J.R.

Fit an emulator/simulator and blank it off then forget all about the ridiculous Achilles Heel. You will also avoid a very long and unpleasant job which would otherwise come round again and again.

Its the fuel wastage that concerns me Langers that and the heat generated, the fans running on after every local journey unless I go for a long drive to let it do its thing. If I still had a functioning EGR it would fail in very short order. When you get to the stage of at least once a week arriving home shutting down & then having to go drive up & down the hill to the aéroport several times until the idle drops to 850rpm again there is something wrong, the car is supposed to serve my needs not the opposite.

Mine was regenning once again straight after a 500 mile 120kph autoroute journey towing a 1400kg trailer VCDS showed 210kms since the last regen which means that despite the high revs, high load, high oil temperature it will already have regenned 3 times on the autoroute, the VAG emissions fix sucks!! Mine produces very little soot as the EGR is disabled by an emulator it regens on a measured 4-6g of soot, it will have been zero on the autoroute. Using VCDS I managed to tell it that it had a new DPF but all this will change is the oil ash volume figure should I choose to view it in VCDS, I also tried a couple of different adaptions those of the DPF pressure sensor and also another related sensor, I noticed afterwards that the calculated soot value had dropped to zero but it was rising before my eyes with the engine ticking over. There is one extreme measure that I am considering but I will only do it when I know I will be at base with a working computer & VCDS for an extended period you can actually switch off the automatic regens, I would like to do this and see exactly how many miles the car covers before the measured soot value reaches the pre "fix" threshold of 30g and then do a forced regen while driving. If it is as infrequent as I believe it will be then I would consider leaving it and doing a regen as part of periodic maintenance.

And the fuel that is drawn from the bottom of a full tank is exactly the same as the last drops of fuel drawn from a tank when you run out of fuel the pick up pipe does not move and the water does not float above the fuel.

You certainly can and many do because their old pump failed with a stuck shroud. I like the quick warm up but if mine fails with a stuck shroud I will remove the achilles heel.

Did it find any codes to erase? Did you make a note of them? What were they? If its a cheap P.O.S. then it won't be able to access the relevant modules to erase the codes especially mission critical ones like ABS, airbags etc.

Why would you want to do that? - Because a MK1 variofloor can be had for peanuts and it sounds like the OP already has a MK2 set, of course you can fit them in with a little bit of DIY, they are made of wood.

You seem to have a good grasp and understanding of the subject and the issues on your car which is the most important thing, you are also keeping an open mind, not discounting things but concentrating on those you can action and rule out. I think that you will get to the bottom of it fairly quckly the soot will probably lead you to where the leak is have a good listen to the leak at idle and higher revs before making a repair, you can usually hear when the exhaust is obstructed, the leaks make a similar noise to where you might block the tailpipe with a rag to test for exhaust leaks in the old days. Hopefully it is a leak and not a blocked DPF. Good luck!

I find that recirc is necessary for the most efficient removal of steamed up windows. Its usually caused by wet clothing etc, rather then the evaporator dehumidifying the damp outside air it is more effective at removing the humidity from the inside.

The display is just an LCD matrix, its neither miles or kms nor English, French or Chinese, it illuminates the pixels that it is told to by the instrument cluster controller. LHD/RHD and miles/kms etc are all coding settings for the instrument cluster, changing the LCD display will not change the coding or the information displayed. Editted, I am having my doubts about the above, I was speaking as if it were a Maxidot display but looking at the ghost image in the photograph I am not so sure now.

My interpretation as well!

The last VW rack that I refurbished was my late fathers 1982 Polo, I had a Delrin bush turned up to replace the worn one at the pinion end. I cant recall how but was probably giving the pinion the good news with a hammer without having spotted a retaining circlip, I broke out the end of the casting where your core plug is, I Araldited a 10p coin over the hole and it remained like that till the end of the century when it was scrapped, the repair was done very early on. Sorry that I don't know how to dismantle yours other than the pinion will certainly come out rearwards and probably be retained with a circlip, all I have had to do in recent years was an inner track rod swivel joint which initially lacking a replacement I pinched up in my 12 tonne press.

Aside from having found a lot more bodges than you expected I like you seek out these vehicles when I can negotiate them for the right price because I find it incredibly satisfying putting all the bodges right and ending up not only with a straight vehicle at the end of it but one that I know inside out. I wish you luck and am glad that you have embraced the challenge.

"Invasive" not intrusive 😆 I can say that with some confidence because I have read it so many times together with "a long low slow battery charge" and "battery reset" that I have started saying them in my sleep.

