J.R.

No, I have different values now. I actually had 2 in quick succession, I returned from Thailand to find the first one missing, later found torched, I keep better company now as well

At a guess the relay was not being energised so the coil has been hotwired or perhaps the relay has failed & they have hotwired the N.O contact, the latter less likely as it would have been easier to shunt and would not have been visible. Well spotted & I hope you get it sorted.

The garage trying to find the problem affecting multiple sensors (later traced to be the DPF differential pressure sensor) were also on a wild goose chase to find the second temperature sensor that didn't actually exist. It could be another example of a confusing or downright incorrect VCDS description.

And yet I bet the question they ask when calculating the risk/premium contains the word "normally". why dont people read the policy T&C's rather than asking a question of someone in a call centre somewhere who will be selling a will, or gas/electric contract to the next caller?

Not sure but I had one on a 1988 Sierra XR4x4 company car and several Sierras after that.

Have they actually refused or were you put off/complying with the notice? I ask because many have done the latter, I just walked in and joined the queue of taxi drivers who had difficulties communicating in English and had very little idea what parts they wanted. I had no problem at all, they are all on sales targets and are hungry for business, at my branch at least the sign is to be seen to be complying with the planning restrictions on the industrial park, they may well invoke the policy to get rid of people taking up too much time, making them frustrated and buying very little, with me they simply set up the account with the discount (unasked for) and the invoices are titled "Generic trade counter sales". They prefer me to phone in the orders, all the staff are behind computer monitors with phone headsets, to serve at the trade counter means lots of back and forths to the printer etc, I phone up with the part numbers and instantly they tell me what the parts are to confirm, those with a suffix they may say "thats the black/silver finish right?". They then deliver the parts to me often within the hour or the next morning if its a non stock item (I'm amazed at how much stock they carry) once again its a well oiled machine that picks the parts & loads the vans, trade counter customers interfere with that. I have rarely if ever seen a mechanic at the trade counter, its always taxi drivers or DIY'ers that dont really know what they want.

I have an unused set of 14" rims from a 1987 Caterham Super Seven which I always joked looked identical to the Skoda ones, the spokes look identical to those in your picture but the centre boss looks different, I am going from memory as I am in another country. Or is the photo perhaps of the non original wheels & not the ones you are searching? I think the difference in look might be because the rims in the photo are 13" and the stud PCD is larger, the Caterham used a narrow pitch to match the Marina live axle even though it was a De-dion set up with ford differential. I'm sure they were K&N something alloys & I had the same ones on my Stag in the early 80's and was the butt of peoples jokes because they were a Skoda fitment. Please advise what wheel type you are looking and the rim size & width, PCD & offset, preferably with a closer photograph

I buy from TPS and pay dealer retail price less 8%, I am public and did not ask for the discount, it was given automatically. During the rebuild of the accident damage on the Yeti I cross checked every part that I bought against offerings on the internet, Ebay, Superskoda etc and with only one exception the Skoda price for the genuine part was significantly less than those offered elsewhere tow hich postage had to be added. By far the most opportunistic was Superskoda and the other supposed cheap Eastern European suppliers. The part I did find a little cheaper was the inner steel bumper beam, often called the crash bar. The only part that I thought was expensive even taking into account the costs of stocking & distribution was the plastic inner grille assembly at £58 + Vat but they were much more on E-bay, Superskoda etc. The headlights probably would have been expensive but I needed right hand dipping ones for my LHD country & I can get OE Hella units from Germany at a very good price.

To use your words, - No offense but find someone else to play with please. Roof is undamaged, what the gloved hand is pointing at is a seperate panel, when rear 1/4 panel is portapowered back into alignment before removal and replacement it will probably lift the rear corner of the roof if it is pulled down, difficult to see from the photograph, at best there may be a PDR ding remaining, no filler or paintwork required to roof but the other panels will be painted anyway so no real problem. 100% it will be repaired and most likely the buyer will not even inspect it having seen all that he needs to like me from these photographs which are more detailed than before and bear out what I thought from seeing the others. It should be possible to disagree with others without insults or mocking, you asked questions in a very rude manner & nonetheless I replied to them politely, its a shame you were unable to reciprocate.

