CS45

Thanks! That’s good to know. I’ll get mine into my dealer to have them look at it.

Thanks I’ll have a look into that to see if the 330 supports them. Interesting, thanks for the tips! I will try and find a suitable roller. I would agree with your points about sound vs vibration damping. Most of the time the difference isn’t huge, however, I took the car on a trip to the lakes last week and I noticed that on motorways the cabin felt more isolated from the road. The difference at higher speeds is definitely greater than at lower speeds. Also, cattle grids didn’t really cause much vibration noise in the cabin at all. Having said all of this, during the trip I had the parcel shelf installed, which I usually don’t. This may have made a big difference also.

Yeah that is the only thing that prevents it from being a ‘perfect’ replacement. I just leave the car’s module alone as much as I can and it doesn’t really cause any major issues. The only things I’ve noticed are that the phone book on the Maxidot doesn’t work now, and while answering calls on the MFSW works, it also causes the Maxidot to say ‘no phone connected’ or something like that, because the Maxidot is controlled by the car’s module. Doesn’t bother me greatly though.

Thanks that would be great. Hopefully it’s nothing too major!

EDIT: I forgot to mention that this unit doesn’t have DAB, and the Radio doesn’t show the name of the station or the station’s cover picture. To be honest though this isn’t a major issue either because you can use a radio app on CarPlay or android auto.

Sure! It’s a genuine Skoda unit used in the Rapid in some markets. It has no SatNav, but instead it has Android Auto and Apple CarPlay. The things that led me to getting the RCD330 over the Amundsen is that the RCD330 has a nice big screen, and a more modern OS which I think lifts the cabin a bit. Also I wasn’t particularly desperate to have a unit with sat nav as I like the live speed camera and roadworks updates that the TomTom iOS app gets, and I wasn’t particularly keen on the idea of routing up the GPS antenna for sat nav. I use the TomTom app through CarPlay for satnav, which also works offline and has Lane guidance, so I find I wouldn’t even need built in nav. The unit itself is really quick and responsive, and boots up pretty much immediately. IMG_9855.MOV It also has a nice, easy to use OS which has Bluetooth if you don’t want to use CarPlay. The bluetooth system is much better than the Swing in that you can scroll through your music and contacts and change tracks on the screen. Voice control is unfortunately not included, and my voice control button now summons Siri. The rest of the buttons and features work just as they did before, except for the car’s built in bluetooth module which is no longer required due to unit having its own bt. I found it was best to unpair my phone from the car’s bt and just use the one on the headunit to stop them battling each other and confusing each other. Also the USB port and Aux port by the cup holders no longer do anything, again due to the unit having its own USB and aux.

Unfortunately from what I can see, Škoda added the window switches that they forgot to add to earlier cars in a technical change in May. Mine was made in February I think. Also it seems not to be a case of simply adding the switches, there are more hardware components and modules required, so I guess I will have to stick to reaching behind me to open the rear right window. The rear left window never really gets opened because I can’t reach that switch from the drivers seat. Never mind.

