J.R.

Donation made, until now all the Gofundme appeals that I have been presented with have been unworthy at best, opportunistic at worst, I am pleased to say that your situation and your brothers words have changed my jaded view. Your PMA will carry you through this and a long way to a new and hopefully better future than the one you had mapped out and worked so hard for, I hope that fate will find a way for you to make a living using the skills, knowledge and enthusiasm that you have gained during your apprenticeship, perhaps training others, perhaps counselling, advising and inspiring others in the future faced with the exact same decisions as you are. In any case good luck and nurture the PMA, it helps others around you without you even knowing it.

Thanks for that Pete, it came at a good time for me and explains where I am after the enforced confinement of the last couple of years, it also gives me confidence that the hard work I am undertaking will show benefits but i must augment it by starting running and cycling again. I have had a few falls recently and each time could not understand how they happened without analysis, not helped by my banging my head each time, I had concluded that it was loss of muscle strength and the fast twitch reaction force & not loss of balance, the headbanging as well, I have had my fair share of falls in my time but in the past my neck muscles have always stopped my head short of the ground.

No way, that damage was something internal making a (successfull) bid for freedom.

Complete and utter BS.

Has the gearbox been removed for a clutch change? A misaligned front cross member will give exactly your problem, dont ask me how I know! It should show up on a 4 wheel alignment check but they are only as good as the operator.

The luggage space with all the seats up may not be significantly more than the Octavia but once they are folded flat to do some real work you will have considerably more length and volume. I have gone from Octavia estates to a Yeti and it is apalling by comparison, nice drive though and a superb tow car.

The moving contact point uses that insulator to isolate the spring and moving contact point from earth (except when the points are closed, looking at your photograph it looks like you have shorted the coil CB terminal to ground which is why you are not getting any spark. To confirm rotate engine till points are open, with ignition on you should measure 12v across the contacts, without the insulator you will have zero volts.

The garage that wants your repeat business, they are only putting in the minimum weight and there probably is a small leak, are they vacuuming it down and if so how long are they holding it on test at zero bar?

We dont know what voltage your coil and ballsat set up should be running at, are you sure they are matching complimentary components intended to be used as a pair or were they bought seperately? If the former then measure the resistances and calculate what the volt drop should be, better still hardwire them to the battery with decent section conductor wires (not using the points or condensor) and measure the voltage, if what you are seeing on the car is lower then you have a high resistance connection or wire, possibly the points.

You should check where that red wire goes to, it should be the starter solenoid and it should have 12v (probably a bit less) on it only when the engine is cranking.

You have a ballasted ignition coil, when the engine is running the voltage drop across the ballast resistor should drop the voltage to around 9v, that is just an off the cuff figure, it could well be 7v for your vehicle. When the engine is cranking an additional contact on the starter solenoid will put full battery voltage direct to the coil to compensate for the volt drop from cranking. If you have the correct coil and the correct ballast resistor (nobody has been swapping stuff around) and it is correctly wired then you can calculate the voltage you should be reading using Ohms law for the series circuit.

Look at the bolt shank, those that are designed to stretch once only to beyond the elastic limit will have a precision ground waisted shank like modern con rod bolts. I can recall Ford garages adding a new sump plug o everyones service invoice because they claimed that the 20mm steel thread tightened into an alloy sump stretched its threads and could not be re-used 😆. In general you never want to tighten a fastener to beyond the elastic limit, once it has reached the yeild point any service load will cause further plastic (& not elastic) deformation resulting in failure. I rarely use a torque wrench but on occasions either using an old fastener, one that may have been defective or having no choice but to really pull up a joint for whatever reason or undoing a rusted fixing I can detect being on the cusp of the yield point, when this happens I always discard and replace the fastener. One thing I have found when not having kept my hand in (due to owning a far too reliable MK1 Octavia) is that I started to break rusted fasteners when undoing them, when I was practiced I would always know how far I could go before stopping, applying more heat and/or lubricant, backing the nut back up the threads etc.

Are you sure that does not mean that it has already been done? My car is the same year, same engine, same power, engine code is in my profile CFHC or something. How often does your DPF regenerate? That is the big difference between emission fixed and rolled back or never done. Is yours EU5 or EU6? Adblue or not?

