J.R.

The Skoda ones are good value because they last a very long time, my last 2 Octavias were the same colour & I passed on the touch up paint which I bought 15 years ago when I sold the MK2 recently. Touch up bottles prepared to paint codes by Ebay sellers are a fraction of the price and come with a set of tiny applicator sticks which are far superior to a brush. Mine is missing from the Ebay purchase history (why does that happen to so many purchases?) but I think it was £3 or £4 delivered and a larger volume than a touch up pen.

Disc backplate self composted.

If the clips are not properly seated then it will leak at boost pressure, the pipes will push apart and the O rings will no longer seal.

I was going to post that timing belts dont slip but as you did the cam belt recently I think there is a very strong chance that the (not) vernier pulley adjustment has moved, they need to be tightened to an inch of their lives. I dont think that there can be valve damage within the possible range of adjustment and the engine will usually not start well before either limit is reached. Ideally you need to fine tune the timing with VCDS after you have got it close with the timing & locking tools, its called torsion angle I think and the aim is to set it to zero, if you find its already at zero BEWARE! It will be a false zero, it only records a couple of degrees either side of the true zero before indicating a default no reading zero, its very very fine adjustment to get it to zero and the figure under measuring blocks should change when the engine is revved, if it doesnt then its a false zero. I apologise because I really havn't explained that well at all.

They never worked effectively because air was drawn back around the threads on the upstroke. Actually not true, they worked really well to seperate people from their money.

My neighbour speny ages looking for the holy grailof one that hadn't been "fixed" He is very easy to wind up so when I had done a VCDS scan & some reprogramming for him I said that I downloaded the latest engine software for him as well & he would really notice the difference 😀

10p a mile for fuel, exactly what my Triumph Stag cost me in 1980 driven at Hoon speed when fuel was £1.60 a gallon. And if anyone googles the historic fuel price they can tell me what year it actually was, I think I was 21 when I owned it.

Exactly what I was going to suggest, I learnt a lot about my last Skoda from the build data including that it was made for the Cyprus market and brought to the UK as a grey import.

It wasn't questions but a statement following my experience, nonethless thankyou for your comments on the vehicle and my character.

I'm sure that if I still had normal vision I would probably glance down to use the rotary buttons and to see what setting I had moved them to, I cant without endangering other road users so I have learned to do it by feel, something we all do with many every day tasks be it doing up a watchstrap, buttons, zips etc etc. Traditional controls have git better & better ergonomics over the years, the important things to look at are on the speedo binnacle so people with normal vision can still keep an eye on the road, important controls are on the column stalk or steering wheel, light switch cloes to hand and tactile so it can be used in the dark, heater controls also tactile but further away etc etc. Given that most drivers will have their social media or satnav on the display to use any of the heating controls must need several touches and changes of menu. I am confident that common sense will eventually prevail, even the young become old one day!

Yes it does, I was haunted by the fact that I had heard the noise before, your car has been swimming in the floods at some time. Worth checking for water ingress in the spare wheel well.

Point taken & well made. Regarding the previous I never said that I dont take my eyes (eye) off the road, I said that I dont need to to use any of the physical controls and that includes the heating controls on my current car with a simple non Climatronic system, twist left know for heat up & down, centre know for fan speed up & down & RH knob to direct air. I cant actually make out the legends without changing glasses so I really do use them by feel, I think I did have to glance at the various buttons on the previous Climatronic. The indicator mark is on the side of the rotary control knobs & tiny, impossible for me to see so I decided to extend it across the front face with paint, not realising that the front face does not turn 🙁

I know from experience that the already optimistic Maxidot figures become even more fantasylike after a remap! I reset mine with VCDS but after fooling myself for so long (and I knew from the brim to brim figures that I was) I jst could not cope with the now true low mpg figures being shown 😞 On my Octavia I decided to put it back & to make up for my dissapointment I overcorrected it the other way as much as it would let me (+ 9% IIRC) and then I was getting the sort of figures that some like to photograph and post on here. I sold the vehicle last week and the guy is over the moon with the fuel economy 😁 I wonder if it will take him as long to wise up as it did me 🤫

I will probably create a removable hatch on this one.

I dont need to take my eye (only one functions) off the road to operate any of the physical controls of my vehicle, to do so would be dangerous, I'm pretty sure that you dont either, maybe to look at what fan speed you have selected but do you look at the gearlever or the pedals when you use them like a learner, do you look for the indicators, headlamp dim/dip or the headlamp switch? - I bet you dont and thats because they are all tactile & differentiated from the others by their shape or location, back in the days of a Jaguar with the row of rocker switches you probably did need to look at what fuel pump you were selecting. Yes kids can operate a touchscreen intuitively but they would still need to look and look quite carefully to find the required heater control. When I was younger I could drive and read a small scale roadmap between my eyes & the steering wheel even in poor light, it does not mean that I was safe though although I'm sure that I believed that I was, no safer than the kids that cycle with both hands off the handlebars whilst texting and do this for 90% of their journey, just like they do when walking around town and when they graduate to a vehicle it will be the most natural thing in the world for them to do and the car adverts reflect this as if putting their phone onto the infotainment screen makes it any safer for dogs sake!

