J.R.

A pleasure! I have a front one thats been on my workbench since the summer waiting to be fitted, very good quality with die cut adhesive & release tabs, it appears to be an OE one as well, it has a die cut cut out in the adhesive with a raised moulded boss underneath with the VAG part number, for such a low cost item a pattern part manufacturer would not have invested that much in the tooling if at all. A lot of the parts I have had from Ali-Express have been OE like the battery box, spectacle cubby boxes etc although they have come from a parallel market, either the makers selling batches, overproduction, out of tolerance parts or from old tooling.

Unless you have not expressed yourself correctly then the caliper and pads are removed, if that is the case then the cause of the underlined text should be your first investigation. I also assume that you mean that you cannot rotate the hub as the wheel would have needed to be removed to remove the caliper & pads. Some details of your vehicle would also help.

An all black badge from Ali-Express will not suffer the same fate.

Lubricate the remote control cables & linkage, reset the linkage while you are at it (youtube), unlikely to be gearbox oil related.

My 2006 had spent many years by the sea, lots of surface rust but front brake backplates aside it was all on the rear suspension & subframe, not a spec on the body, it looked like the only protection had been the thinnest coat of electrostatic black primer, it was a sheet of rust but very little deep pitting and no perforation, had I kept it I might have painted Owatrol over it to stabilise it and prevent any further rusting, I changed the springs so had dropped the wishbones, they were nothing like that, those images have really shocked me, its been at least 20 years since I have seen a dangerously rusted vehicle or components, I never would have believed it would be a VAG product. I just renovated a 1975 mobile site hut trailer, it had never seen any maintenance in its life, made to a price with an intended life of 5 years max, it has been outside in all weathers all that time on damp and boggy ground, the tyres you could peel off like tissue paper but the suspension and chassis were a million times better than those wishbones.

Yes you absolutely should given the circumstances, if they are not reactive I would confront the MOT test station and the selling garage, the former are more likely to worry than the latter. Do a DVLA check to see if the vehicle was by any chance tested & failed elsewhere.

Mind you, 10 years old might be nothing these days but I made my living when I was younger welding up 4 years old plus vehicles where the whole underbody was like that, a Mini rear subframe would never have lasted 10 years.

A weigh****chers membership for christmas? Seriously that is shocking! I am quite used to seeing lots of surface rust on the rear suspension of MK2 Octavias, composted brake backplates & discs etc but nothing structural, all the bolts etc came loose with a crack & the threads were clean. I did however always have advisories for corrosion, thats the advantage of specialist CT (MOT) centres here in France that are not allowed to work on customers cars or sell vehicles, my pal in the UK who always did my MOT's was the same by choice. That is scary!

The requirement would be for me to sit here with VCDS on my computer & the dongle plugged in, my neighbour in the UK with something plugged into his computer (The VAS505 thing?) and my VCDS commands being sent through the dongle then over the internet to hos computer and out through whatever to his OBDII port if that makes any sense. If it meant I could do my scans from my kitchen it would be a bonus benefit but not the aim, to do so would mean me having to have both of the hardware devices. It must be something that RossTech would have thought of which is why I asked if it would in any way disadvantage them? I guess I can answer my own question, if it were available then many of us would not have bought VCDS.

I am completely nul when it comes to computers so will probably struggle to even explain what it is I am proposing but here goes. I know some people find it a pain to drag their laptop to the car to use VCDS, I dont have a problem with it but if there is a solution to the question I will ask then it would be of interest to them also. I have a licensed VCDS 3 Vin (big mistake on my part) one of the vehicles registered is my UK neighbour who is currently having problems but I am stuck in another country. I know the software has to have the dongle between my machine & the vehicle it is connected to, is there any way that a device could be used that makes the "connection" between the dongle and the vehicles OBDII port over the internet with of course a corresponding device at the other end? In these days of remote diagnosis and especially the working from home CV19 régime it would be of great value to garages & professionals to do remote diagnostics of customers vehicles. Also there are those that hire out the unlimited VIN versions using ebay etc, each time they send out the dongle they are running the risk of losing it either via the transport or a dishonest customer, were the device I speak of to exist they would only need to send out the recieving device and keep the licensed dongle, they could also run all the diagnostic checks and the renter would not have to learn the whole system. I could also see myself running my own diagnostics from the comfort of my kitchen table and not risking dropping my laptop each time, its a bit of a squeeze using it behind the steering wheel especially if you are long sighted. Could it be done and if so would it be disadvantaging anyone? Have I missed something obvious?

