J.R.

What premium are you paying?

Whilst I would once have completely agreed that is exactly how Rustol is used and it stops further rust in its tracks, I'll add the qualifier that if the metal is perforated then it must be used on both sides. Whilst I was cynical at first I have used in on rusty subframes and a cast iron garden fontaine that had a really nice rusty patina from new but was continuing to rust and in both cases it sealed out the air and moisture completely and stopped further rusting. The restorers of Rat Rods spray Rustol or clear coat over rusty panels. So I would not say its a waste of time reapplying cavity wax inside sills that have some internal rust and would lean towards agreeing with "every little helps"

On the MK1 Octavia I think I can safely say it wasn't a menu option, over 13 years I would have stumbled on it. Yes I think the horizontal movements may be reversed, next time I adjust the mirrors I will check. I never found it on the MK2 Octavia but don't have the same confidence to say it wasn't there, I changed it with VCDS. On my current Yeti I am very confident the menu option is not there (waits to be proven wrong) and again changed it with VCDS.

Not of the Rapid but I had their remap done on my Yeti by one of their agents and it is very good, I would also recommend them as a company, had I had the remap done at their Newquay headquarters they would have done an emissions rollback for me FOC, as it was Covid travel restrictions and my own schedule would not allow it. A couple of months ago I attended the funeral of my stepmother in Cornwall & stayed with friend at Newquay, I popped into Celtic Tuning completely on the offchance and with only a tight hour to spare before the cremation, they pulled out all the stops and did it there and then, I had to pay, given their co-operation it would have been churlish to say that they were once going to do it FOC. The car drives even better still since the rollback and the very frequent regens happen very rarely now and I have never once interrupted one when switching off the engine which would happen all the time before.

Thanks for that Pete, I knew there must be some logic, had they done that but only mirrored (pun intended) the vertical movements it would have made more sense and not caused the problems that it does.

I, like I suspect most of us had always been watching the drivers mirror while adjusting its position and never seen what was happening the other side of the car, I am also blind in the left eye.

Its a stupid set up as standard but adjusting the drivers mirror also changes the position of the passenger one, it can be changed using VCDS to the logical operation of R for adjusting RH mirror and L for the LH one, I cannot imagine any reason why they should have created the dual setting let alone have that as standard, I suspect recreational drugs may have been involved. It took me a decade of driving constantly having to readjust the passenger mirror to finally see one day what was going on, boy did I feel stupid quickly followed by anger!

The pressure guages would indeed look very different, I have VCDS which only measures the high side pressure, a manifold guage set and a vacuum pump, what I cannot do however is remove, measure the weight of refrigerant and replace, therefore I have to watch very closely the high and low side pressures & the relationship between them together with the ambient temperature whilst consulting my charts whilst refilling or topping up. If the engine was running with the aircon on full when the VCDS readings were taken then the system does not have enough refrigerant, the high side should go up to 9 bar guage pressure (probably 10 bar on VCDS) before the fans cut in and it drops whilst the low side increases again. I take your point though, they wouldn't look too different but its a big difference to the trained eye but they are rarer and rarer in garages these days especially since the advent of the idiot proof so called "smart" machines that they just connect and leave to do their stuff.

Ali-Express is usually the cheapest for conversion kits containing the struts and mounts although they look silly money at present.

A gas spring is very unique in that it has a very high preload with a by comparison very low spring rate, this gives them the ability to work over a very long travel without the force going up massively. As they get old and lose pressure the initial preload reduces until they will no longer support the tailgate, new gas springs will always feel much stronger than the ones that they replace Another phenomenon is heat, I replaced the tailgate struts on my Yeti a couple of years ago, the force of the new ones was correct, initial force to overcome the preload high then a gradual increase which is not felt due to the geometry, there is virtually no assistance at the slam point. This summer and especially in the 40° plus heat at my new property in Nouvelle Aquitaine I have found that after leaving the tailgate open for a long time it takes a huge amount of initial force to get the struts moving, once moving the force and resistance is as it should be. @TheClient The force measurement is Newtons, Newton metres is a measure of a turning moment or torque. Divide Newtons by 10 (actually 9.81) to get the force in kgs (actually KgF)

It will be the 4x4 angle drive transfer box, it will only need an O ring replacing but they will fill their boots with a new unit possibly an entire new transmission because they dont list individual components, only the whole drive unit.

