J.R.

Much less traffic on the Autoroutes with the exception of the mad exodus for les vacances, you can maintain a cruising speed mile after mile without being slowed up or having to accelerate to avoid being boxed, in 15 years I have only come to a stop in a tailback twice. 549 miles nearly all on Autoroutes and I'm guessing without any holdups, in my part of the UK you would be lucky to get 10 miles like that. The above does not include Paris & le périphérique.

I have exactly the same issue as you Costelg with my Yeti that came with the smallest front brake discs (280mm perhaps?) they lacked initial bite and were not progressive and did not inspire confidence on the rare times that I did brake more than gently say approaching what appeared to be a clear roundabout and then seeing someone quite late to yeild to, that further increase in pedal pressure does not bring the proportionate retardation that it should and you have to push harder, same deal with the initial bite. Definitely not brake fade. Had the same on my Octavia 2 after replacing all the discs & pads, it was the rubbish pads bundled with the discs, changing the fronts to Ferodo Eco Friction made a big difference. On the Yeti after replacing all the discs and changing the fluid I had the same, I quickly chnaged the fronts to Ferodo Eco Friction and it was an improvement but still not good, I changed the rears also, still not what I consider acceptable, I drive my neighbours Octavia 2 Facelift with bigger brakes and they are superb by comparison. Its not a case of the old pads having glazed the discs, I have done 20K miles on them and in recent months towed large trailers long distances well beyond the weight limit. The brakes never fail to work in an emergency stop or a long downhill descent with a couple of tons behind, the ABS cuts in when I am faced with the all too frequent idiot on the wrong side of the road pulling out to overtake from too close to the vehicle in front of him, I would say they lack initial bite, are not progressive and don't inspire confidence. I bought discs & calipers from a Golf GTi only to find that my struts are not the right diameter.

I don't think so but I did find a few different part numbers from my own and was never 100% convinced they were the same. At least with the VAG system we dont have to worry about having the right crown wheel & pinion ratio. I only need a differential and will reuse my Haldex pump, I am reasonably confident that you will be in the same situation, that said most are sold as complete assemblies. Has your vehicle been repatriated yet? I hope there are no nasty surprises in store for you in that regard.

They do seem a reasonable price which makes me think that apart from Ron Jeremy mechanics they are bulletproof and the breakers can't get rid of them. What part number and/or description are you using for your searches? I need to do a regular search in case a cheap one comes up near to my UK address, I had a cheap one (the pump had been removed) saved but eventually it sold, it took a very long time though.

Running a high current cable direct from the battery and then closing the bonnet and door on it I hope you have a fire extinguisher and can bale out quick. The wiring loom and many other service penetrations pass through grommets in the bulkhead, run your cable through one of those that has spare capacity and do not wire it directly to the battery terminal, there are spare fused terminals available on the busbar of the battery fuse tray. You should also use an in line fuse rated to the section of your cable or the maximum that the radio could draw fitted as close to the connection point as possible.

Soon it will be changing to "Nouvelle Aquitaine, sometimes Sussex, sometimes Picardie" and then to "Nouvelle Aquitaine, sometimes Picardie" and then hopefully to "Nouvelle Aquitaine" only. Life has to get more complicated before it can get simpler. You would not get a generic OBDII fault code for a non mission critical control module, VCDS would flag up a non comms or intermittent comms situation but there is no sensing hence feedback from the motor, it's told what to do and it either does it or it doesn't or it does it slowly/intermittently.

Condensation in the silencer box, completely normal. Am I correct in saying that when the engine is up to operating temperature there is no steam?

It wont be of any use to you, its a canbus node, the switch does not conduct voltage to the motor in the manner that you are expecting, it pulls up or down a signal current from the body or comfort control module, this sends a coded signal via canbus to the node in the rear wiper motor which controls the motor. You have 2 large wires for 12V and earth, then a twisted pair for the canbus network. If you strip the motor you can hotwire it via the large contacts, you can also measure the continuity of the self park switch. Its usually siezed up through water ingress, I got mine working but it failed again after a few months, a replacement is quite cheap and is plug n play, requires no coding.