The pulley does not need replacing, you can buy just the hub & shear plate for less than half the price & it attaches with the 3 button head cap screws supplied. The pulley itself is pretty bullet proof. The weak point is the central shaft & splines on the compressor is a very small diameter & the splined hub is soft aluminium, the initial failure might be from the nut becoming loose or not being tightened properly, there is a history of that, I believe that my replacement hub stripped because it was not made to the same tolerances, who knows, its a gamble but not much money if you DIY and you can avoid all the expense of vacuuming down & recharging. It goes without saying that you should rotate the pump shaft by hand to make sure it turns smoothly. The hub is made in 2 pieces with the centre splined part staked into a recess in the boss, this can make it very hard to remove the old one and that would justify the fitting of a complete pulley & shearplate assembly by a mechanic asked to do the repair.

Thanks, that is what I had surmised and my reason for fitting one. Mine is on its way. - https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/11-EGR-AGR-Emulator-Simulator-Plate-for-VW-Audi-Skoda-Seat-2-0-TDI-CR-II-Euro-5/183869556154?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2060353.m2749.l2649

Yes that is a shear plate, its relatively easy to see if the hub has stripped, run the engine (AC on or off, it does not matter) and with a bright light look down, you will see the shear plate rotating but the centre nut will be stationary, if its turning then it has not stripped. Another one is cheap, £20 or so and not too hard to fit if you want to give it one last try yourself using loctite. The noise that you heard is the giveaway, it can be like a tinkling of broken glass and is audible if you stop at traffic lights with a wall or shopfront on that side, more apparent to me driving on the right side of the road but it could be reversing onto your drive etc. A Chinese pump is £120 or so and comes with the pulley and shear plate, fitting about an hour plus evacuation & recharge of the system, a Sanden one 2 or 3 times that but with that sort of difference there is no way of knowing if its just a badge & has come from the same factory. I got mine from Maxspeedingrods.

Thankyou for that, its reassuring. Another thought struck me today, when the engine is in EGR mode, or in this case thinks its in EGR mode the throttle valve closes partially to create a vacuum increase to draw the exhaust gases in, the MAF sees a corersponding decrease in Fresh air being drawn into the engine, the emulator fools the maf into seeing what it wants to see. As the emulator does not plug into the throttle valve the engine will be running against a restricted airflow during the now pretend EGR periods. If you have noticed no ill effects then I will forget about it, its probably of no consequence and no worse than breathing in all the soot and combustion gases. Did you notice any change in MPG, driveability etc? When I finally get the vehicle remapped I will try to get the emissions fix rolled back at the same time to minimise the time the engine spends (or thinks it is) in EGR.

There is no clutch on that vehicle, the shear plate was probably replaced because it had stripped but failed again because the shaft splines were damaged or the replacement shear plate (or even the original splines) was not made to the original tolerances. My replacement shear plate failed after about 6 months, well lets be totally accurate, I had fitted a new Chinese pump, withing 3 months the shear plate hib stripped, rather than remove & regas I used the original OE shearplate from my old pump that I had kept as a spare, I fitted it with loctite bearing fit. I then sold the car & after 3 months the new owner reports that the aircon has stopped working, my money is on another stripped spline. I speculate that your garage fitted a shear plate & called it a clutch, now it has failed they rightly say albeit using an untruth, that it needs a new pump. Hope the new one is better than the one I bought, in future on any new compresors I will remove the hib & refit it with loctite & tighten the retaining nut correctly. Find a garage that does not tell lies, eg we replaced the clutch (shear plate), the compressor has failed but the clutch we fitted is working fine (shear plate failed again).

The shear plate probably hasn't failed, the garage are simply saying that it needs (= they will only fit) a new compressor. Perhaps I am misinterpreting your words, stripped splines (I have suffered a few) are technically a failure of the shear plate but not as you say a failure in the way it is designed to fail. I agree the OP needs to look for himself, more & more people are posting questions on the forum because they doubt the garage yet appear to believe without question what they are told.

