J.R.

Yes the loss of VMA is startling but you recover it very quick, I had a month out when hospitalised with Sepsis. A 3 month break takes a lot longer to regain lost ground & when you get to my age it generally wont be recovered as the VMA is falling anyway. I have not run for 2 years due to the confinement and i have put on 10kg in that time, my biggest challenge to restarting is the mental one, I have moved regions so it will be a new start with a new running club, due to the temperatures here in the South it wont be till September but I am doing manual work every day which feels great and can't actually spare the time at present even if it were cooler which is a good thing. I hope your recovery goes well.

Yes.

As someone who has bought a 13kg R134a cylinder some of which I have used I ask Ken once again please what law have I broken and what is the penalty?

That was exactly why I invested in the gear, that and being fed up with Fast-Fit type places here ripping me off, stealing my refrigerant and giving me BS. It can be done on VAG vehicles just like any others, they all have the standard dry break connection couplings, I'm just waiting for confirmation of how much jail time I will have to serve!!!

What law am I breaking Ken and what are the penalties?

I'm pleased that there is at least one other person around with common sense and a healthy dose of scepticism!

Complete and utter BS. And as for greasing a rubber propshaft coupling, they seem to think slathering rubber to metal bonded suspension bushes is a good thing so why not!!!

It is impossible for a rubber (doughnut) propshaft drive coupling to seize. When I hear garages relaying rubbish like that I suspect everything else they say and claim to have done.

Indeed and why I used the term multi-strand, I'm ashamed to say that despite still holding a UK electricians qualification I have forgotten the terms in English, in France most house wiring is solid core, the UK flexible conduit multi-strand cables are called multi-brin but flexible cables for extension leads etc are called âme souple and have many more finer strands. Vehicle wiring is multi-strand because the loom has to be fed through a tortuitous route and it must remain relatively flexible to allow say the speedo binnacle to be extracted & the loom disconnected when there is access, it's perfectly adequate for that but was never intended to be flexed 90° repeatedly, its not a question of the cabling being cheap rather than not fit for the purpose they are using it across door shuts. Frankly I was surprised that the idea was ever signed off or that the cables do not break within weeks, those with a vertical "torsion" section that Pete describes seem a good idea. Also putting repeated 90° bending fatigue loadings on a twisted pair canbus cable is simply crazy!

The correct engineering approach is to use a "door loop" whose cable cores are multi-strand flexible, this is replacable and considered a service item in critical applications. 2 problems for its use in vehicles, cost and the fact that every cable core running in that loom section would then have 2 additional connector joints as potential failure points.

Not such a good garage if they are expecting to hear a click from the aircon pump, VAG have not used clutch drive aircon pumps for close to 2 decades. 2 ways to diagnose the system: 1- Connect an aircon manifold guage set and compare the high and low side pressures and to the chart corrected for ambient temperature, this is by far the best way to know exactly how it is performing. 2 - Use VCDS, it will only tell you the high side pressure and you are never sure if its ambient or guage pressure as the info is contradictory, most of the measuring block figures are fantasy and simply calculated figures not what is actually happening, on the positive side if the system is shut down due to a fault, (usually low pressure) it will give you a shut down code which will hopefully reveal what the issue is, the downside is that if say the compressor modulating valve is sticking it will show everything working hunky dory but no cold air from the evaporator, also of the shear plate has broken and the pump is not even turning it will show fantasy figures for compressor load and RPM. The guage set never lies but few people these days know how to use them since the advent of the (not) idiot proof machines made for idiots.

To be fair we dont know that the garage who cant look at it were actually the ones that did the service.

