J.R.

Very inspiring, you have a great imagination and the practical skills to realise it.

There is nothing to warn you of if your journeys are long enough to allow the regenerations to take place without interruption, otherwise you are warned to drive for 10-15 minutes at 2.5k rpm or whatever to allow it to do its stuff. If you were regularly doing fast road journeys there would be more passive regeneration but the active ones would still happen just with less frequency. There is nothing to be gained by the vehicle telling you that its approaching an active regen and to go for a long high speed journey presuming that is what you mean by a hot fart, that sort of forced passive regen will not do as much good as the programmed active one. The only advice I can give you is to keep an eye on your tickover speed, if it seems increased open a window & see if you can hear the radiator fans running, if so then keep driving until it has done its stuff, if you switch off & realise the fans are running try to go out for a drive to let the process complete or if you know that your next journey or one you will do soon will allow a regen then dont bother. I would like to know how often my is currently regenning, I can see from VCDS how many kms have been done since the last one and since the lockdowns it has never been more than 200 miles but unless I do scans regularly and note the mileages I cant actually know that for sure, and in any case if I do know the frequency I can do nothing about it other than to decide to change to a petrol vehicle.

Noise was always present but less noticeable before the wheel swap, the different tyres may amplify it or the 3k kms I have done since the winter tyres may have worsened the condition. I always do the spinning wheels check as part of my maintenance checks whenever the vehicle jacked up but to be honest with disc brakes and all 4 wheels turning a drive shaft and rotating a crown wheel and the other wheel or the planet gears the wheel stops dead before you can get your hand anywhere near the springs, without a ramp you also need to be lying on your back leaving only one arm with partial motion to spin the wheel, it really is impractical/impossible. Will check the drop links.

I have put this in general maintenance because I think the suspension & driveline on my Yeti is common to all the MQB platform vehicles. I have ears with a high degree of mechanical sympathy and can identify anormal noises or vibrations often before they develop into something that can be diagnosed. I have always thought that I could hear an intermittent rumble from the NSF of the Yeti but it could be the rear, hard to localise, it sounds like a wheel bearing but is not constant, cant be exaggerated by twitching the wheel to load the suspension on that side (my usual test) and as its not constant it could be small amplitude suspension displacements, in the cabin you are not aware of driving over a rough surface but it could be minor undulations and the frequency does seem to be proportional to speed. After driving 10k miles (92K on the clock now) its a little more noticeable/frequent but it could also be the colder weather or the winter tyres, in fact I cannot rule out that it could be tyre noise other than I can only hear it on the nearside. Any suggestions of what to check and how? My first thoughts are the anti-roll bar drop links, I never had cause to change them on the Octavias so dont know what they sound like when the ball joints wear. Console bushes? On my MK1 Octavia they made more of a knocking squeaking and was only evident in freezing conditions. Anything else?

No question about that, although maybe not double the consumption on public roads, my MK1 1.9tdi I did 225000 miles in averaging 60-65mpg, I once did 10 full chat laps of the short windy race circuit at Croix en Ternois until the rear pads wore out and the consumption was 19 mpg from memory.

Over 15 years of Skoda ownership, 3 vehicles and being obsessive about range and MPG I can confidently state that unless there is a fault with the sender you will always have at least one gallon of fuel left when the maxidot drops to zero miles, its their way of creating a fuel reserve. The fuel guage needle will be on zero and the measuring block in VCDS will show + / - 5 litres remaining, the system is incredibly accurate but the display deliberately misleading to give a security margin. When you brim the tank it will show full and the maxidot range will be that which you would get (assuming driver & journey profile remains as before) if you drove till the tank was empty, we will all recognise that when filling up at zero miles we never ever get the range initially indicated at fill up. As the vehicle consumes the fuel the guage will drop in a linear manner and the maxidot range will drop in a linear manner until the last 1/4 of the tank at which time the for instance 50 mile "reserve" range will gradually dissapear. For example you fill up & the maxidot shows 700 miles range but you never seem to get more than 600 miles before refilling at "zero miles remaining", you will travel 150 miles and the fuel guage will drop 1/4, the maxidot will show 550 miles remaining, at half a tank you will have travelled 300 miles & the display will show 400 miles remaining, at 1/4 tank remaining you will have travelled 450 miles and the maxidot will show 250 remaining. You will only drive 150 miles before the guage has hit zero and the maxidot shows zero miles remaining, you will in fact have 100 miles of fuel left in the tank. The above example was to make the numbers easier, you would likely have 60 miles reserve. Before this CR engine I drove all my vehicles to empty several times, (a couple of times when the sender was faulty) the last time was to establish the true range, when it ran dry I filled it with 5 litres exactly, the fuel guage moved up within the red zone, the maxidot showed 40 remaining miles, remarkable accuracy for an inch or so of fuel at the bottom of the tank, I drove 4 miles to a filling station during which time the remaining miles dropped to zero in 5 mile increments. Over the years I have nearly always driven 50 miles beyond when the maxidot shows zero miles remaining so it must be hundreds of times, 50 miles is when I start to get anxious, I have gone beyond it an not yet run out aside from my first range test, I think that time it was 85 miles but I was in super eco mode.

