J.R.

Thanks for that Lee, no it doesn't, its a poverty spec model, that makes absolute sense now that they would not want it functioning in daylight, it was dumb of me to spend so much effort trying to achieve the impossible. I would not rule out that I coded out the DRL function and forgot about it immediately.

My thoughts too.

I dont think you need to now. I was mistaken, they are not LED, I thought they were because the DRL is a strip at the bottom of the headlight which is in fact a seperate lens, it contains a single bulb which doubles for sidelight and DRL being at a lower intensity in sidelight mode. The sidelights work correctly so it must be either a programming problem or something amiss with the body control module, I have in the past tried and failed to get the coming home/leaving home function working but that was a long time ago and the DRLs worked until quite recently. If I do the non Maxidot setting procedure (pull indicator stalk back and hold up for 3 seconds after turning ignition off) I can hear a small relay click each time.

My Yeti is the facelift model with I believe LED daylight running lights built into the headlight, these are not serviceable to my knowledge. I noticed today that neither are now working, I cant say when they stopped but it would have been quite recently, I have not coded them out using VCDS and the DRL option is ticked under the lighting menu of the maxidot, I tried unticking it and reselecting it, restarting the engine again but they still dont work. Any ideas? I will try to activate them using the output tests on VCDS but had not yet downloaded the software to this new a few months ago computer, I installed the files today but it is telling me that I dont have the latest version 😯, perhaps the older program was copied from my old machine. Anyway getting that working will be a job in itself albeit one I must do, I have to plug the unit into the computer then connect to the car which is then out of range of the wi-fi signal...................... For this time it would be quicker for me to do an old school multimeter test, does anybody know the wire colours to probe in the headlamp connectors? @Breezy_Pete?

OK, times have changed then, or maybe way back when I could not find a single seller in France of alternator spares (they were all trotting out the line that it was illegal) it could have been that VAG did list the part, but it would have been and still is the last place on earth I would go to! France does have some really crazy protectionist laws, its illegal for anyone to make or sell body parts except the manufacturers and they extend that to mirrors, bumpers etc etc, just over the border in Belgium there are outfits that will sell you pattern part bumpers, mirrors etc sprayed to your colour code and fitted while you wait for 30% of the price of the bare unpainted and unfitted main dealer part in France to which they add the bodyshop time, paint and fitting labour, it comes out around 85% cheaper to cross the border.

If you drive with mechanical sympathy and listen to the vehicle and not a blaring stereo then you maximise your chances of reliability.

VAG buy entire assemblys from several manufacturers, examples being a Bosch or Valeo alternator or a Sanden or Valeo AC compressor, they will both have the same VAG part number and also their own manufacturers part numbers. If you want a regulator pack or AC pulley shear plate VAG will say "Computer says No!", you have to buy the complete unit, the manufacturers may well sell the service parts, if they dont there are scores if not hundreds of aftermarket manufacturers who do.

No they wont, the mechanics are on a bonus for doing jobs quicker than the book time, the customer gets billed for the inflated book time and the garage and mechanic rub their hands together.

Does the Fabia have the double synchro cones that the gearboxes on the bigger vehicles have? They are pretty much unburstable, in fact its very very rare to hear of worn synchros these days but you never know what abuse a vehicle may have suffered from previous owners. I still cant reconcile a crunch on an upshift sounding like a Police siren, also worn synchros manifest far more on downshifts where the input shaft speed needs to be increased either by the synchro ring or double declutching with a blipped throttle, a slow measured upshift will go smoothly without any synchro as the input shaft speed falls while declutched, it needs precise timing but easily achievable unless you are my niece or my friend in Picardie both of which are very nervous drivers and snatch every gearchange as if the ground would open up and swallow them if they did it it any slower.

Spot on, its only on the highest outputs that things like turbos, injectors etc may get changed, the lower ones are simply to align with the emissions or fiscal horsepower ratings in various countries. I am a very satisfied customer, I went for the highest stage of tune for my 108hp engine, I dont care if it is or isn't 186hp it pulls like a train has a great torque spread and still retains great fuel economy when driven sensibly, I don't know what you mean by "overpower the engine" but mine is not peaky, has far more low down torque and a more useable rev range than before and has not broken anything. OK the DMF made disturbing noises at max revs but it was already like that, the engine could not reach anywhere near the same revs on the old map, replacing the DMF made a world of difference. Any power increase will always show up any other weaknesses.

I have a recollection that despite the connectors being standardised some of them have a polarising tang visible on the photo and I think one of my loom connectors would not plug in beside the metal plate (look at the blue one in the photo) as the indent was in a different radial position, overcome with a bit of bodgery and IIRC I also bought some compatible connectors.