Hi everyone, after a slightly rocky first few months with my recently purchased 2013 Rapid (namely a Cruise Control that would suddenly disengage with no warning, a leaky door, uncomfortable drivers seat and Climatronic issues that the dealer continuously failed to fix) I have finally got it all sorted, and I’m really starting to love the car, so I’ve been doing some small mods to improve it further. I’ve already fixed my drivers seat discomfort by fitting some nice eBay seat covers with some cushions stuffed under them, which now makes them gloriously comfortable, if a little odd looking. I’ve already posted about that earlier. I then bought a little TPMS kit from Amazon. The brand is ‘Jansite’ and it came with a screen that can be adhered directly to the windscreen, or to the dash on a stand. I put it in the top left corner of the windscreen. It has a solar panel on the back side for charging, and it shows the pressures and temperatures of each tire. It comes paired with 4 external sensors that go on the tire valves. They look a bit ugly, but they do the job, and it’s a great ‘peace of mind’ upgrade. I still can’t believe a 2013 family car didn’t come with TPMS as standard, let alone on the top spec model, but I digress, and this cheap kit is an easy way to retrofit it. After that I bought a NoName RCD330 head unit from Lemon Shark on AliExpress and I would say it is easily one of the best mods you can do for under £250. Installation couldn’t have been easier as it was just a case of Swing out, 330 in, and woila, everything working as it should. The seller even included a double to single FAKRA adapter and disabled the parking camera feature before shipping it to me. My car has the ParkPilot sensors that would show up on the Swing unit, and that also happens on this new unit. The CarPlay works really quickly, and the built in operating system is quite nice as well. Only thing I’m not keen on is that the voice control now only summons Siri, whereas when I had the Swing installed the voice control used a more competent, built in voice assistant. Not a big issue though. I’ve had it a couple of months now and it’s brilliant. Last week I did some extra sound proofing to the car. In fairness, I think the Rapid was already pretty good in terms of road noise and refinement, but I wanted to see if adding some dodo mat would soak up those annoying vibration noises caused by rougher roads. Also I have been told by another owner that removing the parcel shelf (which I have done in order to fit a dog carrier) can negatively affect the amount of resonance that travels into the cabin from the rear of the car. Now, I’m a bit of a wimp when it comes to working on my cars, because I don’t want to damage them, so I stuck to areas I could access relatively easily. I started with the spare wheel well: I then did the boot lid because it is hollow from factory. I removed the single Torx screw holding the grab handle, then set about pulling out the plastic push buttons that hold the fabric trim in place. Most of these came out fairly easily, but the two closest to the boot latch were a real PITA. I ended up with several self inflicted screwdriver and plier stab wounds to the hands, but eventually they came out and then it was just a case of shuffling the fabric trim out. I then applied several bits of the dodo mat wherever I could reach, while avoiding any wires etc. The fabric trim went back in place easily. I also tried putting some on the inside of the roof under the headliner, but the only place I could get too easily without dismantling lots of the interior was at the rear, where I could untuck the headliner, pull it down slightly, and stick my hand in the gap to try and stick some Dodomat to the roof. I also put some small bits on the inside of the front fenders, and a little piece in the sunglasses holder, which seems to have stopped my sunglasses rattling so much. So far I would say the stuff has made a subtle but still noticeable difference. Road vibrations seem to make less noise and less vibrations seem to travel through the cabin. I’m told that doing the doors and floor will make a big difference to acoustics, but I’m too chicken to try removing the door cards and carpet at this time. Overall some easy but rewarding small mods to the car. In the future I want to look into retrofitting the hill hold control, as well as the auto windows, both of which my 2010 Fabia had and I miss them very much. My car has the most idiotic electric window setup whereby it has all round electric windows, but no ability to control the rear ones from the drivers control panel. Does anyone know if it’s possible to retrofit the 4 switch control panel and auto windows? Cheers

My 2013 Rapid has made the same noise since I bought it used in February. I initially thought it could be a clock spring issue, but all of the buttons work fine and it doesn’t seem to cause any problems. I assume it’s just a worn bearing or plastic part that’s making the noise. I’m just ignoring it for now as it doesn’t seem to be getting worse at all. I’ll let you know if it does.

I learnt later that day that a family member had started the car very briefly to move it slightly, so I presume it was just the tensioner getting its hydraulic pressure back seeing as it never did it again that day. I also supposedly have the updated version of the chain cam 105, so I’m not too worried about it. I also really like the engine. Sure there’s a little bit of lag, but it pulls so strong, and it makes a soulful, angry sound when you push it hard, but it’s still very smooth, being a 4pot. I personally liked the sound of the 1.2HTP 3pot, so I imagine i would be OK with a 1.0tsi in the future. They seem to be proving to be quite reliable so far.

The other thing is that there isnt much else like it on the market except for the Fabia Combi. Most other things are either smaller, more expensive, or both. Having said that, I don’t know if I'm just being paranoid, but I’m sure I just heard it make the dreading timing chain rattle…hopefully it’s just my imagination.

