J.R.

My thoughts as well, there is one really really bad company out there.

Easy job and will have it running like new again, the brushes come as part of a new regulator. If you need the car running again while you order the regulator pack you can do as I did which was to free off the brushes and allow them to extend a little further, I think I cut relief grooves in the plastic to allow the braid wire to extend further, it was a long time ago. The bodge intended for no more than a week was still working fine 6 months later when I finally got around to fitting the regulator. Good on you for finding a way to overcome the problem which also diagnosed the fault at the same time!

15 minutes of downloading the previous emissions cheat software revision, it may have been 15 seconds and 14 minutes in the workshop for all I know. Cost short answer £250. Long answer I had a Celtic Tuning remap done (highly recommended) had I been able to have it done in their Cornwall workshop and not by a dealer or their mobile technicians it would have been done free of charge with the remap but it was the beginning of the confinement, their mobile technicians were on whatever the British word is for being paid not to work (chômage technique) travel and time restrictions meant the only way I could get the remap done was by one of their dealer network in Surrey. After Covid I went to my stepmothers funeral in Cornwall and was staying very close to Celtic Tuning HQ, I drove in on the offchance saying I had 30 minutes before the funeral service and could they possibly sort me out in that time, they did and I was happy to pay the bill given the circumstances, 2 years on and I consider it money well spent, I have heard probably 3 interrupted regens in that time, before that it was practically every journey.

That would require him to recall what he has written, I do think there is somewhat of a memory problem (I speak as someone with practically zero short term memory following Malaria) and the more someone writes the less likely they are to recall everything.

Well that at least is true. Have you inspected them yet, have you driven it after giving it the good news?

You can, I did!

You have no grounds for a court case unless you can prove your brake discs are no longer fit for purpose, I am 100% certain they are. That is not a diagnosis but a shakedown, I am surprised that so many people on here are believing it without question and recommending that you have the work done elsewhere, just a reminder in bold to them:

None of the above, get outside and use your MK1 eyeballs to decide whether these 10 month old discs really are so corroded that they need replacing, I very very much doubt it and think you are being taken for a ride, granted they rust just by looking at them but not in such a short space of time to render them unserviceable. Have you looked at them or tried driving since giving them the good news yesterday?

Ken Block strikes again 😄 @Prezafab have you really had 106 vehicles or was it a typo and supposed to be10? I was going to post that I have done a higher mileage without ever using any additive and only supermarket diesel without any DPF or EGR problems but then realised that my EGR no longer passes any gases after I fitted an EGR Emulator, I fitted it because I expected trouble from the EGR so I did not post the response. Has your vehicle had the emissions fix? Mine had before I owned it, those that remain with the standard "cheating" software don't clog up the EGR's, my ex UK neighbours car has over 100K miles on the original EGR and cheat software.

Do you know that for a fact through first hand experience? Of both types? I know of dozens of internal concentric cylinders mine included that have failed in that exact manner, I have forensically examined mine looking for how air can be drawn in without fluid leaking out, common to all the failures of the concentric slave cylinder, I have found the source (O ring between 2 plastic parts) which is unique to the concentric cylinder and does not exist on the external slave cylinder. I had an external slave fail on my MK1 Octavia, it leaked fluid, the pedal did not exhibit the sticking half way but the clutch would gradually engage when the clutch was held down for any length of time at traffic lights for instance. I have known of a few other external slaves fail in that way but in general they are very robust, my leak was caused by a garage not clicking the seal onto the pipe nipple, I have not heard of an external cylinder failing in the familiar way of the internal concentric one, that does not mean it has never happened, please enlighten us @Paws4Thot

Seems quite sensible but if what you are saying is that it does not deploy again when you close the boot and you have to manually retract it then I understand your frustration. Thinking about it, it could not automatically deploy in case you had just loaded a tall item, I wonder if the Audi one described had obstruction detection like a roller door?

I never ceased to be amazed at the knowledge that @Breezy_Pete has and his willingness to help others. Good on you sir! PS, I hope you get good news soon regarding your house.