If you look on the internet you will find there is a colour coding for the bayonet type connectors which will identify what they are, if you see the same colours on the proposed new radio unit then you should be safe. In any case the resource will tell you which function for each connector.

Most likely sender malfunction, can be checked using VCDS on a cold engine where the oil temp should correspond to the ambient temp more or less. If that shows ok then oil cooler not functioning is the next possibility but given the conditions you describe and the current temperatures in Sussex its implausible that the oil could get to anywhere near that temperature unless the level is really low, the oil level sensor faulty and the oil cooler not functioning.

As I say I dont know the actual formula but yours cannot be right because using that method in addition to the 80% there would be a further 26.25 hours for the remaining 21 ampere hours (mine is 77ah). It probably would take 40 hours if the battery had zero volts but the charger will not function beneath 7.5v unless you do some bodgery, the leisure battery took several days in total. I think the problem is that VAG and others say that a battery has zero SOC (state of charge) at 11.7v but they are speaking of useable charge for cranking and starting the engine at 12V. There is no question that your 10 amp smart charger would be more suited to me but does it really do 80% at 10 amps or drop to a lower setting after an initial 10 amp (say 7 amp) like the above graph?

Absolutely but when you have struggled to achieve a 45° erection but need 60° to get satisfaction then you go all the way and to hell with the consequences 🤣 The voltage probably would have recovered a little but I put it on charge straight away, I was dissapointed that I had abused it too far, I should have used the hand pump at that stage but it would have taken a very long time, the motor was still turning but not with vigour, the higher it tips the less load on the ram and hydraulic pump. It did however make me reflect on just how much abuse you would have to give a battery to get it low enough for the desulphation stage, the safest way would be to use the vehicles sidelights but as I have pondered before are you doing more damage by the deep discharge than the process could hope to recover? I recovered my caravan battery, it was only a few months old but with zero volts (previous owner did not resolve the 13.4V power supply problem) but needed to fry it with a jumpstarter set to 24v then charge it with the same in parallel to a charged battery up to 7.5v, something did the job because after a couple of days it showed 5 bars and my electronic tester said 100% and 3 years later it still has good autonomy when the power is cut, but that was a leisure battery which are supposed to cope better with deep discharge. 💡💡💡I can swop the tipper trailer battery with the caravan one when I sell the caravan in the spring after spending 3 winters in it.

Yes that is the graph that was printed on the cardboard case, the manual went walkies a very long time ago, I think that is my charger, it remains the only example that I have seen. The manuals are normally tiny concertina folded bits of paper, tiny text mostly taken up with safety warnings and translations, the graph on the box is probably larger as I can read it but not as large as this on the computer screen, it also has contrasting colours which help. The other great thing is a graph is understandable even with a dual horizontal axis and conveys simply the info that would take a long description like mine above and many of the descriptions have errors of translation or are Chinglese. I knew that you would have a complete library of every battery charger manual at your fingertips 😄

Looking at the photo I would say highly likely but each engine installation is different, on mine it was easier for me at the time with limited tools available to do it in situ rather than remove the alternator, I had to do some of it by feel though.

Menopause? Very forgiving of her if she knew you had a spare lined up! 😄

That pretty much mirrors my return to running this year, I was running 4 times a week with a club doing 40-60 kms a week & more than that cycling to and from the club in the summer months, then nothing for 3 years. I had no sooner got back into it with a social running group than I too was hospitalised with a serious illness in April, then subsequently I was troubled with asthma which had been in remission for 3 decades. I did a lot of cycling in the summer and have been running again for the last 2 months, now it is very hard getting up at 7.30 am in a caravan at 5°c to drive in a warmer car to then run for an hour at zero°c. Maybe I should start swimming until the spring, I did it regularly when I was still scuba diving, twice a week training with the club but then moved on to running.

My towing weight would have been 400kg higher if the vehicle had a more powerfull engine, as it is remapped it copes very well, the limiting factor is the brakes. The 4wd and short rear overhang make it by far the most capable towing vehicle I have ever had, the 2 Octavias preceeding it pulled well but the long rear overhang and stupid soft rear springs were unsuitable, I uprated the springs on both of them but they were never a patch on the Yeti. Octavias will drag their ar5e like a dog with worms with just 2 adult rear passengers, 2 wheel trailers or caravans make it far worse, laden 4 wheel trailers will have it pitching up and down on uneven surfaces. The instability of a towing combination can be mitigated by driving with care and precaution but when something out of your hands happens, having to swerve to avoid an accident, a high sided top heavy trailer being overtaken by a faster HGV passing close then you it all comes home to roost, in that respect I feel far safer towing with the Yeti than the Octavias. Thankfully the long 800km overladen journeys are behind me now.