Can you expand a little on what you mean by that please Ken? What carburettor type was fitted? I had quite a bit of experience with carburettors and forced induction, basically you need the float chamber to be pressurised to the same boost as the intake tract, early Webers with vented float bowls needed significant modification, the later ones where the vent was on the filter face worked well with an airbox which was a necessity anyway. Constant vacuum carbs like SU and Stromberg work very well. I cannot see any reason to put the carburettor in a sealed box unless it had an external float chamber vent which no cars of the period had, and there would be far easier, cheaper and more elegant solutions.

Maybe I dont understand what "Driving like Miss Daisy" means but I would not associate it with drifting.

It only needs valve to be slightly bent for zero compression, if one gets hit by the piston then those on the other cylinders will also

In case you are doing something silly with the compression tester (we have all been there!) simply push your thumb over the spark plug hole while someone cranks the engine, if it is not blown off of the hole then you have zero or as close to zero as matters compression. No doubt on your engine the plugs will be recessed, you may be able to get a finger down there, if not then improvise with something long rubbery and flexible 🤣 Did you by any chance turn the engine by hand or by pushing the car in gear during your earlier investigations? If it turns over backwards with a worn or failing tensioner its usually game over next time the engine is cranked.

What does minter mean in this context? A mistake? A right little earner?

So electrolytic corrosion causing conductive particles to be carried within the oil which could then cause a short circuit. That makes more sense because oil is a superb insulator and they would not have uninsulated electrical or electronic components bathed in the oil were it not.

"Synthetic oil used can lead to an internal short circuit and to the blowing of the fuse for the gearbox................" My BS'ometer went off the scale reading that one, is there any semblance of truth amongst it?

The answer to that depends entirely on whether your garage considers the customer as their benefactor and a cash cow. My money is on an underboost caused by collapse of the vacuum tubing between the N75 valve and the turbo actuator, cost about £1, the high mileage MK1 Octavia I bought from my chauffeur friend had that as did a previous Alhambra but he had been rushed for thousands of pounds by the Skoda dealer for 2 new turbos and still the fault remained, they then trotted out the "if all else fails" diagnosis, it will need a new ECU at £XXX

My Octavia 1 & 2 both had variofloors with the space below stuffed full of essential items (AKA K-rap until you need them!) so there was a lot of unloading & repacking to be done before and after a wheelchange but at least I had a spare wheel. The Yeti didn't have one and after making a variofloor from a MK1 Octavia one there would be space for a spacesaver wheel but none left for my essential stuff which has already been reduced by 1/3rd to fit the smaller load space, if I carry my space saver above then it takes up all of the boot space leaving very little space on top. As it is the spare only comes with me on long journeys, the exact journeys where I need all the load space, I would love to fit it on the rear hatch or on a swing out bracket, it can't be fitted to the towbar because all my long journeys recently and for the next couple of years are towing trailers. I liked my Galaxy with the spare wheel under the boot floor, OK it gets dirty but the one coming off will be anyway, I made the mistake once of pulling over with 2 wheels up the kerb to allow traffic to pass, I jacked up the car, removed the punctured wheel and then found there was not enough space to drop out the spare, the kerb was in the way.

How can you not admire the stylish "peek-a-boo" cover?

Sounds like the crown wheel and pinion, well whatever the equivalent differential drive gear is called in the FWD setup. I'm sure I have read of catastrophic failures where the transmission case has fractured when things make a bid for freedom and photos showing the parts that had caused the meltdown, bolts or rivets securing the planet wheel carrier to the crown wheel perhaps? My rationale is that the noise is only under load and in all gears which rules out mainshaft or layshaft bearings. I'm sure someone will recall with detail what I only have a vague recollection of. I know how embarrasing it is to have pedestrians turn around and wince while you are trying to isolate and diagnose the cause of the noise.

The Hollywood method, works on all vehicles. You reach under the dashboard by feel while looking over the top furtively, grab hold of the convenient placed cable bundle and pull down hard, they are specially designed to break and 2 of them will self strip the insulation from their ends at the same time, you touch the wires together creating a pyrotechnic confirmation flash and the engine will start, you must remember to give a smug smile to disable the immobiliser and steering lock. Next week, how to set off the fire sprinkler system in an entire building by using the break glass switch.

Not Lambda 1.0 on wide open throttle but still kept within a richer value for emissions.

Non fact!, all petrol engines for the last 25 years + have run closed loop lambda fuelling which maintains the mixture at the stochiometric ratio. Petrol engines are at their most efficient on wide open throttle, most efficient does not mean lowest fuel consumption, vehicles built for economy record breaking will accelerate on full throttle to somewhere near to the point of max torque and then coast down to a lower speed and accelerate again, probably between 1500 and 4500 RPM, it will depend on the engine, the cam and valve timing, turbocharged or normally aspirated but the principal remains the same.