Poor connections would certainly correlate with the ECM fault code. I will suggest that when I take it in *again* next Monday seeing as the warranty should be paying for it. As for my EVAP code, I cleared it and it’s not come back. Just a glitch I assume.

Hi, great to hear you’ve been happy with your Toledo. To be honest, when I made this post I was in a bit of a sulk about the whole car because I had just had to book yet another dealership visit to fix my Climatronic and I was running out of patience. Since then I’ve had time to calm down a bit, and I’ve realised that all but two of the issues I’ve had (cruise control, door seal) have been the fault of the Climatronic system, so it’s likely that it wasn’t fixed properly the first time I took it in, and the other trips I’ve had to make since then are repeated attempts to fix it. (I have been discussing my Climatronic problems in the thread about climate blowing hot and cold on this forum). I suspect that many of the issues I’ve had were ones that were beginning to develop for the previous owner, (when the car would have been out of warranty), and they decided they would rather get a new car instead of fix them. I agree with you, the Rapid is just about the perfect car for me. It’s good looking, hugely practical, spacious and good at motorway driving, yet also is cheap to insure, cheap to fuel, easy to drive and quiet. Add to that the exceptional value for money my used Elegance offers (particularly now that I have installed an RCD330 for even more features, I’ll make a review about this soon), and it’s still a great car. I do sort of wish I had manual A/C though. Climatronic is annoying me greatly. Hopefully though the next dealership will finally fix it. After that, I am going to use my favourite local independent garage for 5k oil changes and 10k major services and other general repairs, and a VAG specialist for any finicky VW electrical issues. Cheers

Hi, unfortunately that is a bit further than the Carista can go. It can read codes from the modules and show some live data, but I’m not sure it can do detailed stuff like Climatronic data. (Btw, I found a way to view live data on the Climatronic display following this terribly blurry video for a SEAT Ibiza, I’m not entirely sure what each bit of data actually means though). The Carista is more of a consumer grade item, but even so it’s been a godsend in these last few months because I’m not convinced the dealership has really done a huge amount of diagnostic work, as you say they seem to just do things and hope for the best. For example, the fault codes were still stored after I picked it up the first time, which suggests they haven’t really checked to see if their fix has worked, and I wouldn’t know this without the Carista. I sometimes wonder if garages treat customers differently if they know they have a diagnostic scanner. It does do basic changes; I’ve enable the needle sweep, single lock, teardrop wiper and things of that nature using it. It’s capabilities do seem to keep growing as well, and I’d definitely recommend it. I’ve had a look into that rosstech page, and it seems as though it can occur on any module when it can’t communicate correctly with the ECM. At this point it sounds as though the entire Climatronic unit is faulty. That would certainly make sense to me as it is controlling the motor which is still going haywire, presumably because it’s doing what the Climatronic computer is telling it to, and also that could be why the unit is failing to communicate with the ECM. I’m guessing here though. Really it’s up to the dealer to figure it out. If they can’t do it this time I will be taking it to a VAG Specialist. The irony is that near enough all of the issues I’ve had with this car are Climatronic related, but I’d be perfectly happy with manual AC. Still, the Elegance seemed like much better value than the SE. Im just hoping that the other issues that have suddenly popped up today are just coincidences, namely a front bulb not working, despite replacement, which the car is not warning me about, and fault codes for evaporative emissions flow. I’ve heard that this is a common issue and usually, if there is no engine warning light on, which there isn’t, its often as simple as a loose fuel cap or a bit of a pressure change in the fuel tank. Also, thanks for all your help. I wish the dealerships were as knowledgeable as you.

