J.R.

Have you ever or will you ever carried 3 people in the back of the car? I remove all mine for visibility and I think that it looks much better without any of them, its certainly a lot safer (as long as I don't carry passengers) also tipping the seat back forward and flipping the rear seats no longer needs the front seats moving forwards.

On my Yeti I used an Octavia MK2 type hard plastic battery cover and lid (they are common across all the vehicles on the platform) I got it new dirt cheap from Ali-Express, the existing battery tray had all the clips and lugs in the right place for it to fit correctly, it seems they simply ditched the proper cover for a cheaper felt one without creating a new battery tray, and why would they? I much prefer the look, it matches the rest of the underbonnet rather than loking like something made from papier maché in a pre-school playgroup, I believe that it insulates better and I will feel secure from an electrical fire the next time an elephant sits on my bonnet!

The drivers door should unlock and open with the key, you say that it wont turn in the lock, have you ever tried it before and did it work then? If so then some lubrication and maybe heat according to your temperatures, if you have never tried it then maybe the lock barrel had been replaced with an off the shelf one & not correct cylinder configured to your key number, are there any spare keys that you have? I would expect the failure to be in the drivers door loop unless all your journeys are done with a passenger.

My UK house is a small semi-detached but on a corner plot, I built a nice garage years ago, then a shed for woodworking extended with a wooden conservatory then converted as a tiny self contained chalet which is what I have been living in when in the UK since 2004, now both demolished as the land is sold which has paid for the new French house. It already has the lean to barn with enough headroom, its where they stored the tractor. OK, I see what you mean about open air, yes I much prefer that, am working under a cantilever car port at present. I have lived in France for 17 years in total immersion, have never mixed with the English or spoken English, my funny foreign ways only show when I return to the UK.

I am currently without the shanty town and all the things you describe and a lot more are languishing in 3 mobile site hut trailers awaiting my move to my new property. The whole of the ground floor is a workshop with the living accomodation above, a lean to barn on the side which may be cropped on the photo and 1/3 acre of land

That should be in the joke section! 😆 I keep old scrap parts like that, tons of them, they have saved my bacon and other peoples many many times, my UK garage has now been demolished and a new house is being built on the site, I had a big clear out and only packed the really necessary things to go into storage in France awaiting my new home, I tried, I really tried but most of the crap has remained 🙄 And I'm sure many of the bits will continue to save mine and other peoples bacon. Bad threads would not cause premature failure of an 02 sensor, its simply a very corrosive environment. I would not keep an old non functioning sensor if the threads had stripped on removal.

You were speaking about doing the work yourself because the garage had butchered it, the suggestion to fit a new boss was to yourself, not "get a new boss welded in by the garage" It sounds like you are handy with the tools, if you cannot recut the thread then remove the downpipe, if it comes off in good shape then buy a boss (it will be cheap) and take it to a fabricator welder and ask him to weld it on, it would only cost you beer money. If you have an old or scrap 02 sensor then you can make a thread reclaiming tap from it using a file and a hacksaw or simply a traingular file at a pinch, you file back the first few threads to the root diameter to create a pilot spigot then cut spiral flutes in the remaining threads, you screw it in paying great attention that it doesn't move off centre to follow the crossed threads, you can knock it carefully back into line while tightening.

I retract my suggestion about subsidising someones airfare in which case. "Are you carrying anything for another person?" "Yes!" "What is it" "An explosive device!" 😲 You would not want to transit by or stopover in the USA for sure!

Subsidise someones air fare! My Octavia came with a garage bill in the service history for replacing the passenger seat airbag, of course it had never been done, usual story of garage not being able to find the real fault and the fault code having to be reset for every MOT and every service, the VAG list price for the airbag was not that much, certainly nowhere near the carriage and customs agents costs for your airbag. I bought a new steering wheel airbag from Ford for a right off rebuild Galaxy in 1997 and considering they were a very new thing it was not that expensive. As you have found the UK have lots of specialist remanufacturers but until now most of them had not set up delivery agreements with countries outside of the EU as that was such a large and uncomplicated market on its won it was not worth the hassle, there are companies that will recieve a delivery in the UK and then forward it to any country taking care of the customs formalities for a reasonable fee, I recently sold all my X/flow race engine bits, a guy in Greece bought the DCOE inlet manifolds, he used a place in Dartford to send them to him who took care of the EU customs stuff, I simply sent the parcel to them. Otherwise I would try a country like Poland, most of the dynamic UK companies in this sector are run by Polish nationals, many have moved back to trade from there worldwide, they can no longer service the EU countries from the UK without considerable cost and hassle.

And my guess is that the Karoq is a vehicle that he has bought sight unseen and not yet collected. It was the same for my Yeti, from the photos (scratched bumper, broken slat on radiator grille) I just could not see why the airbags had deployed, I still couldn't when it was in front of me, it was only during the strip down to replace the leaking AC radiator that I found the crash bar longeron crumple zone had slightly compressed, no chassis deformation but enough shock to trigger the airbag module inertia sensor. And the plastic bumper is still on the vehicle with just a small touch up and polish, the polystyrene insert between the bumper and crash beam is also undamaged & reused. Amazing that you can bend a steel crash beam & deform the crumple zone with an impact transmitted through a thin piece of plastic and a block of polystyrene with enough energy to deploy the airbags and the weakest materials were undamaged.