Sorry to dissapoint you but you are both amateurs compared to me, the master. I have a less accomplished life, am more paranoid & desperate for recognition and am more feeble and insecure than both of you put together 🤣

Even I would say no to that one and I must be amongst the most reckless when it comes to overloading tyres. The plys may be damaged inside and even though it is not bulging at present they have lost the support of the rubber on the outside. If I were to do it I certainly would not remove the piece and leave an obvious visible filled area, the better to glue it back in place but still very bad.

I don't like them, its another bit of complication that can go wrong and makes it impossible to modulate the throttle and clutch when you do need to make a speedy standing start say across a junction in a gap between oncoming traffic. It can also slip when upchanging if you are using full acceleration making use of the power band, if overtaking and perhaps you have not left quite as much room as you thought for the manouvre that is exactly when you would make a faster than normal gearchange. VAG would rather the clutch burnt out than have a gearbox failure and their vehicles do not perform as they should when you most need them to. I modified one of mine by drilling out the return restrictor valve, the clutch feel was much better but I replaced it with a new standard one while I was ruling out all the possibilities before having to replace my DMF, Clutch & slave cylinder, with all new parts I thought it best to leave it as standard, I'm beginning to wonder now.

Those are the ones that secure the undertray to the cross member behind the transmission, they often shear off.

"Grey area" was the term I was searching for in what remains of my English vocabulary, much better than "borderline legal"!

Be aware that many of these LHD buyers will tell you what they think you want to hear regarding price knowing that once you have made the journey over with the car they can offer much less and will have you over a barrel. You also run the risk of being pursued for speeding fines etc as they will insist that a certificat de cession is not completed, them reselling the vehicle with a foreign registration is borderline legal, if they sell it to someone moving to or returning to France they will provide a falsified reciept & paperwork in your name with your French address, it's the only way that the new owner could register it and the dealers details wont appear anywhere, worst case scenario is they sell it to someone intending to use it in the UK on the French plates & having immunity from speeding fines, parking tickets etc, if they rack up a lot then an investigation would lead back to you albeit at your old address in France. I would sell it on Ebay UK in the first month of your return with its French identity, if you look at sold listings you will see that vehicles go for strong money, it will likely be purchased by someone doing the same as you in reverse. That way you would do the paperwork correctly with the certificat de cession etc and have relative peace of mind. Of course it could still be bought by someone wanting to use it in the UK but you will insist on the certificat de cession being filled out to cover your back. If you find that LHD vehicles are no longer making strong money (I've not looked for a couple of years & Brexit may have changed things) then you can be fairly sure that the dealer is nevr going to pay you the high price floated.

Be aware that many of these LHD buyers will tell you what they think you want to hear regarding price knowing that once you have made the journey over with the car they can offer much less and will have you over a barrel. You also run the risk of being pursued for speeding fines etc as they will insist that a certificat de cession is not completed, them reselling the vehicle with a foreign registration is borderline legal, if they sell it to someone moving to or returning to France they will provide a falsified reciept & paperwork in your name with your French address, it's the only way that the new owner could register it and the dealers details wont appear anywhere, worst case scenario is they sell it to someone intending to use it in the UK on the French plates & having immunity from speeding fines, parking tickets etc, if they rack up a lot then an investigation would lead back to you albeit at your old address in France.

They cut away your balls? 😲

The internal concentric slave cylinders(on the 6 speed gearboxes at least) have the same peak torque limiter valve AKA clutch bleed block although it is located externally and clips on to the inlet stub of the internal concentric cylinder. Equally easy to change, cheap and I agree, definitely something to be ruled out first.

And that is after their best efforts to fix it, were I to look further back in the thread I'm sure there would be countless other experiences related. Its a gimmick anyway IMNSVHO to appeal to the terminally anxious, I bet the UK Police have never and would never respond to an unverified automatic SOS call generated from a vehicle. I would still like to know if & how the system could send an SOS call (to be ignored) from a "dead" spot for the mobile network it uses.

Normal French retail margin, they will have paid less than the Autodoc prix publique. Enjoy the rest of your touring with peace of mind!

No need to disconnect the battery, you are not working on the electrical system or the ignitor circuit, removing the cover will not disturb the airbag & even if it did it would not cause any problems. From the dampness of the headlining I would say the water ingress is higher than the windscreen, I would suspect the roof rail fixings.