J.R.

Are you certain? It looks just like the Yeti where the inner grille and outer surround are seperate part numbers, not exactly cheap but a whole lot cheaper than a bumper, the cost of which will be a lot more once it is painted. If its the same as the Yeti, and I'm certain that it is, the inner & outer grille clip together and both are clipped into the bumper. The garage is most likely telling you porkies because getting them apart without breaking the expensive chrome outer surround is difficult and you need to be motivated as the owner who is paying the bill, the garage has a different motivation, they just want to sell you a new grille, surround and bumper making their margin on the parts plus the painting and labour, that way it all just clips together easily.

I understand the legal process says that the claim must be against them but under what moral basis could anybody justify tapping them up for money in this instance?

I can see a bit of the M, the A and the C also.

Happens all the time in this country where people never question what the garagiste tells them and where specialists dont spring up like they do in the UK, the first I ever knew of a DPF was when a girlfriend had to pay out €4k + for a not even 3 year old diesel Honda Civic that she should never have been sold in the first place as all her journeys to & from work & shopping etc were less than 3 miles, that was in 2014.

They will pump up and make an awfull racket whilst doing so, new ones usually settle quite quickly.

If you havn't alreadty bought new hydraulic lifters then I would remove them, soak them in degreaser, then immerse them in 0W30 sysnthetic oil & warm it through on a stove. Compress them to remove the old oil first.

Head gasket failed, combustion chamber leak on number 3 cylinder - very slight but can be seen from the exhaust valve colour & the witness marks on the head and gasket. also leaking around the tappet galleries into the head bolt holes but thats no problem in itself. The gasket looks to be delaminating where its in contact with the water jacket but that might be a camera illusion, more shadows etc. The noise was definitely a sticking lifter, I would have run it on a thin grade fully synthetic oil and driven it like you had stolen it (after the head gasket change) that usually sorts out sticking lifters. Was there any water in the oil? rust will cause a lifter to stick but thats usually when an engine has been sat in a salvage yeard with the head off or the intake tract open.

Torsion angle, but again you would need VCDS to know.

You cannot register it in your name with the French registration authorities, even if you could come up with a French address and satisfy the identity checks to access the on line ANTS procedure or even if it were still possible to submit a demande for une carte grise at the préfecture (which you can no longer do) it would be refused because the vehicle has not been CT tested within the last 6 months (1 yr CT remaining means it was done 1 year ago) and also you would need a certificate de cession signed by the previous owner and for them to have submitted it via ANTS. Others will advise on how you could register it in the UK but there will equally be paperwork required including an EU certificate of conformity and there may well be the same punitive first registration charges, of that I have no idea & unless you state what the vehicle is nobody else will be able to advise.

Have a scan done with a proper diagnostic tester preferably VCDS or failing that at a garage with a Snap-on or similar one that can interrogate the various modules. The toy testers wont tell you anything except standardised OBDII codes after a MIL light has been illuminated.

That engine is very sensitive to tiny changes in cam timing, after the belt is replaced the VCDS procedure whose name escapes me (like all of them it bares no resemblance to the parameter) needs to be run and then the tiny adjustment made to the vernier pulley. Be aware that it only measures up to +/- 4° or something before showing a zero value which will make you think it is spot on but it is in fact outside of limits, the engine will run out of limits but behave like yours. The name will come to me soon, something like torsion angle. Torsion value - https://www.myturbodiesel.com/threads/pd-engine-torsion-value-solid-information-about-why-and-how-to-optimize.35386/

I will try an answer what I can with the limited info you have given. 2. - As a non French resident you cannot other than re-registering it on UK plates. 3- With great difficulty, even the temporary insurances are for UK registered vehicles. 4 & 5. - If you register it on UK plates then the taxes to be paid will be part of the registration process, the same will be true of the other EU country. Beware that many EU countries like mine have a heavy malus tax on newer and higher CO2 vehicles, for my country this applies on first regstration in the country and you are treated as if its a brand new vehicle, on my 5 year old Yeti it was an additional €1000 on top of the normal regsitartion fee, for a Range Rover etc it could have been as much as €25K Worse still you might have no choice but to pay that in the UK and again in the other EU country if you cannot make the deal look like you bought it in France and took it to the other EU country. You asked for no comments regarding the financial benefits, hassle or difficulty so I will respect your wishes but please be aware that there might be considerable financial non benefits.