Liquid Radweld you might have a chance of dissolving but the weapons grade dog turd radweld nothing will touch, I'm sure they must be banned from selling it now, I mean they have banned everything else that actually does what it is supposed to. My all steel X/flow exploded, and I do really mean exploded, into a cloud of steam on the Goodwood circuit, the dog turd had reformed making a solid bung in the radiator expansion tank overflow pipe, this was 8mm bore hose open to atmosphere and I had to drill it out when I finally found what had cause the radiator header tank to split from end to end.

Yes, move to Germany! Alright then, replace the ariel!

I changed the language to Turkish and chose the voice of Mehmet, no matter what my destination was it took me via his brothers carpet shop 😆 Sorry for the levity, it sounds like a hilarious situation, what does it say your journey time would be to Berlin? Does it have a "Where am I?" function? It would be interesting to see exactly where it thinks it is.

Wind resistance is 30% more at 80mph than 70 mph which is a 30% increase in fuel consumption on its own, what is often overlooked is that power = work done per unit time, the act of going faster even if there were no increase in wind resistance would require 14% more power, there are lots of other resistances at play but simplistically driving at 80 mph vs 70 mph will increase fuel consumption by a third or more. Working the figures backwards its easy to see that driving at 60 mph massively increases the range on a tank of fuel. At 100 mph you would be consuming more than double the fuel than at 70 mph.

Is there one on how to make a polite request? 😆

I never got less then 600 miles to a tank on a remapped 2006 1.9 PD TDi. However I drove it for economy, the remap was simply to have the power & torque when it was needed on a mid range overtake, I also ran the tank to close to empty every time always going 50 or more miles beyond when the fuel computer said zero miles. I would usually refill with 55-58 litres and have driven 650-700 miles If you are enjoying the power (and why not!) doing urban journeys and not using the full tank capacity then 500 miles seems reasonable. On my first tankfull I wanted to see what the maximum economy was and also just how far I could drive beyond the "Zero miles remaining", I drove really slowly on the motorway and autoroute journey to France, probably 60 mph then spent the week going for long drives exploring local roads free of traffic and getting to know the vehicle, I drove like I was on an economy contest, the car ran out of fuel at 850 miles. The vehicle was not remapped for the initial journeys, I did it after 6 months, the economy did not seem to be affected aside from the first tankfull when I was enjoying the novelty.

Thanks, where on the vehicle was the impact?

Of course, I will drop everything and get on the case, would you like me to fit it while I am at it? 😆 I don't need your vehicle model year and engine type, Vin number etc to find the part number as I am clairvoyant.

;Thanks for the explanation, did any of the other airbags deploy also the seatbelt pre-tensioners? What type of impact triggered it or them? On my Yeti all the airbags except thankfully the seat ones deployed, it was only the tiniest of parking shunts & the front bumper did not even need repairing, just a polish and a small touch in, however due to all the airbags etc & the ruptured dashboard top the vehicle was written off. Here in the UK there are specialists selling either individual airbags or a kit or reclaimed & reconditioned parts including the dashboard for repairers like myself, they get their components from breakers mainly in Eastern Europe, there will probably be a similar operation in your country if you search. Dashboards and the seatbelts can all be repaired to as new by the specialists with new pyrotechnic charges.

Their efficiency at any speed is more than double that of an internal combustion engined vehicle. The improvements in aerodynamic efficiency have pretty much all been made in recent decades, any further improvements will be de minimis reducing frontal area will always have a major effect, we need to get back to sensible sized passenger vehicles, ones that can carry a family of 5 and still park in a standard single garage and allow the passengers to exit, ones where you can see over the roof and wash it with a sponge not requiring a stepladder. A large frontal area does not equate to a poor drag coefficient, you could build a half scale vehicle and it would have exactly the same drag coefficient. Drag coefficient is a bit of a con trick, what is relevant and what should be used is CDA, the coefficient multiplied by the surface area, I guarantee you that when a manufacturer boasts how good the CD is on their new vehicle the CDA will be significantly worse than preceeding vehicles.

Has it deployed? The fact you are not asking for a seat cover as well suggests to me the answer is no. If not then I would bet my house that you do not need a new airbag, a mechanic will have told you that you do because he cannot resolve the fault causing the airbag light. I bet it happened after you carried a tall rear seat passenger.

So what coding do the armchair pundits suggest should be done if fitting a second hand battery?

That will be the audible warning that only one person should be carried in the passenger seat 🤣

Nothing wrong with outdated maps, roads never get removed, I'm still using a 2009 map of my country. So the device can be removed from the car and would have had a use when it was up to date and with a healthy battery? Presumably like me taking my old Tom -Tom with me on a walk if I didn't have a map of a city centre? If so then it was quite good for its time, I cant take my head unit out to navigate my way by foot.

Or remove the AC clutch drive plate, they usually self destruct anyway, mine did on my MK1 back in the day and I drove for a decade without AC with the belt freewheeling on the pulley before second hand compressors became freely available & cheap. Got to be better than scrapping one of the last truly great and reliable Skodas. If it freewheels OK before the clutch engages then simply remove the connector as has been suggested.