J.R.

That could not have happened, the brake fluid warning light would come on before the take off to the clutch cylinder sucked air, also the clutch slave cylinder is at least 6" lower then the fluid reservoir, even if the level sensor did not work you would have to have a leak in the clutch system. In any case air in a hydraulic line or the master cylinder will not prevent the pedal from returning under its spring pressure, the spring acts on a cam with detents at the top & bottom position, only 2 conditions would prevent the clutch pressure plate from pushing the release bearing back displacing the fluid & hence the pedal back to the top detent position, fluid return flow being blocked (debris in the torque limiter bore restriction or a burst slave cylinder seal or hydraulic line.

Agreed, you can with care remove the connector with a long handled screwdriver, its best to practice on an identical connector in a more accessible location.

Maybe the guy has been really clever and it does nothing at all except part the gullible from their money It looks well made though! Maybe blocking the EGR pipe creates a fault code but no MIL light?

Doesn't need to be higher servicing costs if you DIY, in fact for me over the last 20 years I have saved loads over a petrol engned car aside from the fuel savings, I have never replaced a glowplug and dont change the diesel filters if they have a drain tap. During that time and probably 200000 + miles I would have replaced a lot of spark plugs, plug leads and latterly coil packs, no more points & condensors though The oils & filters cost no more than for a petrol engine, I have never understood why the main stealers charge more for servicing a diesel vehicle, you are correct though, it does cost more but for a DIY person I believe it costs less. I also agree that they are dirty (very) smelly (not so bad these days) slow and heavy and the younger me would never have imagined that I would drive a diesel let alone for 20 years and probably for another decade. I did actually replace 4 glowplugs on my Octavia 2 PD engine when I bought the car because of fault codes, they cost about £25 for the 4 and made no difference whatsoever, that engine would always start on 1/4 turn whatever the temperature with or without glowplugs.

If you drive it with a blanking plate and no emulator/simulator it will go into limp mode and show a fault code something like Mass air flow sensor implausible reading, without the EGR gases more filtered air will be flowing into the engine than it would expect, thats what the emulator/simulator does, it detects when the EGR is being commanded by the ECU fiddles with the output from the mass airflow sensor to give the result the ECU expects. If you can have the EGR replaced FOC then go ahead but be aware that they will also do the emissions fix if it has not been done and the car then may not be the same car that you have enjoyed driving all this time, the emulator/simulators are cheap, very easy to fit ad dont change anything other than stopping the intake tract & throttle valve from becoming gunged up. Glad that you have found the problem.

I am not getting a particularly great discount but also don't know what I would do without them, its been at least 15 years since I have been recieved at a proper main dealer parts counter by someone that has even the slightest clue about their range of vehicles, usually its an empty desk in a shiny chrome & marble showroom, you have to find the bored looking heavily made up girl chatting on the front to an admirer, get her attention, if she deigns to acknowledge your presence then you might after 10 minutes get an idiot arrive who you will have to find the parts for on their computer. If you walk in looking green, maybe with a partner & kids then you will be mobbed by salespeople coming from their hiding places in all directions. What discount do you get from TPS? I get 8% on everything and a bit more on some lines, service items etc, I have not tried negotiating as I would gladly pay 30% more than retail price just to be able to use them and avoid the only alternative! If I need a part here in France and will not be visiting the UK soon enough I get terminally depressed, if you think the dealers parts counters are bad in the UK they are 50 times worse here.

Never would be my answer seeing how virgin like mine was after 82K miles.

All TPS sales staff are working from home since a long time, in normal times they spent 99% of their time dealing with phone orders, it was only people non trade people like myself and the taxi drivers that would ever go to the trade counter, they dont(or didn't) mind dealing with me because I knew exactly what I needed, gave the part numbers & could confirm the suffix numbers if there were different trim colours for instance. Tthe taxi drivers in general were a real pain in the backside for them but were tolerated because they were businesses and collectively made up a big market, they knew that they were buying the parts & paying Fred in a shed cash to fit them, Fred not wanting anyone to know he was moonlighting would not have an account with them and would have bought the cheapest parts on the internet, so they accept the walk in taxi drivers, I would phone my orders & have them delivered or collect if it was urgent, they always sold to me under either "Generic trade counter sales" or "Generic Taxi" I reckon at the end of this like many businesses they will continue with sales staff working from home and closed doors to the warehouse so as not to have to put up with the great unwashed walking in. Now is perhaps the time to get a foot in the door if the dealers parts counters are closed and to try and build a relationship to remain with them, in my branch its them that do the relationship building because that is what you should do to retain customers.

