J.R.

Great riposte 👍

I added the above important bit, engine torque will release a stuck clutch every time, my preferred method is to have someone run the car in a high gear (clutch depressed) with the driven wheels off the ground and drop the trolley jack swiftly, it sounds like you will cause an accident or run yourself over but I have done it scores of times and they have never moved an inch, I stand directly in front because thats where the jack handle is. Caution, do not try this with a 4WD version! You need to trust the person behind the wheel to have depressed the clutch, if they are revving high its a bad omen, it only needs minimal revs, inertia vs momentum does the job.

A lot more than a few days but its a remote possibility, the pedal feel being normal corresponds.

I'm pleased to hear that.

Do you know how to operate the main circuit breaker on your house fuseboard? If you were going to be working on your house electrics I suspect that you would. It ain't going to take a day thats for sure or they would be saying that they need 2 or more days to unbolt the lead on a traditional battery!

You do realise that the block of wood on the jack crutch is sharing the vehicle weight between the cill and the plastic underguard? I won't mention the lack of an axle stand (glass houses, stones and all that) but perhaps your attention should be a little more on the lifting process than the furry bolt threads. In any case its the corrosion around the hub centre spigot that could bite you, not the unengaged section of the wheelbolt threads.

It seems reasonable to me, its an interference engine and the outcome of belt failure is bent valves on all cylinders and zero compression, its binary, low compression is like saying someone is half a virgin! Another it was the auxiliary drive belt that failed and while doing so ripped into the timing belt cover which in turn frayed the edge of the timing belt which was replaced together with the water pump etc. I would go by my own judgement of how the engine felt, if I had any doubts I would do my own compression test, I do not believe a word the motor trade says especially when they are being asked to write it down by the person paying their bill. That is a pertinent question but only if looked at in relation to his previous vehicle ownership. Those are the words that would compound any doubts that I have.

Mmmm...................

If it used no oil and now it is using a measurable amount then something is amiss and will no doubt reveal itself in the course of time, if it remains at the current level you ma be able to live with it. I am assuming that you would have seen of there was an oil leak, any oil being burned will reduce the life of the particulate filter. My vehicle with the same engine consumes no oil , OK thats an impossibility but the level does not drop between oil changes, it had 79k miles when I got it and I have done a further 50K. My experience with previous generation VAG TDIs is that when serviced regularly any initial mild oil consumption reduces with age, my MK1 Octavia used maybe 0.5 litre between services and stopped drinking when it got to 225000 miles.

You want to know if its OK to drive a car with the engine (supposedly) breathing better or you want to know if removing the cover would allow the engine to breathe better? If the first question then I'm sure someone will soon be on here saying that you must inform your insurance company 🙄 If the second question - Can you breathe better and run faster if you go commando? (not wearing underpants)

Not for the garage, its a real money earner! You are feeling depressed and suicidal, we need to run a diagnostic, it will cost £135 refunded if a fault is found. Sorry no fault found and the manufacturer will not contribute, you can't have your money back. About as ridiculous a scenario as booking a car in for a diagnostic on suspension. I love the way the garages try to abdicate their responsibility under consumer law by giving a warranty (actually paid for by the mug punter) which simply brings in money for unnecessary diagnostic checks and leaves the customer blaming the warranty company, and how the pigeons swallow it. 😒

Not sure if that is the case but were it to be so it would be through being insufficiently tempered, rather like myself 😀

For future battery needs I recommend batteriemegastore.fr Very good company, competitive prices and fast delivery, oddly sometimes its cheaper to buy from then through Amazon.fr or Ebay.fr

Whereas its unheard of for an incompetent garage or garages to effect the same repair several times on an ICE vehicle without actually finding the cause isn't it 🤔 No different to knowing where the speed cameras are or having to find out. Or planning an autoroute journey with breaks for food and fuel away from the expensive services. Both of these are more pronounced in France where Shatnavs are not allowed to give speed camera warnings and the fuel at Autoroute service stations is massively more expensive.

You absolutely do have them, it is required for first registration, most of the time they do not make their way to the first owner but VAG will supply it FOC on request. All the "I must tell my insurer if I fart" nonsense is getting a bit repetitive now 😒

Front wheel drive? A couple of hours labour plus parts, no DMF to worry about at that mileage so the clutch kit should be cheap enough. But you cannot expect a reasonable price from a main stealer, they have a reputation (as robbers!) to protect!!!! Nothing you have written so far suggests that the fault is definitively the clutch and a garage especially a main dealer should not have to remove the gearbox and clutch to make the diagnosis, having got you on the hook the chances of them ever saying "we removed the clutch and it was fine so we put it back" are zero but it might prompt them to look at the gear linkage cables and adjustment.

There are several different tyre sizes on the vehicles homologation certificate, the use of any of them can not be questioned. My tyres are 215/60/16 and the winter wheels which I doubt I will even bother with this year are 205/55/16, there is a 5% circumferential difference between them yet they are both shown on the homologation certificate, with the built in speedo error my speedometer and odeometer under-read by nearly 10% when using the winter wheels.

Caock and bull!

Oscaro? They do that pretty much everytime you order branded parts, they send out pattern parts with a **** & bull story, I have my doubts as to whether they actually have available a fraction of what they try to sell, I have even known them send out completely different parts for different vehicle. Most of the other websites are all different flavours of Auto-doc, there are literally hundreds of different sites all with exactly the same menu structure, parts search etc and all showing the same results with a small variation in price. I have never been sent the wrong parts by any of them though.

I inadvertently ran mine on tap water for 18 months including two winters with the car outside in sub zero temperatures, lucky or what!!! I drained the system to remove the front end and replace the aircon condensor when doing the crash repairs, I would have refilled it temporarily with tap water until I bought the correct coolant and then forgot all about it. What really did surprise me was when I drained the tap water it still looked clean and clear enough to drink! No sign of corrosion yet I'm pretty sure my vehicle does not have Silkat, definitely no bag, it looks like a twin wall expansion tank but has no Silkat markings. That reminds me I filled it last year with the older G12 coolant and have since bought the correct later G13 (or have I got that backwards?) I must drain and refill it definitively very soon before I forget once again.

Thanks for that, it saved me watching another video which might have wound me up/bored me/had me shouting and spraying spittle at the screen.

It can be done using VCDS, I think there is a setting for Winter Tyres but I'm not sure you can actually select the tyre size, I think perhaps its a warning not to exceed a certain speed, worth a look though.

I bet you are great fun at partys! In your dreams!

Damp sensor used in production although Lord knows why, they can also be found on the floorpans beside the cills. Worrying that a vehicle built inside a state of the art factory requires damp sensors, perhaps the days of bodyshells being left in fields to rust are not yet behind us.

Draining the oil. I am a convert to suction pumps and will never go back, you can also suck out a considerable quantity from the oil pump housing.