Well, I’ve just taken it out for another drive after clearing the existing faults and it gave me these. Of particular concern to me is 01314 Engine Control Module. As I understand it, this can either mean that the Climatronic unit has a fault preventing it from communicating with the ECU, or the ECU has a fault and the Climatronic is the first to suffer from the approaching torrent of ECU communication issues. I did manage to take another video and the cogs that are clicking don’t seem to have been changed, so I suppose it’s feasible that one of those is warped and causing unexpected feedback. As suggested earlier up this thread, I tried going from HI to LO multiple times, but what I noticed is that the system didn’t really seem to be listening. Sometimes it would start to cool down and then stop halfway, other times I would turn it on to HI and it wouldn’t really change at all. It has already had a new flap motor, and a new sensor when it developed a fault causing it to suddenly go onto HI without being asked to and would not turn off.

Hi, these are my Carista faults: the other ones were just because I replaced the Swing head unit with an RCD330. I do have an VAG Specialist nearby, but unfortunately I think that may cause issues with the warranty, especially as they have already paid out on issues that the dealer has told them have been fixed. I might ask them anyway. I’m going to take it for a longish drive tomorrow to see if I can get it to replicate the fault codes, as this evening I cleared the codes and they didn’t come back, but obviously something is still wrong, and I would imagine the faults will come back after a while. This will be my 8th trip to the dealership in the 4 months I’ve had the car, so I will tell them to keep it until you’re sure it’s fixed (or even better give me £5000 for it and get the lemon off my hands).

Well, it must be something else that is confusing it. I had the motor replaced today, I thought it was fixed, then this evening the damn thing started doing it again. Guess it needs yet another dealership visit. My assumption is that the motor is doing what it should and it is something else causing it to ‘hunt’. I can draw the conclusion that Climatronic is a money pit.

That’s reassuring. I really do hope mine is just a case of it wanting a bit of TLC and not that it’s a complete lemon. If I get the impression it’s going to be constant issue after issue, I’ll probably get rid and get an i30 or a Yaris or something. But id rather not because I think the Rapid is so pretty and it really fits my needs.

£49 is certainly a big saving over what I’ll be paying for mine at the dealership, £285. Luckily I have a third party warranty that has repeatedly come in clutch, and will be doing again.

Oh trust me, I know about that. When the drivers door was leaking, i called the dealership about it and I said I was aware it was a common issue. The guy on the phone said he had never seen it on any Toledo’s or Rapids. Yeah right. I’m pretty sure there was a recall for it? On the subject, below is the video of the turbo noise the dealer diagnosed as normal. No doubt it’s normal until it fails, at which point they’ll say you shouldn’t have ignored the noise.

Interesting. I’m having that servo motor replaced on Friday, so we will see if that solves it. If not, I will look down the potentiometer route.

Wow, that’s very unfortunate. If mine plans on killing its turbo it had better do it before the warranty ends. I did take it to the dealership recently to have them listen to a metallic rattle from the turbo after having read one of your earlier posts about your turbo failures, but they said it is normal behaviour. Hopefully they are correct.

Thank you for your reply, the Friday car thing is exactly my concern, especially as the dealership now requires me to settle the bill and then claim it back from the warranty people, which adds a lot of extra nuisance. I am seriously considering taking the loss and selling it if something else goes wrong with it, mainly because I know someone who will soon be selling their fully loaded 2014 Yaris, (which I’ve always had my eye on to be honest) and Toyota now have a scheme that allows you to get a year of Toyota warranty for free when you get the car serviced at the Toyota dealer, and that’s even retrospective and applies to cars up to 10 years old, even if they have missed a service. The downsides are that the Yaris is smaller, has had a few bumps and scrapes and the A/C doesn’t work at the moment, but this may mean they would sell it to me cheaper. And it’s a Toyota after all. Even so, it wouldn’t be a decision I would take lightly. Mainly because my family put money towards it as a surprise birthday gift, so I would feel guilty about selling it and potentially losing money on it. But the whole point of me buying it was to get a nice, low mileage car with lots of kit on it that would last me a good few years, whereas in reality I’ve only had it 4 months and I’m already alarmed at the number of issues developing. Oh and I should point out, although it may sound like something from Hoovies Garage, this Rapid isn’t an abused, ‘hooptie’ example. It was a Škoda approved used car, that has been serviced by the previous owner every 5k miles, and it has things like mudflaps and the registration etched into the windows, signs of a cautious owner. I guess I’ll see how it goes, but it’s on thin ice. Thanks again for your reply, it’s really valuable for me to get some insight from someone who’s owned one longer than me.