The same fan cools the radiator, the intercooler and the aircon condensor, the fan control relay will be triggered by the Climatronic and engine control modules. There is not the physical space to have the radiators seperated with seperate cooling fans.

They are a silly price, DIYable but will need coding with VCDS, they often can be repaired with some patience, determination and a soldering iron.

Very pragmatic advice BogdanB. It probably is simply driving time generated and all the numbers being a red herring unless one goes beyond the threshold. When the stars are aligned I will have a rollback done of the emissions fix which should reduce the frequency massively.

Yup, sounds like the culprit.

The majority of new car sales are sold nominally to VAG group themselves who then give them away like Smarties to anyone with the slightest connection to the manufacturer or dealers, 18 year old University students with a family member working for the group get 3 or 4 new cars a year to put a limited mileage on. All the hire companies, any national operator get to lease them short term at unbeatable rates under the same deal, have you ever wondered why national chains of alarm installers or Fire alarm engineers all drive new estate cars and not vans? The VAT is reclaimed by VAG and there is no VAT to pay on a second hand vehicle, after 3 or 6 months they all go to a closed auction where only VAG dealers can bid on them, when they resell them they are always the sales or finance managers vehicle. It's been going on for decades, all of the manufacturers do it, without it they would simply go bust, I can't argue with the savings, I would do the same if I wanted a new car but I would not swallow the BS. In 1971 my parents bought a 6 month old Capri from the Ford dealer, that was also (not) the sales managers car.

And never get a lift to their trade counter when you have broken down with a failed battery. Please dont ask me how I know I have never used the robbing bar stewards since then, I arrived home to find that had I ordered on line it would have been half the price without any discount codes and even cheaper from them on E-bay with free delivery.

Of course it was, every one of them that is pre-registered and sold under the tax scam with low mileage are. And Santa Claus is real.

Many fail very quickly, one one of the linked threads I was saying over a year ago that mine was making noises of impending doom and I was waiting for its imminent failure. I'm still waiting after more than a year and many thousands of miles many of which towing weights well beyond the vehicles limits. So yes it could easily have done 1300 miles with some oil, its probably too late now to forensically work out whether the mechanic was like Ron Jeremy If they made the common mistake they will not have overfilled the Haldex and it takes a very long time to drain the diff unless the oil is hot, more than long enough for someone with half a brain to realise their mistake, I say that as someone who does not have half a brain Its plausible that they eventually realised that it wasn't thin Haldex oil coming out and refitted the drain plug without refilling, they would not have been issued hypoid oil and may have decided to bury their error, you will never know or be able to prove it.

If it doesn't have the additional camshaft pulley sensor with the odd pulse pattern on the pulley like the PD engines it will take two revolutions before it knows what cylinder to inject fuel into. As it has always been like it I would not be concerned.

Many people when they travel want to remain on their home time zone, for the French its so they don't upset their highly refined stomachs by eating even one minute past 12.30 CET It's not relevant in the central EU countries which keep the same time zones but if you were to pop over the border for the afternoon to another time zone you will already have planned to get to the destination during their opening hours and when returning you would want to see your home time zone to know what time you would get back.

That is the clutch bleed block known by VAG as the clutch peak torque limiter, it allows fluid tobe pushed into te cylinder as fast as you like (depressing the clutch pedal) but throttles it on the return stroke, their logic being they would prefer the clutch to slip than the transmission to fail if you dump the clutch. It causes big time problems of clutch slip on the higher powered TDi's when upshfting quickly to the higher gears from high revs with full boost and mashing the throttle, if you overtake someone and misjudge the relative speeds, change up and get on the throttle quickly to complete the misjudged manouvre you will have no drive when you need it most.