If its turning over too fast & will not start using Easi-start then it all points to cam timing slippage and probable valve damage. A compression test would be the next logical step.

Is the difference between the old & the new non functional ABS ring visible in hindsight?

It clips. You will probably break the old surround removing it, it can be done without removing the bumper, at that stage you can decide how much forcing will be involved to fit the new one, if its too much then remove the bumper.

You only need to remove them once or twice a decade so dont commit too much time, money or headspace to it, cutting a slot with a hacksaw or dremel is the quickest way to get back to the real challenges in life. And yes, I know the service schedule says the element should be changed more often but my remarks are based on 15 years and 250000 miles of experience, if you keep a weather eye on the fuel consumption display you will soon know if it ever may need inspecting.

I removed the suspect VAG cylinder today and replaced it with a modified pattern part one where I had bonded the pushrod retaining collet into the piston to prevent it withdrawing as I thought had happened to the new 2 months ago VAG one. I should have known better than to replace all the interior trims, the knee airbag and its mounting plate etc before bleeding and testing the clutch After bleeding the pedal felt lighter than usual but no free play, I actioned it a few times and it sunk to the floor with no resistance and didn't return After bleeding again I did a blind fingertip investigation and found that the plastic pushrod had broken by the ball joint where it clips into the pedal, my way of fitting the cylinder without removing the pedal (the return spring makes it impossible to put back) may have strained & cracked it. So I have to do the job all over again for the Nth time I did an autopsy on the VAG cylinder and could find no problem with it other than some grease around the seal (probably used when they assembled it) which may have been blocking the fluid top up port, either that or it was the DOT 5.1 fluid turning to silicone solids from either heat or maybe contamination. I did however find that the pushrod collet was 100% firmly retained into the piston whereas the pattern part ones came apart with a slight pull. So I will be refitting the VAG cylinder because its the latest revision and seems to be better made than the pattern ones, maybe the pushrod is stronger also. I wish that I could be confident that this will be the last time I have to change the cylinder but I cannot. I am getting quite adept at it though!

That has certainly made me think of the subject in a different light, - thankyou

Reading through the various topics linked from other Haldex failure topics it appears that very little has been learned in the last decade. I am quoting from a 2012 posting: However Skoda have a tech note to warn of mechanics mistakenly draining the final drive oil instead of (or as well as) the clutch oil and not reflling it causing final drive failure.

Impossible to say without knowing what parts have worn, the crown wheel & pinion, the planet gears, the pinion bearing, the crown wheel bearings etc. I have had a diff on a Suzuki SJ410 that made a screeching noise and would grind the car to a juddering halt with people 200m away turning round staring, when I removed it it was in pristine condition, simply resetting the pinion to crownwheel mesh and the bearing pre-load cured it completely, I had one on an Escort that made no noise but would lock up randomly on roundabouts or when on lock turning into a parking place. As has been said some Skoda rear diffs have exploded when run dry of oil but they were all very soon after the deed had been done.

I'd like to know the answer to that, looking more carefully at the photo I dont think it is glass or steel judging by the crack, plastic or GRP perhaps? Aside from the lunacy of having an entire glass roof I dont think it could possibly have the radiused edges and seal retaining grooves that the one in the picture has.

By charging £99 (or is it $99?) to register a new user license agreement they are effectively helping the cloners and preventing owners of genuine leads of getting any money back by selling them if they change to a non VAG vehicle. Have I understood correctly, someone can buy a cloned cable with unlimited VIN capability & then download the software free from RossTech but they would not be able to get any support from the Rosstech community? I paid for a 3 VIN VCDS, after changing vehicles 2 are used up, the 3rd was to change a parameter on a neighbours car that it turns out he could have done using the Maxidot. The time will soon come where I want to help someoneelse with their vehicle but will have to pay for the upgrade to 10 VINs which is actually only 7 VINs or to the unlimited one which will cost more than had I had the foresight to have bought an unlimited one in the first place, given that the support I have requested from the Rosstech forum was not forthcoming but my problems were resolved each time by the good members of this forum there would be temptation to try a cloned interface.