Only one pipe is connected, the other is for the baseline atmospheric pressure reading. From what you have recounted: DPF sensor fault Soot escaping from the pipe seal Not heard any regenerations recently............. I would say that the DPF is clogged, the sensor has detected that, stopped any regens from occuring and brought up the MIL indicator light, putting the engine into LOS (limited operating strategy) mode. You have continued driving so the back pressure has overcome the pipe seal to the DPF sensor as witnessed by the soot, this may also have caused the sensor to fail but hopefully it will just be the connections. You are right to start with a DPF clean (an off vehicle one by a specialist not a tin of snake oil) followed by adaption/coding by VCDS to tell the ECU that a new DPF has been fitted also adaption of the existing sensor if its working or the new one to calibrate it to the ambient pressure, its called DPF offset value.

More likely the drivers door bellows as it usually gets much more use, the commands to all the passenger doors pass through those cables from the drivers door controller.

You are getting a false reading as the comms network has not shut down as witnessed by the radio consumption. To get a true reading first you must trick the vehicle into thinking the bonnet is closed by closing the latch with a screwdriver or similar, then switch off ignition and lock vehicle leaving drivers window unwound as a precaution, disconnect battery and make your multimeter connections but do not take the reading for 20 minutes, it will probably have fallen to the quiescent current after 10 minutes but if it looks high wait for the full 20 minutes. I would expect 20-40 milliamps current draw unless you have accessories like a dashcam or a towing relay. If it is higher then use the procedure linked to by Wino but in that case its both the bonnet and door catches that you will have to fiddle.

No saving on the bulbs, the light units are stocked with all the bulbs fitted, having different part numbers for with or without bulb would double the inventory costs

Caveat Emptor. Anyone buying a second hand vehicle and getting a perfect running car is lucky, anyone buying a new car and getting one without any faults is probably a fantasist if the multiple threads regarding the MK4 Octavia are anything to go by.

I did read your post and then I quoted you, are you saying that you did not write " I don’t fancy rolling down a hill backwards at 15 mph"

Thankyou so much Langers, that is the first reassurance I have had on the subject. I am doing long autoroute journeys towing very large frontage heavily loaded trailers, the engine is so loaded that the fuel consumption drops from the usual 55mpg to 28mpg, 500 miles on Saturday, almost every time I stopped for fuel or a pee the fans were running as they were on arrival, in urban driving it was regenning every 100 miles despite only showing 6g of soot, it seems the same is happening even when under constant passive regeneration over 500 miles. It's the fuel consumed in doing so that I begrudge. My UK neighbour has the same engine in an Octavia, he made sure to buy one that had not had the emissions "fix" done and has kept it that way, he does mainly short journeys now but has only ever heard the fan running on shutdown twice in several years.

It is becoming clear that either I am not explaining well enough or you are not understanding what my problem will be. It does not matter how clean my DPF is, whether I run snake oil through it or have it professionally cleaned the ECU will take not the slightest bit of notice it may report actual readings for soot but what triggers the regens and the game over when it believes the oil ash limit is exceeded are the calculated figures. My car thanks to the measures I have implemented (DPF emulator) produces 1/5 of the soot that the algorithm says is there, nonetheless it regens when only 5 or 6g of soot is measured because the calculated value has exceeded 22g. Even if the oil ash were rising at the level the algorithm thinks it is I still have no idea how close I am to the service limit because the stupid thng reports it as a volume and not a mass and nowhere can I find what the service limit is in volume or a conversion factor. Neither can I find out what will actually happen when the calculated volume does exceed the still unknown service limit. Do you understand my concern now? It is not that my DPF might be clogged, I know full well that it isn't, if only the ECU algorithm would take heed of its own measured readings.

Roll forwards then, nobody said you had to roll the car backwards! Or were you really talking about rolling yourself down the hill? In that case you will be OK unless you are overweight, the basic human body form (chest larger diameter than waist/hips has evolved to ensure that we can not roll down a hill if we trip but roll in an arc stopping in the recovery position with the head lowest. Humpty Dumpty was an accident waiting to happen 🤣

I don't have any doubts, I can measure and take heed of the DPF differential pressure sensor, unfortunately VAG's stupid algorithm doesn't. I agree that the service limit is measured in grammes which is what makes it so feckin stupid that the measuring block data for oil ash is expressed as a volume and nobody can give a correlation between the two. I could use some of your snake oil, it might even lighten the oil ash as it will my wallet but it will not make the slightest bit of difference to the ECU which is going to blindly carry on adding X volume =????? grammes for every 10K miles driven until it decides that its game over, that could happen to me at any time and there is not a thing that I can do about it or even know when it will happen. The only option I can see is telling the ECU that the DPF has been replaced. How in dogs name did we get from having super reliable vehicles after 100 years of development to the overcomplicated shower of **** that we are driving in recent years?

The MK3 version of any vehicle is always bigger and lardier then the original. The Golf has gone from a lithe athletic shape & size to a SupersizeMe lardar5e over its many iterations. All of the current Mini range of vehicles are an insult to the memory and creativity of the late great Sir Alex Issigonis. Can you imagine what for instance an original windscreen peak from a MK1 Mini would look like on one of the modern abortions?