But not while watching where they are driving, as old as I am and as bad as my vision is after the recent bodged operation I can operate all of the essential controls on my vehicle by feel without taking my eyes from the road. Its taken 90 years of study of ergonomics and continous improvement to get to that situation and its all been thrown away in a few short years.

Its very easy to check that a Lambda sensor is behaving and that the engine is running correctly at Lamda 1 (which yours clearly isn't) all you need is an analogue voltage meter, a £2 cheapy will be perfect. After first checking that there is voltage to t he sensor, with the engine at idle at operating temperature the signal voltage should flip high and low around the reference voltage, cant recall what it is but say its 3v then the needle should swing a couple of times a second between 5v and 1v, if its constantly high or low then its detecting a rich or weak mixture (cant recall which is which) that the fuelling is not able to overcome or the sensor is foutu. My memory is hazy but with the ignition on it should read a ceratin voltage and not be high or low, - check with Google.

Without the undertray then yes I would still be draining from underneath Sepulchrave. However its such an integral part of the vehicle that without it all the side protection plastic pieces flap around & eventually break (been there done that) and I suspect the wind resistance increases, probably not measurably, the engine sounds even more rattly without the undertray.

I would be delighted with that from a petrol engine developing huge power for its displacement. Diesel is still cheaper than petrol here at present. Mine is showing 47.3 average for the long term figure on the Maxidot and calculates out to 44.something on each brim to brim refuel. I just cant get over it being more economical on a 2 x 2 mile stop start town drive starting with a cold engine than 2 x 10 mile A road run never exceeding 60 mph, no traffic, no hold ups, no stops and from a warm engine. And barely any better on a 180 mile motorway/autoroute trip never exceeding 70 mph, it just doesn't make sense and bears no relation to any of my vehicles after 30 + years of MPG watching. Keep the figures coming, thanks for those so far.

There are also much cheaper WinCE units which have their quirks but are far better value for someone like me whose life does not revolve around a smartphone & who wants a car radio CD like before but with the addition of satnav, reversing camera and blue teeth (if thats your thing). All the steering wheel controls etc work with these and they display all the vehicle status functions and are plug n play. For me there was no benefit in paying a lot more for an Android unit, for others who would not even step into a vehicle unless they could sync their i-phone or whatever it is they do instead of driving or concentrating on their driving then a WinCE unit would not be acceptable.

I recall now that I disconnected the lower ball joint, I dont recall that they had slotted holes so the camber would not have been affected, I have guages for all suspension variables so would have used the camber guage had I had any doubt.

Agreed, not sure the Octavia is lighter although with my driving profile the weight is a de minimus factor. I think the Tonka toy stance the large gap between wheels & wheel arches also make a difference plus the 4x4 system, the Greenline made for economy and low emissions ratings is much lower. I was not expecting comparable but significantly better than I am getting, remember I am driving even more for economy than before. It used to be that the later generation engines gave better economy, my chauffeur pal sold me my MK1 Octavia 110hp TDi and replaced it with a Touran TDi 170hp DSG and he got better economy from that, he visited me in France and I was booked on the same Dieppe ferry as his return, we reset our fuel computers and drove in convoy, exactly the same speed & acceleration etc over 110 miles (approx) the Touran returned better MPG than the Octavia, granted I did not have VCDS then to adjust the maxidot display but he drove 80K miles a year and kept monthly and yearly figures of mileage and fuel consumed, I believe him when he said that the Touran was more economical regardless of what the Maxidot figures were. And it doesn't help when you get people posting sometimes implausible consumption figures on the forum. What long term fuel consumption figures have any of you got from your diesel Yeti's and were they 4x4?

I did not understand what that meant until seeing the photographs of the damaged bolts, I had incorrectly thought that it was a rivetted construction. I am surprised that someone has not machined domed recesses into a batch of standard bolts and sold them on e-bay, there is an opportunity there for someone, much cheaper & simpler than replacing the whole pulley, bearing and hub.

I do not agree that the certification process and the testing regime give any assurance that a tyre can run safely continously at its maximum speed and load, they do attest that it will be safe for 10 minutes under those conditions. If you can find any vehicle that has a maximum speed of 118mph that is homologated with T rated tyres & not H rated then it would be convincing but if there were one and you looked at the maximum axle weight you will probably find that it would be well under the load rating. I dont think that I have ever had a vehicle that didnt have tyres rated well above its maximum speed, I was surprised to see that my Yeti with its supposed 108mph top speed was homologated with only T rated tyres but I bet it was fitted with H or V rated tyres from new like it currently wears. In fact i am pretty sure that the sticker on the fuel filler flap specifys H & V rated tyres, too late & dark to go looking now. But for having to reregister my car in France & needing a CoC I would never have known what tyres were homologated.

Its only something that a dodgy trader would do to a much older vehicle that had a blocked cat, unlikely to be the case with your vehicle, if it had been done then I would expect the manufacturer to refuse the warranty claim but if it is that then its probably broken up of its own volition and should be covered. Given the age & mileage I would look for other causes first but it does sound exactly like loose material bouncing around as opposed to a partially detached baffle rattling. Someone mischeviously inserted something?