Hi everyone, in February I replaced my trusty 2010 Fabia with a 2013 Rapid. I was thrilled with the car at first, but since then the initial excitement has really faded. Partly because of the god awful seats mine had, (an issue which I fixed in one of my earlier posts), but mostly because I’ve only had it 4 months and I’m about to make my 7th trip to the dealership to have issues fixed under my 1 year comprehensive warranty. Most of the issues have been minor but very annoying for a car with only 47000miles when I bought it. To summarise my issues so far: The 1st problems occurred the day after it was delivered. The cruise control stopped working properly. Also, the drivers door filled with water. These issues took 3 dealership trips to fix and AutoTrust paid approximately £400, while I paid £75 for the door to be fixed. Next, a month or two into ownership, the Climatronic system started acting up, in that it would inexplicably start blowing extremely hot air, regardless of what setting it was on, to the point that the air was too hot to touch and it would only stop doing it if the car was turned off and on again. This took two trips to the dealer to fix, and again AutoTrust paid approximately £400, for a new sensor to be fitted apparently. When I took it in for that repair, I also reported an annoying clicking noise from behind the dashboard, the dealership said the noise would likely go away once the Climatronic had been fixed, but it didn’t. Last week I took the car to the dealer again to have this noise fixed, and also for them to advise if a metallic rattle from the turbo was a normal sound. They charged me £90 diagnosis, and said the clicking was caused by debris in a filter, and that the Turbo noise was normal. Unsurprisingly, cleaning this debris did not solve my issue, so I am trying to get the car booked in AGAIN, this time armed with footage of a servo motor behind the dashboard going haywire and causing the clicking noise. So hopefully that will get sorted out. However, just this evening, I went to turn off the car, and I noticed that the key really didn’t want to turn. It felt as though the barrel was steering locked, even though the car was running, and the steering was fine. Gently applying more force eventually persuaded the key to turn, but it was still concerning, especially given the bad look this car has had so far, and that I am aware that these ignition barrels fail on other VAG cars in a similar fashion. It also felt a bit stiff on the return journey. I will be monitoring this, and if need be, I’ll have to take it to the dealership yet again. All of this is making it difficult for me to like the car, despite the great practicality, good looks and amazing economy. My local dealership is about 30 minutes away, so having to go there so often is inconvenient and time consuming. My question is, how has your experience with Rapid ownership been? Have you had these issues, and if so did they stay fixed? Maybe your car has been reliable and I’m just having bad luck with mine at the moment? My concern is that issues will continue to appear at their current rate or faster after the warranty ends, and that I’ll be stuck with it, so I’ll be interested to hear about your experience and find out if it’s just having a run of bad luck and will be reliable once everything’s fixed. Cheers and sorry for the long rant.

Interesting. I wonder if this is what is happening to my 2013 with Climatronic. It was making a really annoying clicking noise as you can hear in my videos below, and occasionally the system would seem to get stuck blowing hot air, even if i hadn’t asked for it, to the point that the air was so hot it was uncomfortable to have my hand near the vent. I took it to the dealership for this issue, (because it has a bumper to bumper warranty), and they replaced a sensor. It hasn’t done that again, but the noise remained, and on Thursday i took it in again. This time, they charged me a £90 diagnosis fee and said the noise was caused by debris in the cabin filter. Unsurprisingly, this didn’t solve the issue, so I had a look at the car myself and I found this servo motor near the cabin filter going haywire, and it was continuously actuating these cogs which seems to cause the click. I’m going to contact them again tomorrow to see if they can fix that part and also to see if i can get that diagnostic fee back. PS: the behaviour you see in the videos happens after the car has been running for a while, but it continues to do it regardless of the climatronic settings, whether it is turned on or off. Indeed, one of the videos is taken when the car is off with the key out. https://youtube.com/shorts/v5VHRgLh6rI?feature=share