same deal if a driver forgets to dip his headlights which is something that we have all no doubt done at one time or another, we don't blame the other driver for being oversensitive

Untrue, their standard diesel comes from exactly the same tanker deliveries from the refinery as the Supermarkets. Premium diesel is another subject. You are wise to have not had the emissions fix, I speak as someone who drove with it for 30k miles then paid to have it unfixed the difference is night and day better, I had previously fitted an EGr emulator/simulator so my EGR no longer operates, I left the black box in place after the emissions fix rollback as I considered that it was still a weak component, your experience validates my decision. Fitting an emulator and perhaps blanking off the water cooling pipes would have been a much lower cost option than replacing your failed EGR (£99 and 20 minute labour) which will no doubt in time fail once more.

That is complete and utter rubbish, as someone who is currently driving very long distances at night (20 hours door to door yesterday) I am constantly being dazzled by these matrix headlights and the inconsiderate drivers abdicating their responsabilities to them who no doubt also label me as overly sensitive. The situation has gotten far far worse in the recent years probably due to so many new cars being bought during lockdown, autoroutes are by far the worse as the barrier prevents the sensors reacting to the headlights of oncoming vehicles. I have also had the experience of a vehicle behind me travelling at the same speed constantly putting up its full beam as soon as the distance between us increased beyond say 75m, its sensors were no longer picking up my tail lights but the lights dipped instantly every time I flashed my rear fog lights, I mistakenly thought it was the driver (early part of lockdown and I did not know what auto-lights were) so eventually I slowed to let him past & then drove behind him on full beam for 10 minutes. If people are constantly being flashed then they must know they are causing discomfort and danger to oncoming drivers, if carry on regardless blaming the other drivers for being oversensitive then they are better words than inconsiderate to describe them. When I am towing with considerable noseweight and/or with a loaded vehicle as last night I sometimes forget to use the headlight height adjust control, it only takes one flash from an oncoming vehicle for me to immediately remedy the situation and feel remorse, never blaming it on oversensitivity of the other drivers.

I cannot understand why you would want to start your engine before taking to the road with the handbrake released, or how your car can roll backwards 1-2 metres while you are doing so when you now say you are not on a hill. Actually you said slide and not roll, are you on an icy level but cambered road? As RootToot says, knowing your location might help us resolve this enigma you are gradually revealing. - I see you have now put Romania for your country.

Your posting did not say that the handbrake was functioning well and you were attempting a hill restart using the footbrake and clutch only, very very bad practice and one which requires heeling and toeing, Kens comment was appropriate given the information posted. I have no choice but to do it on a hillstart when I have a heavily loaded trailer (2 or 3 tonne) behind me as the vehicle handbrake is not sufficient but I am heel & toeing in addition to the handbrake.

Would not be the first time that some new whizzbang system dreamed up does not comply with the law. Does the manual or Construction & Use regulations still state that headlamp bulbs must be a minimum wattage and not luminous intensity? That was the case when the first LED headlights appeared which were non conforming to the archaic regulations.

Yet another main dealer slathering of grease bodge instead of correct diagnosis of (yet another) failed top mount bearing, ridiculous that they should put grease anywhere on a modern vehicle especially where it isn't even needed but scandalous that they should charge the customer for it. And you seem happy and think they have done you a favour!

In my poorest years in France I would take the battery from my MK1 Octavia inside on cold nights, on very cold nights I even had to share the bed with it under the quilt as I could not afford heating either. It was probably 8 years old then and 250000 miles but I had left the sidelights on one night and it was never the same after. Many a morning when it struggled I had to revive it by pouring a kettle of boiling water over it. I would have to take a spare battery (no better but held charge) and jump leads with me when leaving the car at the station for even 2 days to restart it, in hindsight I should have just disconnected it, I never knew till years later that it had some Canbus modules, thats how reliable it was. Restarting after standing 2 months is very impressive, that said my canbus when fully asleep does not draw a lot but the towing relay does in comparison, it will reduce the time the vehicle could be left by more than half, for that reason I have an on-off switch for the module, its been on for nearly a year because I am doing so much towing but otherwise would be off and always if I know the car will be left for an extended period.

Surely disconnecting the battery is not a good thing to do for the time it takes to carry out a low level charge, all the control units on the car will complain that they have been lost power and the dash will awash with error lights and error messages on the dot matrix display. It was a jibe aimed at someone else not yourself, reading through this thread it wont be hard to guess who has earned the nickname.

To the best of my knowledge "airbag spring assisters" do not exist for your vehicle or any Skoda model past or present, if they did I would have tried some by now. You asked for a proven approach, well fitting stiffer springs using the VW part numbers and load ratings as Carston has described has been a proven approach for me on my last 2 vehicles, before that I fitted Grayston assister springs, not to be confused with the totally unsuitable plastic donut spring assisters, the assister springs worked fine but cost as much if not more than new springs, yours probably have broken coils anyway, the spring assisters should be avoided at all costs in my opinion, others disagree.