I agree with all of the above especially the last sentence, I do however have a comment on number 6. I have a manifold set, vacuum pump and R134a cylinder, I have tried using electronic luggage scales to show the weight of refrigerant going in but the things keep cutting out or resetting in the time it takes. Its not the ideal situation but I have found that with knowledge and experience you can fill from empty or top up by watching the interaction of the high & low pressure guages, it is after all how all skilled AC fitters did it before they made idiot (not) proof machines to do the job for idiots. Whether I am topping up or refilling from a vacuum I stop as soon as the guages react as they should, its probably a little bit less than a full charge and in the month that follows if I dont feel the system is performing as it should I will try again and usually there is a small uptake of refrigerant, this used to make me feel there was a leak but I havn't had to do it again in the 2 years since and its coping well with the constant 40° plus weather currently here.

Ask them why they didn't need months notice to **** your car up! Tell them that you appreciate that they are too busy to put right their **** ups so they will need to authorise an equivalent hire car for you for the period.

No, the connector is on the engine bay side of the bulkhead. Have you correctly bled the clutch? It does not need a pressure bleeder simply gravity, if you can rig up a vertical tube from the bleed tap to the height of the fluid reservoir then you can leave it overnight for any air trapped in the pipework bends, normally the air from the cylinder will rise to a pocket under the bleed valve & it just needs opening for a few seconds until fluid comes out like bleeding a domestic radiator.

Be aware the the dimension is only true at the base, the higher your bag is the less the length that can be accomodated. If it has a solid bottom but squishy sides you will probably be OK dependant on what is inside.

Actually if you have access the pedal bracket can be left in place and the cylinder removed from the engine side.

Clutch pedal bracket needs removing (two 8mm bolts under dash) remove fluid pipes and position sensor cable then the cylinder is removed by twisting the bayonet fitting. Difficult first time but I can do it by feel now. If you removed the transmission to replace the slave cylinder then it will be a walk in the park for you, you did remove the transmission didn't you? It was actually the slave cylinder that you replaced and not the bleed block/peak torque limiter? Most people would have changed the master cylinder first hoping it might be that as its far easier and cheaper.

Must have been a kerb shaped pothole! Just saying................................. Or maybe a careless tyre fitter type pothole!

Can you explain what the danger is from these extreme G force loadings when braking with tyres that are inflated to the manufacturers specification?

The alternator will give its full 90 amp plus output from virtually tickover. Thats the short answer, you will soon get the long low slow chapter and verse from battery man.

Having read your posting again I take that back. The oil temperature is normal but if you had an engine overheat warning that should be investigated, presumably the engine coolant temperature, what was the temperature guage indicating? I would get someone to scan for fault codes and maybe do some live data measurements of the coolant temp sensor during warm up. The oil temp is acceptable and to be expected however if the engine coolant gets too hot the oil wont be cooled as much as it would normally.

Completely normal, nothing to check except the contents of your wallet.

There is nothing to dry out, greasing of vehicle suspension articulated joints became obsolete 100 years ago with the advent of Silentbloc bushes and greasing of swivel joints over 50 years ago with the introduction of sealed for life ball joints. Anyone that greases a rubber to metal bonded bush is at best a bodger, at worst risks causing premature failure of the joint. If they are creaking then they have failed or failing and allowing metal to metal contact and they should be replaced Some VAG front suspension bushes (console bushes?) weaken very quickly allowing metal to metal contact under certain conditions, slathering them with grease is not the answer, I don't care that a TPI exists telling the dealers to do exactly that, it simply shows how desperate they are, their complete lack of morals (Dieselgate anyone) and sadly that they have the measure of the the gullibility of many owners. There is a reason that the name Silentbloc was chosen.

It worked on my MK2 Octavia but the function was not supported on the later Yeti so I suspect it will not on an even later car. That makes complete sense, like most cars it was pre-registered and punted out to anyone with the weakest of connections to VAG, eg a first year university student a distant relative of someone or to any of the fleet operators, car hire companies etc, they get them for 3-6 months and have to do say 6-10K miles & return them for the next one, the car is then sold on to a pigeon who is told it is an ex demonstrator, the sales managers car etc etc etc. The mileage from the services stacks up.