Very good advice for prevention and continued maintenance while driving, better explained than my "drive it like you stole it"

At 10 months old the rust and pitting will not be severe enough to warrant changing the discs, take it out to a safe place ideally downhill and do a repeated series of full on ABS emergency stops from as high a speed as you can to deglaze the discs but ease off just before coming to a stop (credit to Rory for that!), the ABS may not even work initially if they are very bad, only stop when you feel the pedal becoming very spongy but dont stop driving, carry on to allow the brakes to cool, if you have to slow down do so gently allowing plenty of stopping distance, they will be so hot at that point as to be quite ineffective, when you get home dont apply the handbrake instead leave the car in gear and chock the wheels if you desire. Do not drive it again for several hours better still leave overnight, the juddering will be gone and the braking transformed, when you feel it starting to return you can just do a much reduced version of the above or simply drive it like you stole it once in a while.

Air in system drawn in through concentric slave cylinder, gearbox out job to change. Search the forum for multiple threads on the subject. Bleeding it will resolve it for a short period and may buy you some time but the frequency of recurrence becomes shorter and shorter, in the end I was having to bleed mine every 5 miles in urban traffic. Pulling the pedal up actually draws more air in but what other choice do you have!

He is wrong, the master cylinder is very simple, no more complicated than a bicycle pump, it does not have a return spring, the pedal has a control loading spring operating through a cam which assists the pedal on the downstroke from the midpoint and upwards from just beyond it, the return hydraulic force from the clutch diaphragm is what initially raises the pedal when releasing the clutch at the midpoint the control loading spring/cam takes over. You have air in your system which causes the exact problem you describe, it usually afflicts vehicles with the internal concentric slave cylinder so I would inspect and see which type you have (is it a 6 speed gearbox?) before accepting what you have been told. On the concentric cylinder air is drawn into the system via an O ring connecting the 2 plastic mouldings together, it draws in air but does not leak fluid, if you have an external slave cylinder its good news as cheap to replace, no point the mechanic looking for fluid leaks, the O rings seal under pressure but retract and draw in air through the action of the control loading spring and the bore restriction from the peak torque limiter AKA clutch bleed block, the O rings on that may be the culprit or even the seal where the clutch line enters the master cylinder, these must be correctly "popped" onto the union before refitting or they will leak, in that instance leaking fluid.

Which will immediately be discharged again by the vehicle Don't get me wrong, I am no fan of stop start and would disable it if I am unfortunate enough to end up in a newer vehicle but they use a different (and of course more expensive) battery chemistry to allow for the quasi permanent lower SOC. Its been over 50 years since short journeys could be a problem for dynamo equipped vehicles and todays vehicles really can charge a battery faster than the starter motor discharged it when needed but old habits die hard for some, for those that feel the need to charge their batteries to feel more secure then really the best plan would be to disable the Start/Stop crock of shoîte thus hobbling the battery mismanagement system reverting to a standard alternator charging profile which will bring them pleasure everytime they look at their voltmeter while driving or stopped. And if you are going to do that then when the battery does eventually need replacing you can do so with a much cheaper standard one which probably will have a longer life.

As the title describes I wish to swap the worn drivers seat components for the unworn passenger ones, the side bolster has worn thin through being rubbed by my wallet pocket when getting in and out, I know the seat reclining mechanisms are handed and there may be differences in the occupancy pressure pads also, is it an easy or feasible job to swap the squab and seat back upholstered parts from side to side? Has anyone done this? @ApertureS maybe? I removed the covers from a MK1 Octavia seat in a breakers yard once and it was a big job but necessary to avoid paying for the whole seat I dont want to do that on my own vehicle it was pretty hard going on the seat foam and the hog rings were very challenging.

Frankly of you are going to do that you should disconnect the shunt resistor as you are preventing the system from doing what it is intended to do and the system will immediately seek to discharge back to the lower SOC, I myself would have done it within the first 30 seconds of owning the car, I drove a stop start vehicle once only and absolutely hated it. Be aware that your non engine running voltage measurements will be at least 0.7v lower than the true standing off load battery voltage and significantly more than that within 20 minutes of switching off or opening a door or the bonnet. I have a multicoloured LED voltmeter in my car, the voltages written beside the LEDS are too small to be read (its positioned between the seats) but every morning it is showing only 2 or 3 red LEDS, no orange, yellow or green, the car starts just fine and all the green ones light up when charging, I preferred the predecessor that had an LED voltage readout which after factoring in the aforementioned volt drops would tell me if the voltage was low enough for me to warrant charging before starting, the battery is very good, I have an electronic plus an old school shunt resistor volt drop tester, the only reason I keep an eye on thing is that the car in the past has not be driven for weeks on end and the towing relay means I have a higher than normal parasitic discharge.

