J.R.

If your battery is in good condition and unless you were not driving the car for moths at a time then all your solar charger is doing is masking the actual problem that remains, namely battery discharge probably because the Can Gateway Controller is not going into sleep mode or is being woken up, does your vehicle have the original radio? What were the actual breakdowns that you suffered?

I hope people are not making the switch to EV's intending to have 10 years or more motoring from them (entirely plausible given the simplicity and reliability) and budgetting on the electricity (fuel) price continuing to be in the order of 7.5p per kwh. Very soon the loss of fuel duty to the government (currently 53p per litre) will result in similar charges being levied on electricity consumed for vehicle transport. Also the 35p per kwh peak charge sounds very high to me but perhaps its because I'm used to state controlled energy prices and France having a huge proportion of Nuclear and wind powered electricity generation. The current high Petrol & Diesel prices have insulated the government from the tax losses resulting from the EV take up but that will not continue.

A now retired pal who worked his life in the bottled gas supply industry told me that with any aircon system with rubber hoses or even O ring seals in dry break couplings it is not a question of if it will leak but how long before the refrigerant charge drops below the operating threshold. Fridges and monobloc AC units are completely sealed the motor and pump within the big cylinder, pipes to the condensor & evaporator are solid steel or copper, split units that are charged during commissioning use flared couplings and unless they are badly made there will again be zero refrigerant losses. the DIY ones being sold now with the precharged connection coils with dry break couplings will leak via the seals from day 1. Car AC units with exposed pump seals, polymer flexible hoses and sealing washers will leak a significant quantity every year. He told me that it is possible to have hoses and seals of a material with a molecular value such that leakage is negligible, they have to use them for HSE reasons but they would double the cost of a vehicle were they equipped with them.

I do hope that is not "all of us" as that would make me the only person to know that the oft repeated phrases using Canbus in relation to lighting circuits should never contain the term. The canbus does not monitor bulbs, a control module will do so if the vehicle has bulb monitoring, it may be called various names like body control module, comfort control module etc even by the same manufacturer, these modules communicate with the main ECU and other control modules via the Canbus network, it does not "throw errors" but may communicate the information to other modules whose outputs may be modified accordingly.

Actually the switching commands could be along the 12V supply cables courant porteur en ligne in my country, possibly DLAM in English?

Its high time that the only cable cores in a trailer connections become a decent conductor size live and neutral to power everything including caravan fridges etc, no second cable. All the lighting commands would be transmitted wirelessly and of course use LED bulbs. It will require a new EU legislation but it will come, there are far too many dodgy connections on the current set up and too many long cable cores which are getting too small in cross sectional area.

100% agree with all that, there is a further issue that using a correct low impedance by pass relay and a trailer board with LEDS then the module will not recognise that they are fitted and will not sound the confirmation buzzer, whether it would then disconnect the output I don't know. I would stick to incandescent bulbs unless its the factory set up and programmed for LED bulbs in which case a normal trailer socket tester will not work on either the socket or the trailer.

He probably meant 500rpm which is equally implausible, so agreed still a rev counter fault or more likely a fault in observation and relaying of information.

Its impossible for an engine starting from either cold or ambient temperature to overheat in less than a minute even if the thermostat were stuck closed, your attention should be aimed towards the coolant temperature sensor.

Does air release mean that any trapped air can (eventually) migrate through the film?

Your understanding is incorrect. The waterpump has a sliding sleeve.

Unless the cylinder has been removed or replaced then it wont be the seal leaking, its not like an oil seal that wears.

Thanks for the inspiration, I had to repair slight accident damage on mine so I took the opportunity to spray it black, I don't think I could have done any more than I did to prevent the paint lifting but it was for nothing. I used a scotchbrite buffing wheel on my bench grinder to really key the chrome then wet n dry, then 2 pack black paint and 2 pack aérosol, despite all that there is as much chrome showing now as black it doesn't help that I use a car was with the rotary brushes. I wish that I had thought of vinyl wrap, it would have been easy to remove had it started looking naff. Did you use a specific wrapping vinyl perhaps with a specific semi-gloss finish? I have some black domestic vinyl (Fablon type) in stock but don't know if it is suitable.

£170 for a 'kin track rod end 😲 Nice work if you can get it!

Clutch master cylinder, a rare failure. That pushrod that you assume is metal is actually plastic as is the entire cylinder assembly with the exception of an internal magnet to activate the reed switch. About £118 retail from Skoda/TPS, as low as €18 delivered on the internet for a pattern part. A tricky job first time round especially fitting the rigid pipe into the cylinder, make sure the pipe seal did not detach and remain in the old cylinder and that it fits back on the pipe end with a forced "click" do not put it in the new cylinder & then fit the pipe, it will not seal. In fact given that the cylinders dont wear and leak that pipe seal may well be where your leaking fluid is coming from, has any work been done before in that area?