Please read my post again...................................... I cant stop re-reading it, its addictive, makes me smile every time, the gift that keeps on giving

You have an interesting way with words for someone that does not want to cause offence. My experience, pretty much every vehicle that I have owned for the last 35 years have been those that I bought as salvage and repaired, even when I was running my company my company vehicles were purchased this way although were not shown on the books as such, I would buy them in a friends name, repair them and put all the parts through the company as maintenance, then sell them to the company at book value to maximise the depreciation. One of them was even written off a second time by my being rear ended & I retained the salvage & did a second rebuild. My current vehicle is a salvage, the last 2 (going back 15 years) were bought as straight vehicles but one was again written off and I was paid out more than I had paid for it by the TP insurers and the repair cost zero. I have no idea what strong money would be as a £ figure because I have been away from the UK since 2004 and have no interest in the retail value of vehicles, I will answer your question though by using a percentage. The model has changed with the advent of Copart etc but most of my salvage vehicles came from the yards with a contract with the insurers, some were bought from repairers & even what turned out to be car ringers who simply wanted the documents and identity & not the damaged vehicle but that is another story. The deal they had then with the insurers was that they recovered the vehicles, stored them & when the insurance was cleared they had to purchase them at an agreed percentage of the gross payout not including the excess which is in fact very significant in terms of the real cost to the insurers, the then equivalent of a Category S they would have to buy under contract, no choice to say no or negotiate, at 40%, they would then sell to the highest bidder and it would have to cover their recovery, storage and profit margins, I had a very good relationship with the breaker but would always have to pay 40% + £500 minimum even when they owed me a big favor, if I didn't they would advertise it (pre internet days) and they would always get more, I would ring them every day for up to 3 months waiting for the vehicle to clear or else someone else would jump the gun on me. The auction deal will have a similar reserve price and I know that they always sell for more than the contracted breakers used to because they have all gradually lost their contracts, most of the vehicles go to Eastern European countries for repair and then come back, StickyMickey on this forum inpsected my Yeti for me at the salvage yard near to him while i remained in France, he will confirm that there were transporter loads of salvage vehicles leaving every day for Eastern Europe. So the answer to your question is for the vehicle in question 50% + of the gross insurance payout which should be the retail value of the vehicle, someone will repair it and make a good profit when they resell it at considerably less than retail value because of the Cat S marker on the V5, that would not happen if it was a difficult or expensive repair when done in an expedient manner and not with UK overheads. For me its now a mugs game unless you are going to constantly flip your vehicles as I once did, sure you get a late car for a lot less than it looks to be worth but if you keep it then that profit just dissapears in depreciation, the Cat S marker depresses their resale value however if its imported to and registered in my country it dissapears.

The vehicle is a banal repair as witnessed by it only being listed as a Category S salvage, it will make very strong money at the auction and will be back on the road very soon. £29k is the "insurance" estimate. If we get to find out what the salvage sells for and can estimate the book value that the insurers will have paid out less excess, take one from the other and also subtract Coparts commission you will see just how little it actually costs insurers for lets say a £35k payout (I have no clue of the vehicles value). And from the above net cost to insurers figure you will see that it is in their interests that the repair estimates are high enough to write the vehicle off.

What did you do to get to and retain the silver finish on all the as cast areas? Well pretty much all areas really, other than the cam lobes and crankshaft bearing surfaces everything would have been well blackened.

It means that all the force is resolved axially as it should be, as you say it can be done without once it has nipped up slightly but the force applied will try to rotate the nutsert and would strip its grip if you fully tightened it, the handle avoids that or simply leaving the final tightening till the component is secured in place will suffice. For flush rivnuts (thin sheet nutserts) a handle (good name) is essential but not as good as the correct setting tool.

If you use rivnuts without the setting tool then drill a hole in a piece of metal strip to hold as a handle to prevent the rivet from turning and you will make a much better job of setting them. You will probably have something in your scrap bin, a repair bracket or even a piece of Meccano. If you want to start using flush thinsheet nutserts (Avdels) then a setting tool is a must, they are a fraction of the price today that they were 35 years ago when I bought my Avdel set for £40ish.