Waterpump shroud, no way would the temperature even get high enough for the fans to cut in let alone overheat towing a caravan at normal speeds at 22°C. A stop-start traffic jam on a very steep incline at 44° maybe, just maybe, I have towed several tonnes with a huge frontage 800kms on autoroutes and up some very long steep inclines at full throttle and the oil temp may have hit 115°C but the water temperature remained constant at 90° the whole time (OK I know it would still show that if it went slightly higher) cooling fans never cut in so larger ones would have made no difference.

Noise may not necessarily be connected to the smell. My candidate for noise would be a failing shear plate on the compressor drive hub or the splines on their way out, the former is more a clattering clacking sqealing and the latter a loud tinkling like breaking glass more apparent when pulled up beside a wall or shopfront that can reflect the noise. These auxiliary drive belts have such a large load transfer surface and efficient tensioner that they simply dont slip unless a n alternator, power steering or aircon pump has seized, in the latter case its the very substantial shear plate straps or rivets that let go before the belt could slip.

Batteryman says: You have to look after the battery (how? 🥴) you should give it a proper long, low, slow recharge, preferably off the car and in a more even controlled temperature if possible. Not looking after your battery will make the charging system work harder and the VW computer programs will make you suffer in all sorts of ways. Just driving is not enough............... You have been warned 😳

I will get would have got, all weather tyres next time round but just remembered that I scored a second set of winter rims with nearly new and recent tyres, the old ones were downright dangerous on anything but snow. I am astonished that I have done 30K miles in a Yeti 4x4 on tyres that were not new when I got the vehicle and unless one gets damaged they will do another 20K, if you can avoid uneven wear and especially edge scrubbing while the tyre wears from 8mm to 4mm tread then the remaining 4mm (which is actually only 2.6mm before the legal limit) will last a lot longer than the preceeding mileage. I would go further and say that how the vehicle is driven for the first 1000 miles are critical to the longevity of the tyre, when the tread blocks are deep it is so easy to scrub out a new tyre. Cars that race in Production series having to use road legal control tyres will have them scrubbed (machined down by specialists) before fitting, the top teams will use one new set of scrubbed tyres on the practice/set up session and another set for the race. I have seen people decide to use new unscrubbed tyres for a test day with the intention of scrubbing them on the circuit, the logic being that they would wear exactly to the individual suspension set up, they set off with the correct tyre pressures and had lost the complete edge of the tyre right through to the canvas exactly like the photographs we are seeing on this forum after the very first session, elsewhere the tyres still had the full 8mm tread and had barely worn off the mould sprues. I think the way some of these cars are driven is the reason for the tyre damage in many cases, it's understandable that someone would think I have new tyres so I can give it the full beans but not the right thinking for longevity.

In 1987 a young & rash J.R.(+ brash!) with a new XR4x4 company car on contract hire (full maintenance) totally fed up with the incompetence of the Ford dealer handling the warranty for a warped cylinder head having kept the car for 3 weeks to investigate and deciding that a new thermostat would do the job took the above course of action, it was not a wise thing to do but I was not a wise person, my comment was tongue in cheek and not a serious suggestion.

There is no such thing as summer tyres, it was a term made up when they wanted to persuade people to buy M&S tyres that they rebranded "Winter tyres" Road resurfacing is done in summer and not winter, tar and tarmac are not amenable to being worked in cold weather. You must have very good eyes to see that the white specs are sharp abrasive stone which must have remained in the (summer) tyres since driving on them last winter when certain councils resurfaced their roads contrary to any other local authority, it couldn't be that Colin has a limestone gravel drive now could it?

You say its a warranty issue so............................. Drain the water, drive it until it seizes and then tell them "I told you so! please come and recover the vehicle and organise a hire car for the time they will be sourcing and fitting a new engine", don't forget to insist on a new water pump as well 😆 Alternatively be patient, them's the choices!

A good subject for discussion. I have VCDS, it seemed very expensive until I found out how much a local VAG specialist would charge me to do diagnostics on my then MK1 Octavia where only the drivers door would unlock and how many weeks it would be before they could even look at it. I scrapped the car instead and got a MK2 and then realised with the complexity and fragile electronics VCDS was now an essential, having got it, seen what it can do and how much use I have had from it I consider the price a bargain, it gives me control and peace of mind when things start going haywire to be able to faultfind and diagnose. My only regret is not getting the 10 vin version from the get go, at the time 3 vins seemed more than I would ever need but I was wrong.

No compression sounds terminal, it's possible that while checking things out the garage rotated the engine backwards which caused the chain to jump but it's hard to say that it's their fault as the underlying problem is the tensioner design. They probably feel really bad about it. Was the engine spinning over unusually fast when it refused to start? Could the engine have rotated backwards at your place? - In gear on hill with handbrake not fully applied, a big engine stall etc?

Remember the Jags like the XJ6 although it probably started well before that, with twin tanks and rocker switches on the dashboard to engage the other fuel pump when one tank ran dry? I used to think they were so cool! Can you imagine the price of filling both those tanks today? - You would have to pay a minder to watch your car whenever you parked. The 70's fuel crisis put most of the really desirable jags & their ilk off the road, I dont see that happening these days with the lifestyle statement Range Rovers and the like but I can't recall the last time I saw anything like a Jag or a big Yank V8 being tooled around as a daily drive.

You are right, I apologise BilTecknik, I will leave the posting uneditted for my shame 😳