Been there done that got the T shirt. Bleed the slave cylinder, its very easy all you have to do is turn the knurled thumbnut 1/2 a turn and close it as soon as fluid come out, you dont even need to remove the air filter but advisable the first time to know what is what, after that you can do it by feel. Towards the end I had to do mine several times a day and on any journey have to find somewhere to pull off before any junctions or roundabouts after cruising a few miles. They dont leak fluid but draw in air, against all logic given that they have a hydrostatic head of fluid above them, but thats what they do, it come in via the O ring joint where they went from a one piece casting to two plastic mouldings, replacement is a gearbox out job and you are advised to try and find a new old stock aluminium VAG one and not the later plastic one that will likely fail again. With the knowledge of how the parts seperate it may even be possible to replace the O ring working through the starter motor aperture, you might need to withdraw the gearbox a few cms. If you get a new cylinder which will be plastic you will see the joint that I am speaking of, I reckon sealing around the inlet pipe where it protrudes from the bellhousing with Sikaflex would stop the vibratory movement and prevent the new one failing. Touch wood mine is 100% trouble free after I pulled the 4x4 transmission and replaced it with an early VAG cast ally one.

Indeed, my flange mount one cost £110 and maybe £20 for the wiring kit but the fitting is a lot quicker and cleaner these days, bumper off, unbolt crash beam & replace with towbar. Then there is the faffing about cutting the removeable plastic underbumper panel and connecting the wiring. The bypass relays are much more reliable and only take a miniscule triggering current from the vehicle electrics so don't affect bulb failure warning systems, the indicator sensing for the audible buzzer works faultlessly and does not require you to be spacing out the turns of a wire coil over a reed switch and behaves the same when the lights are on or off. They do however draw current 24/7 and I fit a switch to disconnect mine when I am not towing, the downside is that I have to remember to switch it on before towing and off afterwards. All in all its a more pleasant and less challenging job nowadays yet people seem more and more intimidated by it.

I did a scan and found that it had been 180 miles since the last regen most of which was autoroute France to UK, then it was local journeys and it regenned at 240 miles which left me wondering where I had got the 90 miles from. Since then I have done 700 miles of autoroutes during which time it either did passive regens or proper ones, on Saturday I interrupted a regen, I did 2 journeys later that were long and fast enough for it to complete, I did the same journeys the again the next day and was dismayed to find it regenning once again after them when only 90 miles had passed. One thing that I know for sure is that the measured readings never get anywhere near the threshold and most of the regens are just wasting fuel. My car has now gone over the 100K miles mark (I missed it happening ) and would really like to know how the 0.1l oil ash volume it believes it has corresponds to the threshold where it must be replaced or perhaps cleaned, the only figures I have seen quoted are in grammes, does anybody know?

I tried with my Braun and it didn't work, maybe a Philishave or Gilette would?

And I have done exactly what I spoke of. I had not appreciated that you were going to put it on the rear face as a reinforcement, thats good but why would you speak of sanding it and not using any filler then? The link to the tape shows it as something to be wrapped around a repair, it did not say that it was self adhesive & I thought that it might only stick to itself like self amalgamating tape hence my comment about wrapping. A medical cast is wrapped as the repair tape is intended to be, you would not try to stick a piece of bandage on the back of a plastic spoiler with plaster of Paris but when wrapped the amalgam of fibres and bonding agent are very strong. I have stuck scrim tape and fine cloth to the rear of repairs like this with PU gel adhesive and then proceeded with the fine repair on the visible face. There are many ways to skin a cat, I will ignore your observations about my being a bodger. A description of how you would propose to use that reinforcement tape would have been a good idea as we don't know the skillset of the OP.

Strong as steel and sandable.............................. Well if you have a lifetime you can indeed sand down steel. You can't be serious suggesting using that can you? That would look really tastefull wrapped around the splitter with the underside stretched across fresh air. Black Sikaflex would bond it and be the right colour but you would need to make a cramping up fixture, if the extruded excess was trimmed off before it cured and the whole splitter sprayed with black stoneguard you might just get away with it to sell to a blind man in the dark or if you care as little about how your car looks and how little you spend as I do. I would use my go-to PU gel woodwork adhesive which gets used for everything including broken brick walls.