Exactly what I did despite having a second knowledgable pair of eyes overseeing me (I only have sight in one eye and not good close up in the gloom) because we knew of the possibility. The mistaken diff oil came out clean as a whistle and did not have that hypoid smell that I was so used to, I scrutinised it with a cynical eye and concluded it must be Haldex oil, with hindsight I know that used Haldex oil will be filthy. Because I removed the pump to clean the guaze strainer some fluid was lost so the refill quantity whilst low was not that short, conflicting info on the net of the refill volume only further muddied the waters. I drove about 300 miles, 2/3 of which was a loaded high speed autoroute run, that was when I first heard the diff noise. Amazingly despite the diff being dry and when flushed with 50/50 oil & parrafin it coming out black as treacle I seemed to have dodged a bullet, there has been transmission noise since but not obviously excessive, perhaps there was some anyway with the lack of soundproofing, touch wood I have driven for 3 years and 32K miles since then, most very hard miles towing overloaded and the diff has held together and not got any worse.

Number one suspect will be the damper/restrictor AKA Clutch peak torque limiter, unlike a collapsed hose or internally corroded pipe or a partil blockage the torque limiter only restricts on the return stroke. It is actually very nigh on impossible to remove the internals of the restrictor, if you can block it from rotating you can drill out the bore, I bet it is functioning and there is some debris on the slave cylinder side.

Sounds even more like it with the description, what was reported would be the crown wheel & pinion breaking up and the planet gears locking then releasing with a jerk, definitely not uncommanded Haldex engagement. Another mechanic with an indiscriminate hole penchant!

They are taking you for a pigeon, it's very rare to see discs in such good condition, I dont even need to see the rear of them behind the dustshield to know they are in perfect condition, the garage certainly wont have done. Tell them "nice try but you have now lost a customer". No way in a million years would any of those discs fail an MOT.

Clever ABS to always pulse the brakes at exactly the same angular position of both wheels regardless of the speed! Well not so clever really if you believe that is what happens.

Can't help you regarding looks, that is not the reason I chose a bumper protector. I have the cheapest rubber universal protector from Ali-Express, not even a self adhesive one, I glued it with contact adhesive after carefully setting out and masking the area to be covered taking into account pre-stretching the rubber so it was applied from the middle outwards. Performance wise it is perfect, it looks fine to my eyes and has not moved or detached in nearly 3 years which is more than I can say for the expensive self adhesive rigid one my neighbour used.

Aside from the commission payable to Ebay I think its very easy for a hobbyist like yourself to offer a service on ebay without the hassle of a website and also with the convenience of turning the tap on and off as it were when you dont want to be obliged to return communications. With a web site you would be forever fielding questions, the communication ends up taking up all of your time, different business but same problem, its why I would pay the commission to Booking.com for rentals, people just clicked on reserve and they paid and that was it.

And he is also a great asset to the forum! Pete, have you considered offering your service on Ebay? I had a caravan power supply repaired by someone like yourself who did it as a sideline & I think only the one unit and rapidly became known as the go to guy, he is very much like yourself, wanting to save people money while saving serviceable equipment from landfill.

Correct, in the scenario you describe the DPF will not need a regen but unfortunately if it has had the emissions fix the software will make it have one as the "calculated soot load" will continue rising regardless of the constant passive regens. I suspected this was the case comparing my VCDS readings with my neighbours Octavia (same engine) which has not had the emissions fix, I now know for sure that I was right after paying to have my ECU software rolled back. I would leave for a 500 mile motorway journey towing well beyond the permitted weight limit, miles of full throttle uphill sections in intermediate gears, during which it would regen several times and as soon as I arrived it would try again, problem being that while at my destination I was commuting 20km each way which was never enough to get up to temp and complete the regen it was trying to force despite the measured soot level being close to zero (calculated was at the 22.5g threshold) every journey the fans would be running at the end. It was ridiculous that I had driven 500 miles at double the usual engine load (and fuel consumption) and was forced to continue driving after a 20km commute to allow the DPF to regen when it didn't need to only for it to start again within 3 or 4 days. I now do a minimum of 800kms between regens and that is on short local journeys and have never since heard the fans running at shut down.

Its certainly true of tuning boxes (and I suspect remaps as well) that the "chip tuned"engine is now consuming more fuel than the ECU thinks has been delivered in order to produce the power and hence the maxidot MPG readings as optimistic as they already were become even more so. Being on my second remap and doing regular brim to brim checks I can say that the remaps certainly do not reduce the consumption when you drive in a similar manner, in real terms during those journeys you may well be doing overtakes that you would not have considered before, having more power & of course using more fuel, that the economy does not seem to drop must mean its more efficient.