I have nothing to offer I'm afraid if its going to yet another EU country, with what I know of the registration requirements in my EU country if you have chosen your path for an easier ride than sourcing a car in the EU country concerned I think you may be opening yourself up for a world of grief. Possibly the EU country which you have not specified is more lax but my gut feeling is that the only way to avoid being stuck with something that you cannot register is if you present the vehicle and the documentation to show that you bought the vehicle direct from the French registered keeper and imported it directly to the new EU country and have no trace of the involvment of a 3rd party reseller in another soon to be non EU country. Naturally this would involve a certain amount of creativity in the documentation which could leave you in even more doo-dah.

I have been driving VAG Tdi's since the beginning of this century, the last time I ever topped up coolant was in the last century! I check the level when hot and would top up when cold if it were needed but taking into consideration the expansion when hot, that is to say if when hot the coolant level was 1cm too low I would add enough coolant to bring the level up 1cm when cold which would be a lower level than desired when hot.

Only if they have a fault that is exacerbated by the regen temperature, its a sealed system with an expansion tank, there should be no loss. Unless of course you are filling the expansion tank to the brim. You can remove my TDi engine from your collective "all TDi engines" that use coolant during regens and I suspect there will be many others saying the same.

I retract the front pistons by levering the caliper back on its slides before removing, - simples!

Having dechromed the grille with satin black I'm gradually doing other silver bits like the door mirrors my attention has now turned to the winter wheel trims, they look naff anyway so they are in line for a splash with the aerosol can, its a good way of seeing if black wheels suit the car or are too much. I agree that the wheel trims on the Czech site look much better but there will be a lot of black painted steel showing through, not sure if they will look as good on the car.

Sorry if this is teaching you or the garage to suck eggs but.................................................... You/they do know that the engine will not rev above 2.25K prm unless the vehicle is in motion? You can try and rev it up all day but it wont have it. I sincerely hope you have not lost 7 months through this! Please dont ask me how I found out Editted, I just read again your final comment, you are driving it, are there any ABS ASC ESP etc warning lights that might indicate that the wheel rotation is not being measured?

There are those that can and those that mock, I know which I am, your racist observation is not appreciated. I understand that it would not be an easy repair to you, but to myself even handicapped as I now am or anyone else with the same or better still current crash repair experience its a banal repair. The affirmations that it will be back on the road illustrate that it is neither too difficult nor too expensive to repair for someone that can. I'm pleased for the OP that it will be written off and he can buy another vehicle that has not had crash repairs.

Not irrelevant, I was responding to the question the OP asked, was he being unreasonable in expecting Skoda to fully cover a repair bill for a car out of warranty? I dont question that Skoda could do 100% goodwill or that they could eventually after a prolonged legal battle be forced to do the repairs if it can be proved to be a manufacturing fault. The very essence of goodwill is that it should be recieved in the same spirit that it is given, if its not then it has been a wasted gesture, I have pro-actively offered a goodwill solution to a client who was in fact being really out of order, I did so in the hope of moving forward and not losing a customer, he did not see it in the same way and tried to exploit the situation which was of his own making, I withdrew the offer as I had already lost his custom & would not want him to return. I was taken to court, his claim was thrown out and my counterclaim granted 100%.

If your car was written off and your insurance had only expired by one month I think you would be snapping up an offer like that towards a new vehicle.

A week ago I would have been wondering what line you were all talking about

Off topic but the blue mobile hut is what I have been doing up recently, I need 3 of them to store my stuff when the house sells in the UK (mainly my garage equipment) and I am collecting the last of them tomorrow. The German ones with the curved roof are much better.

Good luck, when its settled keep an eye on the salvage websites like Copart or keep checking the DVLA information from records, I guarantee you will see that back on the road, a nice project for someone.

How lucky for you that you posted the link!