J.R.

Get a proper diagnosis rather than a "most likely................." "will cost you lots of money..........." = we dont know what it is & just want you to go away. A compression test at the very minimum rather than sticking a finger in the air.

Well done and a virtual pat on the back to both of you! I hope that you inspire others to do the same. I was going to suggest some of the German E-bay sellers like AT Autoteile for good value headlights but they mostly stock LHD ones, are they perhaps universal dipping for the xenon units?

A kind stranger from another forum gave me a lift to the UK today, when he arrived in his Volvo V70 he apologised that it was hot inside as the aircon had not been working for a long time, that can soon be remedied if you have 1/4 of an hour I said!!! Got his A/C working so the journey was pleasant despite the heat, got dropped of at my house in Sussex so I can pick up my old Octavia2 and return to France with it to sell it, its been standing since March 16th. A/C system no longer cooling, suspect all the gas has leaked out 😞, will check with VCDS tomorrow. At least it started, I had disconnected the battery & it tested at 12.46 volts and 45% life remaining.

Yes I do but its very difficult to tell when the air is expelled and its just the gas escaping, I probably waste a lot but on the positive side having my own personal hole in the ozone layer means I have no need of a tanning salon, not that I ever used one anyway.

Mine came from a German E-bay seller for €17 = £15. Febi Bilstein branded. Good question regarding the subsequent servicing, I will probably do mine again after a year & then will know if I can relax the régime.

I changed the fan on a MK1 Octavia and I think unless I was dreaming I also removed the fan on the MK2, I was expecting an impossible job but it had been really carefully designed and could not have been easier. I am surprised to hear that the Fabia would be different.

I think that we can agree that as with any wet or dry clutch wear occurs when there is relative movement between the clutch plates and it is proportional to the load being transmitted, negligible wear will occur when the clutch is disengaged and the engine revved, lots of wear if you do that reversing a caravan up a hill. In normal driving conditions the Haldex is either disengaged or allowing a small amount of drive to be transmitted, as there is no central differential there will only be slip in the coupling when not driving in a straight line or if there is tyre wear difference between front & rear axles. If you were to drift the vehicle around a hot rod oval wear would occur in the coupling and heat would be generated, my 7's with plate LSD's could get very hot and when it was a confined diff housing for IRS a pump an oil cooler could be needed so heat is by far the best indicator of wear going on inside. I have doubts over my rear differential (not the haldex coupling) as I made a big mistake and drove it for a long high speed journey without oil, it seems a little noisy now but could be normal & a lack of soundproofing, after any reasonable journey I now get underneath to feel the temp of the diff which is to date OK but also the front of the casing where the Haldex oil sits and it has always been very cool to the touch. I dont think there is measurable wear going on, nobody has ever had to replace the Haldex friction plates, I think that its something else going on between the oil and the organic friction material causing the sludge. As the oil is so expensive I am considering using a different lubricant, perhaps ATF but will do some research first, I know that using fully synthetic engine oils rather than Castrol superbike oil in my Blackbird engined Caterham will cause clutch slip, the friction modifier additive is not compatible with the wet clutch which is being asked to drive a much heavier vehicle with better traction than the motorcycle.

How stupid do you think I am Zac?

I bet if you leave your car parked all day in very high temperatures it will drive like the Flinstone wagon for the first few miles.

That must make a real mess of the tyre fitting machines and I wonder if it doesn't get scraped away when fitting? Other than that a good idea but no doubt the next eco disaster and an excuse for them to charge us more to dispose of the old tyres than to buy the new ones.

If it does that and doesn't flatten the battery then you have a right result. keep an eye on the battery charge for a while just to be sure, dont leave the car for more than a few days without either starting it or checking the battery voltage, if its OK over say a week then you can forget all about it, by not connecting the canbus you have probably dodged a bullet.

Nor doors, boot, bonnet open, trajectory lines for reversing camera, functions like volume changing with vehicle speed, pretty much anything that requires information from the vehicle.

You wont have full functionality of the head unit without the canbus data. Wont stop you listening to music though!

If the construction is the same as the Yeti then it will be a case of realigning the crash beam and it will probably need the holes opening out or elongating. Everything is aligned from that, bumper, grille, headlights, slam panel etc, its only when everthing is bolted into position and you find that you cannot gap the front end properly that you realise everything has to come off again to start again from a level beam 🙄

They are already present on the loom connector, when you connect your new radio the canbus signals will be recieved by it as they were on the old radio.

Oh yeah, that is bad! Easy enough to gap it though, the wings are made of bacofoil and can be dressed up & down with the palm of the hand, check out the rubber bonnet stops first, they may be adjustable, cant recall. On the Yeti the alignment of the steel bumper reinforcing beam aligns the whole front end, wings, headlights, slam panel, bumper etc. Mine had been in a front end shunt and I had to do some mullering of that area on one or both wings.

Driving like a 71 year old That is shocking Octavia5! Maybe its not wear of the plate material but a degradation or breakdown caused by the oil? Under normal operating conditions there will be little or no differential movement between the plates in the clutch pack and any wear is going to take part when the coupling is not engaged.

Angle de ripage.

I will give that a try.

You have chosen a camera angle that I would use to hide what you are wanting to show!

Has anyone gone from a Yeti to a Roomster? I keep looking at them and wondering, they look to have similar if not more usable rear space and I think might have the same flexiwhatevertheyare rear seat system. I know the looks are an acquired taste. I like the high driving position and handling of the Yeti, I like that its a lot shorter than the Octavia estate but it comes up short on load space although being flexible with the seats out its still quite good. I really dont like the poor fuel economy by comparison, the 4wd will have an effect for sure but I think the main one is the frontal area, unlike my Octavias its barely more economical on a run than stop start in town. Which all leads me to considering the Roomster, a strange animal that I did not even know existed till I followed one, I dont need or want a big car now, am not carrying huge loads frequently but would like the flexibility to do so, the Yeti gives me all this but I keep wondering about the Roomster. Has anyone owned both to make a valid comparison in use?

Someone on another forum posted a copy of the advisories on their French CT certificate asking what they meant in English, one was foglight aim too high so over here it is tested although not a failure just an advisory.

Every 10K seems rather excessive, but I suppose it would do no harm were I to remove mine to inspect at 20K then I would know whether to do it at 40k, 20k or even 10k. Everybodies use of the 4WD system will be different, some will rarely if ever engage it.

Ok that makes sense, different from my diesel, I had not realised that both your old and new belts were double sided.

Strange that its double sided but I suppose it stops someone putting it on the wrong way. Regarding it running on the opposite side of the belt on the aircon pulley I think you are mistakenly running the belt through the wrong path, been there & done that on the MK1 albeit with a diesel engine, it looked the obvious and to me the only path, like you I had not looked carefully before removing but the tensioner would not operate. Its all a bit of a dim memory and I cant visualise it, probably just as well that I didn't have a double sided belt as well!