Thankyou, that is reassuring. I wonder why it warms up so quickly or why the others were so bad even after replacing the thermostats? I had forgotten that the profile details cant be seen on a smartphone & perhaps some browsers also.

Its contained in my profile description to the left of my postings. 2015, CFHF engine, 110hp.

My UK neighbour with a 2013 Octavia has just had a similar experience, one of the sensors had an intermittent fault and when it manifested it would take down the 5v bus and throw fault codes from multiple sensors, they tried disconnecting sensors etc one at a time if the engine would still run without them, the EGR was one and if it didn't drop out again going into limp mode that one would be excluded, they changed the throttle valve & then refitted the original, finally it was the DPF differential pressure sensor which was my hunch. I know this independant garage and have reasonable faith in what they say, they are not bull****ters and dont play parts bingo as can be seen although I had my doubts when they started talking of sending of the ECU to be reconditioned. Dissapointing that the failure mode of a sensor could pull down the others and not be indicated as one single fault code, perhaps someone with a wiring diagram to hand can confirm that they are all powered from a common 5V output, I dont take anything as siad these days, someone I know's BMW X3 would not start one morning, been driving perfectly then next day cranking but no combustion, sounds like fuel but after 2 months the local French garage now says that there is no compression on 2 cylinders and it needs a new engine. Sounds a crock of brown stuff to me, I know of someone else who put an X5 in for a cambelt change and by complete coincidence all the valves bent when they started it

I presume on my engine I have the sleeved water pump, what I have noticed is that the engine warms up much quicker than the preceeding MK2 & MK1 1.9tdi Octavias with standard water pumps, the difference is very noticeable and its as good if not better than any petrol vehicle I have had in the past. I think with a standard set up the water circulates through the heater matrix as soon as the engine is running which slows down the rate of the water jacket heating, yet I still get warm air from the heater after 2 miles maximum even in the current 2° temperatures and the guage up to 90°c within 5 miles, before it was 8 miles and only if there was a fast section of road or a hill. So I think while it is working its a very good feature, if it becomes an achilles heel then thats not so good. Can anyone tell me if my vehicle is of an age to have been fitted with one of the problem waterpumps please? I seem to have dodged most of the bullets with this vehicle like self destruct clutches etc.

And I drone on for the pleasure of boring others A cool job, I am jealous!

What on earth are you talking about? I certainly need a translation for this posting. As has been said I was trying to help and I had directly answered your question - My question is why my car fails to tell me when it needs a whopping big hot FART ? I dont think the country that you or I drive our cars in has any relevance to your request, the journey profile will.

Me neither, my 2015 Yeti has less tech than my first 2001 Octavia and I love it all the more because of that.

When you say "obviously" are you saying that the car does not start or you believe that it would not start without the glowplugs doing their job? I ask because my MK2 Octavia would always start on 1/4 turn with or without glowplugs no matter how low the temperature got, they were all open circuit and replacing them made no difference. My Yeti has the same engine as yours and its currently hovering around zero degrees, it still starts immediately and I will continue starting it without waiting for the glowplugs until the temperature drops low enough for it to not immediately start & run on all 4 cylinders if it indeed happens. I am actually doing this to preserve the battery, the voltage drops considerably after the glowplugs have heated, if as at present it will start instantly and run without misfire I dont want to make the starter labour and finish off the battery which is past its prime.

The belt that you have photographed is not the timing belt, it is the auxiliary drive belt, to inspect the camshaft (& water pump) drive belt you will need to remove the top and middle covers that are just visible in some of the photos, they are held in place by spring clips, easy to remove, a little trickier to replace. The cambelt is shrouded by the covers to avoid dust & dirt contamination, it is likely that yours is on the original belt, I changed mine at 225000 miles but it had less than half the age of yours & was starting to disintegrate.

I have done my analysis and my suggestion is that you take a photograph of the cam belt and not the auxiliary drive belt Your cam belt is likely to be 16 years old, how much longer do you want to wait?