Do you guys have to click to accept cookies for the ESP / ESC, ABS / TC / ASR / XDS/ XDS+ systems & then wait while they download the latest version before you can drive off?

I also wondered about the fix not being done before especially as many dealers were doing it without permission, its almost like they know of the risk on the 1.6 tdi engine & left them well alone, however they had to contact all the registered keepers and probably are obliged to make contact again now for those that have not been recorded as converted. My UK neighbour like you Langers has refused the fix but they keep writing to him, he is a very nervous sort and will never have a main dealer look at his car for fear that they will convert it, in doing so he has protected himself from their incompetence. I did a VCDS scan once for him and as a wind up said that while I was at it I had installed the latest ECU programming, he freaked out

You sound like you will notice straight away if one brake drags or the handbrake travel increases, hopefully you will have done what is necessary. If you have further suspicions then actuate the handbrake lever arms on the calipers manually, they should both have the same travel and return to the same stop position, it gives an unmistakable indication of when the self adjusting is not working as it should, far more definitive than the quadrant angle, cable slack etc. The smoking happening so soon and without the wheel falling off always sounded like a stuck caliper to me.

Its a shame that there are no programmable outputs, I would love to know that a regen was going on while I was driving and not find out after I had switched off & stepped out of the vehicle to hear the radiator fans. And no, I dont want to be looking at a smartphone while I am driving.

It could be the outer metal annular ring on the propshaft vibration coupling has become unbonded. what did you do to resolve the brake dragging? - Check that the compensator was level and one cable not adjusted right up, you probably have an ongoing self adjuster problem, either dragging or long travel.

My Facelift Yeti is February 2015 and it needed resetting, may not be the same on other models during their production run, answer is that I dont know. The engine would start though and was running in limp mode, you may have another reason why the engine does not start but I am reasonably confident that once you replace the airbags, seatbelt pyrotechnics etc that have deployed you will need the module resetting for the airbag light to extinguish & the system to function again.

Without naming names its a "new" sort of forum, or it was when it was named. If you give the bots 24 hours to have hoovered up todays web content and do a google search on the following gem of text hot off the press it should take you to the site in question. It looks like it could be the end of the road for my Marmite, Yorkshire tea bags and brown sauce. Brexit morons!

The airbag module will need either replacement & recoding or a reset by a specialist.

There are very few fixings holding the Yeti dash in place, all at the sides & bottom, the whole upper section is retained by one central spring clip which should engage when the dash is pushed into position, sometimes these are very hard to engage and some mechanics have been known to remove them, the resultant movement will makes noises from all contact and fixing points. If your dashboard has the centre cubby box then removing this will enable you to see the clip and lubricate it if appropriate, otherwise you can get a good grip with both hands to push the dash in all directions to try and find the source of the noise.

Is that based on the scenario where the mechanic would have had the one wheel off the ground & put the car in gear to lock the driveshaft to undo the hubnut? I do have some sympathy with a mechanic finding out the hard way that he should no longer use one of his reflex techniques that has been used by all mechanics since the first vehicles. Especially if he was helping out a friend or a neighbour who said "I can manage to undo this hub nut!"

You have answered your own question! Ask yourself why the manufacturer used bolts on the lower mounting and not setscrews. I thought the upper mounting fixings were also bolts but will take your word for it that they were setscrews, either would do in that instance but its unlike VAG.

You have used setscrews in place of bolts. But at least with all the other "improvements" that you have done its unlikely that someone else will end up driving it unaware. You look to have invested in decent tools, decent axle stands & coil spring compressors, you speak of having an impact gun, why are you working with a scissor jack & not a trolley jack?