There is not a black and white answer to that question, once on the move there is no load on the clutch, how you pull away when laden, what route you choose to avoid hillstarts, how you plan ahead and creep across junctions (if you can) how good you are at reversing are all factors that will decide the life of your clutch, some people can burn one out in the above scenarios even without towing, others like me can tow more than double the rated weight for 10000 kms without clutch problems but had I found myself in the wrong situation that could have been undone very quickly. Diesels with their taller gearing are harder on the clutch during a laden hillstart or even pulling away from standstill on the level. Anticipation and mechanical sympathy are the key elements.

To summarise the above in as few words as possible: The 5 amp charger will only charge at 5 amps for maybe 30 minutes or less on anything other than a totally discharged battery 80% of the charging is done at only 3 amps. 20% of the charging is done at a piffling 0.8 amps which probably takes more time than the previous 80% Someone cleverer than me could probably calculate how many hours it would take to recharge a flat 096 battery, I just know that it was a fecking long time! At 80% charge it would be a lot quicker to put it on the car, start the car and get on your way to work allowing the alternator to do the rest.

Are you charging it on the vehicle Gregoir? As said once charged it will sit with a maintenance charge of (on my smart charger) 0.1 ampere, if the voltage drops below 12.8v it will then switch to a 0.8 amp charge, if the battery is on the car or has self discharge it will cycle between the two charge levels. I had to recharge the batteries on my tractor and tipping trailer this week, I have loaned out my faster 8 amp charger so had to use the 5 amp Lidl smart charger and it was frickin slow despite the figures showing on the display initially looking optimistic. The battery for the tipper hydraulic pump is the old one off my vehicle an 096 77ah 780 amp CCA, it had discharged to 11.5v trying to tip double what it should, within 30-45 minutes the display was showing 13.6v and 2 bars out of 4 (might be 5) but then it dropped to 12.4v and one bar, what was happening is that the charging current had dropped off to the 2nd stage and later would drop even further to the 3rd stage, it had got nowhere after a few hours and took overnight to fully charge, probably more than 12 hours (I slept in because of the cold!) It has a good graph showing the stages once you can sort out the weird scales, there are 7 in all 1 - diagnostic and protection against reverse connection, can be ignored as it takes about 1 second! 2 - if battery is between 7.5 and 10.5 volts it does a pulsed desulphation stage, not with mine at 10.5v which is as flat as you could make a battery cranking. 3 - Between 10.5 and 12.8 volts it charges at the full 5 amps and from the display it is putting out 13.6v, this only lasted 1/2 and hour or so on my fully discharged battery and was a lot less in the past on partially discharged ones. 4 - 12.8 - 14.1 volts it drops to 3 amps and it says this takes the battery to 80% charge, this is when I saw the 2 bars drop to 1 bar and the voltage drop to 12.4v, I dont know how long it remained in this state but it showed very little progression over 3 hours before I went to bed. 5 - at 14.1 volts it drops to a 0.8v charge which they call absorbtion. 6 - at 14.4v it drops to a 0.1 amp maintenance charge. 7 - If despite the maintenance charge the voltage drops to 12.8v (could only be through a parasitic discharge or starting, ignition on with radio etc) then it will revert to stage 5 and cycle between that and stage 6. So in reality there are only 5 distinct charging states. What I have learned is that my 5 amp charger spends most of its time putting out far less than that, it does not get hot like any of my other chargers, its a good piece of kit for slow charging and hopefully recovering completely dead batteries but you will need to put another in parallel with the dead one initially if it is below 7.5v. Its ideally suited to keeping a battery on charge for long periods over winter etc or to connect permanently to a battery used to power a caravan or Chinese diesel heater. It is pretty useless if you car wont start and you want to get a quick charge in it just enough to get the vehicle running. The graph I found on the packaging is much more explanatory than any of the user instructions I have read for various smart chargers.

Not if you load it accordingly (keeping below your rated towing PTAC), not even if you don't aside from in the eyes of the law which are probably too busy looking at a computer screen from behind a desk anyway. I towed 3 tonne this week without any issue and I think mine has a similar plated towing capacity, over the last 2 years I towed that and more on multiple journeys of 800-1000 kms with single axled unbraked removal trailers which was more eventful, a decent 2 or 3 tonne rated braked 4 wheel trailer from Ifor Williams etc will glide along fully laden.