Good idea, I also wondered whether a failure of the alternator one way sprag clutch could cause a squeaking noise but only on start up?

So you have driven 2K miles since the Haldex service never at speed apart from at Easter, short local journeys? Its looking cut and dried but I am surprised that you heard the noise immediately when driving out of the garage yet were able to do another 2K miles, I didn't notice mine until 200 miles and the last 100 were a heavily loaded motorway run. I filled the diff immediately with a paraffin & oil mix, run it on axle stands then drained & refilled with diff oil, I have done 10K miles since, its noisier than I think it should be but has not got any worse thankfully, the car was new to me so maybe the transmission noise I have now is normal, I have dodged a bullet but I wont be confident on the long journeys towing a removal trailer that I have to do soon.

Loosen off the wings anyway, get the best alignment that you can with the rear edge of the wings and the radiator grille, decide then if slackening the crash beam bolts and re-aligning will tweak the headlights to a better alignment with the bonnet, finally gap the wings. Unlike any car I have owned the headlights were the key to all the panel gaps, you may even get some movement on their fixings. Good point re the bonnet catch especially if the bonnet wing gaps are equal at the rear which I cant see from the photos, if the gaps are parallel but unequal you can physically pull the bonnet to one side to spring the hinges. I prefer to do all my gapping with the bonnet catch removed, not least because you dont want it to get stuck in the closed position, once you have it as close as possible then the final tweaking of the front side to side can be done with the catch.

Did you replace the bumper and crash beam? All the gaps are tied to the correct location of the crashbeam as the headlights are aligned from it, yours may need moving to the left and possibly shimming forwards. If it was not replaced then the drivers side sacrificial crumple zone may have given slightly moving that side of the beam back. To correctly gap my Yeti I had to slot some of the fixing holes on the crash beam, loosen the front wing fixings, align the bonnet to the headlights and grille and then gap the wings to the bonnet. You are pretty close & I think the key is the crash beam alignment.

As someoen who has made the mistake what happens is that you drain the diff as you say and then refill through the Haldex filler leaving the diff dry. A garage that does not do the job properly by removing the pump to clean the filter is more likely to spot the error, that is because a significant amount of Haldex fluid is lost when the pump is removed, when you refill it takes quite a bit but not as much as you expect, you scratch your head, check the internet again for the refill quantity & read conflicting info, you look at what you drained off, it does not look or smell like hypoid EP90 and its far too clean to be diff oil that has done 82K miles, it's not at all viscous, it must be Haldex fluid surely?..................... Very hard to mix up the filler plugs but the diff drain plug is directly underneath the Haldex filler plug, the Haldex drain plug does not look like a drain plug, its just one of the casing securing bolts that when removed you find is longer than the others and does not go into a blind hole. I'd like to say that if I were using a ramp instead of struggling on my back, if the lighting were better, if I were not a senile Mr Maghoo the mistake would not have happened........................ but it probably would It sickens me everytime I read of someone being presented with a £4.5k estimate from a garage to put right their mistake.

Its unclear from the postings who did what and when but I can dispel some of the suggestions from my own experience, low diff oil, to be more precise "virtually empty and came out black and discoloured" is in no way a coincidence, it is 100% proof of what occured. When I made the same mistake myself the diff oil that came out after 82000 miles of forestry use was like virgin oil and so clear you could have used it for a salad dressing. After driving 200 miles on what was left coating the internals what drained out was a carbonised black mess full of fine metal particles. I dont think the OP could have driven any great distance or time since the error was made which sounds like it could have been the new garage, however its encouraging that they are not trying to hide what they have found.

You got what you paid for and what was advertised I'm afraid. It sounds like it works on your car and other then the risk of screwing up their ECU's you should try it on others to see if it is unlimited VINs, you cannot get support from Rosstech unless you pay for a proper licensed dongle, the software is free, its the access to the support that you pay for. The seller of this (not so cheap) counterfeit dongle has not paid for a license, had he done so you would have benefitted from it. You either use it as it is and accept there may be something nasty lurking in the software or hardware or pay for a genuine lead and license agreement I'm afraid. Does the lead you have carry the Rosstech moulded logo and the printed velcro cable tidy? If it does then thats maybe your only chance of disputing it with Paypal/E-bay.