It sounds like you are correct but it could have been noisy and the seller may have been aware of it but smoking? Only you can speculate having met the seller whether they would sell something knowing it to be dangerous, it could simply be that the grumbling bearing broke up during your journey. I have suspected a front wheel bearing for 10K miles now, it was no more than a slight rumble on uneven road surfaces, could have been tyre noise or suspension bushes, I did 2000 kms in the last 2 weeks with 2 x 750k autoroute journeys, it seems louder & more regular now but I'm still not convinced, there is no play or vibration when I spin up the wheel which is difficult with a driven wheel anyway, it could go on for years and it could fail big time tomorrow, or it might just be the winter tyres. Because of the confinement I had not driven on an autoroute since bringing the vehicle over in August, I could have sold the vehicle and the same thing could have happened to the buyer. I dont know the mileage of your vehicle but at 11 years old any one of the wheel bearings could fail at any time, usually there would be some warning.

I disagree with the consensus that you have any recourse against the seller of an 11 year old vehicle on e-bay especially if it was an auction listing unless they were a motor trader. Did you inspect the vehicle before buying/bidding? Editted, I read the first posting again (I have no short term memory), private purchase of a second hand car, test driven & satisfied, I am guessing you agreed on less than the asking price........... Unless the seller is exceptionally sympathetic and has other buyers eager to pay more than you did I dont think you should have an expectation of returning the vehicle. Worth a look to see the selling history of the "private seller" you may find lots of other vehicles sold which would strengthen your rights and give you leverage. I bought what was supposed to be a 2.0 TDI 140hp 6 speed Octavia on Ebay and the listing said "ice cool aircon" it turned out to be a 1.9 105hp 5 speed with a depressurised non functioning aircon. I did not even think of going back to the seller, I had perused the V5 but not carefully enough, I should have seen the 5 speed gearknob, I think the retired couple genuinely thought it was a 2 litre as their garage bills all said that, re the aircon I think the husband was lying on that one. To me it was the not unexpected risk of buying second hand.

I know its inaccurate and has been on all my Skoda vehicles, I recalibrated it with VCDS on my last Octavia but after being lied to for so many years I could not stomach the truth So I recalibrated it to lie again and gave it the maximum correction factor available knowing that the deception would please me! The new owner is still delighted Joking apart (it was all true!) its good as a comparator. I can already see that the last tank has given me at least another 75 miles from the one before, this one is coming to an end so I can do a brim to brim calculation, it will be less than what the maxidot is showing but more MPG than the previous brim to brims have shown. Its only when Covid will be over and my journey profiles are back to what they were before will I be able to have a precise idea of the improvements.

My pleasure, I forgot to say that my vehicle has done 92000 miles, 10K of which by myself, I have no idea of how it was used before. Mine is the 110hp 2.0 Tdi like yours. How many miles has your vehicle done so that I can learn from your experience please?

Yes I just read it and editted my posting which overlapped with yours. I am in complete agreement, however on the French forum I belong to its many times worse, I come here for a break! They are reacting very badly because the joy they were hoping to feel at the downfall of the UK has been denied them.

Doing logs is beyond my skillset & even if I could saving them to the computer, finding them again and posting them on the forum would be way beyond! I did however lood at some advanced measuring blocks in VCDS. With the engine 3/4 warmed up the DPF DPS values were: 3hpa at tickover 27hpa at 2000 rpm 51hpa at 2500 rpm - This is the maximum revs at standstill & I wasn't going to drive with a computer and notebook on my lap and a pen in my hand There was also a measuring block for the DPS raw value which was slightly different, perhaps by the amount of yet another one called DPF offset which was at 6hpa. The soot calculated was shown as 15.04g and the soot measured as -3.09, whenever I look the measured value always seems to be negative but the variable names & their units of measure etc are always screwed up in VCDS and make little sense to me, I have given them in case they mean anything to you.

I thank you for your calculations of fuel consumption & energy, its a good way of looking at it, I would be very surprised if during the one hour and 40 miles the alternator would have drawn 1kwh of the 10kwh developed. I wish you a happy & contented 2021, if you can get bent out of shape by a cordial technical discussion about how much power is consumed by the alternator on an internal combustion engine then you are wise to take a break. Editted, I have just read your reasons for withdrawing, I agree with you and completely understand. On my part, I have, as my New Year's resolution, decided to leave this site again as the constant resident left wing socialist claptrap on Briskoda is getting me seriously down. Hopefully I will only return if I require help to resolve a technical issue with one of our Skodas, which with a little luck might be never.