Its time I had another trek around all the weird sounding menu options, maybe I will come up trumps this time. Will keep an eye open for swap slider & others.

A result, what was the parameter called that made the vehicle display a mirror image? Just in case mine is called the same and I hadn't realised what it was, it has to be in their somewhere! Also what sub menu did you find it under? All these things look to have come out of the same factory. Its interesting when you find the settings that can change it from a premium priced VAG specific unit to a Ford/Itchifanni/whatever premiumpriced unit, its simply a case of choosing the right communications protocole for the vehicle manufacturer, there is nothing specific about the unit other than maybe a different shaped faceplate and the factory menu setting. I was staggered at how many different manufacturers & comms protocoles it has pre-programmed, many of which I had never heard of. On my last unit the birds eye view for the door open indications etc was my exact car model, it being an estate and even the right colour!!!!

Sorry if this sounds unhelpfull but nobody can answer your question of "how can an engine just fail 2 months after a service" when you have not specified what the actual failure was, I appreciate this is probably because the garage have not told you yet. That question must be answered and if in any doubt the vehicle checked to be sure it is true before you can ask your question which probably does not have an answer that would satisfy you anyway. In recent days someone was asking how could it be that their car broke down without any warning?

Thanks for that, mine being a 4x4 will be more restricted, the connector looks to be at the top when installed but whether it can be reached from above is another matter. I have spent far too many hours on Skodas with my forearms being jammed & getting the skin scraped off them whilst trying to diconnect a sensor blind & by feel without actually knowing whether the tab needs pushing or pulling, this will be more of the same but at least I will have the connector on the emulator as a reference. Seeing how hard the job is especially without a ramp makes me all the more determined to fit this thing and stop the EGR working before it decides to do so itself. Oh for another EU3 diesel!!!!

Thankyou Wino, a skim it will be. I wonder if Haynes Manuals have already given up creating books for newer vehicles? Everything is available on Youtube. Mind you I would happily pay them the price of a manual just to be directed to the shorter more to the point videos that dont start with "HEY GUYS!"

I have a 2.0 tdi cr and had to remove and clean the throttle valve that was really clogged. My neighbour in the UK has the same engine in his Octavia and it looks like he needs the EGR valve & cooler assembly replaced as its throwing fault codes, pulling down the 5v sensor bus & causing the other sensors to give out of limit readings & going into limp mode, if the plug is removed aside from the EML light the engine runs without further problems or going into limp mode, it sounds to me like the gear mechanism is blocked. I tried to convince him to leave it disconnected and fit a £99 EGR emulator but he is 1 million percent risk averse so will be paying the garage to replace it & hopefully it wont end up as parts bingo. I cannot countenance being in the same situation here so have ordered one of the emulators and the EGR blanking plate to fit to my car, I think a couple of others on here have already done so. Any comments, suggestions or experience regarding this would be very welcome in particular is it difficult to reach the wiring connector on the EGR to remove it to connect to the emulator, also any potential issues with the EGR cooler remaining in place. I see from my study guides that when an active regen happens the EGR is switched off to raise the exhaust temperature so hopefully with it no longer functioning the exhaust gases will be hotter & more passive regeneration will occur.

Some would say that about your car but I'm sure like mine it fullfills your needs perfectly.

Ask the seller for the code to access the factory settings, I managed to change my first one but a bit like VCDS the names of the parameters bear little resemblance to what they are. On my current unit despite having access I have yet to find how to change it, its not a big deal. I am on my second WinCE unit and they do everything that they are supposed to just fine, if you want yours to be an extension of your mobile phone then I cant comment but they do what they say on the tin in terms of radio, DVD, satnav, integrating with reversing sensors, vehicle systems, heater & steering wheel controls, reversing cameras etc etc. I have found no need for more speed or to have spent any more money, the Android units cost a lot more and for a user like me I can say after 3 years that there would be no benefit. I don't understand all the talk about WinCE no longer being supported, what support would I want and who would I be asking for it? Certainly not the Happygoluckyshiningstarpotnoodlespacehopper company in Xianging.

They are not men!