That is the wrong way to do it and potentially dangerous dependant on what is holding the vehicle up, if access allows then a downward turning moment will always exert more force, fine in theory but the real problem is how little force one can apply while lying on ones back, getting it up on a vehicle lift is the best way and once again a mechanic with any nouse will pull downwards not just for safety but because he can exert more force that way, second best is a decent impact wrench, one that actually does something rather than making noise and vibration, I have used air impact wrenches for 40 years, I have one really good one, the others feel and sound like they are doing something but fail. In the last year I have spent a lot upgrading and extending my Bosch 18v cordless tools and also batteries, in many ways the battery is more important than the tool for high loading jobs, the 1/2" impact driver with a genuine Bosch 5ah battery (not the other Chinese copies that are at best 3ah despite their claims) is way better than my air impact wrench even a Snap-On one, it removed 45 year old rusted trailer spring shackle bolts that would have sheared were I to have tried with my breaker bar.

Every time you charge the battery yourself you are just wasting the mains electricity, the vehicle will immediately cease any charging even regenerative over-run charging until it has discharged the battery again to IIRC 70% state of charge at which point it will resume the (minimal) fuel and emissions reducing charging regime. Not true, don't be misled by Battery Man and his fairy tales, it certainly wont put it back in if you have manually charged the battery as described above, otherwise if the SOC warrants then it will take a matter of seconds on the over-run to replace the energy lost in starting. Even the smallest VAG vehicles have a minimum of a 90 ampere alternator, I reckon 95% of vehicles owned by forum contributors will have a 100 amp or bigger alternator, those like you with start stop much higher than that, you will have to check to see how many amps it is rated at. If we take the smaller 100 ampere alternator as an easy example it has an output power of 1.2 kilowatt, that is greater than the starter motor in most cases, our generation of vehicles start in less than a second, lets say 2 seconds to be generous, that is how long the alternator at full output will take to replace the starting discharge and in certain traffic jam stop start conditions with a low SOC that is precisely what it will do.

I never fill with coolant before initial running of a rebuilt engine petrol or diesel.

Not true in terms of combustion and hence emissions, petrol engine have to run an enriched mixture for several miles after a cold start whereas a diesel engine runs a normal stochiometric ratio as soon as compression ignition is sustained without glowplug intervention, a few seconds in most cases, its why diesels will always beat the pants of petrol engines for economy on short cold start urban journeys which are very bad for the planet using either fuel. "As we know".......... some know different, its definitely true that a diesel engine which has far less thermal losses will take longer to get warmth from the heater but even that is massively better since the VAG sliding sleeve water pumps and auxiliary coolant circuits, on the coldest of days I could drive 8 miles in my MK1 Octavia and only get full heat and normal operating temperature after giving it the beans up a hill, the Yeti its about 2 miles and is putting out significant heat after 1 mile. Yes emissions will be higher until the Cat and/or DPF reach operating temperature but I doubt there is any significant difference between the fuels in that regard and the emissions system on the petrol engine cannot operate until the cold start enrichment has ceased and the engine is running at Lambda 1. Your EV's have no such problems and are as clean on a 25m drive as on a 250km one.

That is complete BS for any modern vehicle especially one with stop start. "if required"........ pray tell how the OP is going to decide that Battery Man? I guess it was too much to hope you might resist the temptation. Yes it was certainly an indication that it no longer had the reserve capacity to allow stop-start to work under urban conditions, ironically at that point it would have adopted a standard charging profile plus the regen over-charging. It would probably have carried on starting the car for another couple of years had you disabled the stop/start invoking a normal alternator charging profile (described below) which not only would have avoided the error messages but also the low voltage measurements both of which alarmed you. You can disable stop/start by disconnecting the shunt resistor lead at its connection, it is in parallel with the main battery cable, the negative I think but it might be the positive, the alternator will then revert to a standard charging profile, you have been a victim of the need for the manufacturers to constantly reduce their pollution figures and all that is left for them now is kidology like stop/start.

You do not need to, the proof that it is working is that your car has always started in the morning even when it set off on the previous journey with 12.2v. Buy a plug in voltmeter (cigarette lighter socket) and you will see the charging voltage peak during braking and over-run conditions, as long as you havn't foolishly manually charged the battery again beforehand, I have a feeling that what you will observe from monitoring the battery (mis)management may only add to your current anxiety.