bigjohn

If you Google "Water Hose Pipe Clip Retaining Flange Radiator Fits VW Audi" you'll find lots of options. I got some quite cheaply from my local Skoda dealer complete with replacement sealing O ring (recommended!) . As well as easy to loose on removal in time they can be prone to rusting through.

If you're splitting the 12v after the fuse box it'll be fine as they are both low current items.

Yup, with you re that "big" issue. I'm 6ft 4" and love the Superb for a comfortable driving position, especially re the size of the drivers door and position of the B pillar. It's actually a problem as to which car next - now retired Mrs BJ & I should be downsizing from two cars (Superb & Panda) to one, but what? We're at the stage in life that we like travelling, especially driving, all be it in the UK or in Europe. As the only car unfortunately Mrs BJ finds the Superb toooo big to drive though.

Probably depends on your driving. I generally average mid 40's mpg and nearly 50mpg on a not to energetic run with my 1.4tsi Superb. I don't commute (used to be 64-70 miles a day!) anymore but I do have a regular 5 mile journey to my gym so that might keep it higher. One thing of note is it takes nearly 3 miles of the journey on the way there for it to warm up and the trip computer shows mid 30's to start with but is back into the mid 40's by the time I get home. I suspect if you're just driving very short distances the the economy would be in the 30's. I find the 1.4tsi rather load / hill sensitive re economy as well, however nearly 50mpg on a run is amazing for a petrol big bus. Having said that my previous 1.9pd mkI Superb also took ages to warm up

Does the manual 1.4 even have a Dual Mass Flywheel - could be a Single Mass Flywheel with the smaller engines?

No, a colleague had two mkIII Granadas. The first early one had the "security" issue, the second later one didn't. The early mechanical abs was a pain as well, probably one of the reasons why many mkII Granadas outlived the mkIII. I drove a few hire mkIIIs, the mechanical cruise control was interesting - If you ground to a slow speed/stop in traffic with cruise enabled as traffic cleared and you picked up speed it'd then decide to resume "as we were" by flooring the throttle which in a 2.8/2.9 auto was by also dropping a couple of gears. Mind you earlier Fords weren't great re security either. We used to be able to unlock a friends mkI Escort with an average coin of the realm.

Better than earlier implementations of auto unlock. You could open some versions of the mkIII Ford Granada by kicking the back bumper - great security feature 🤣

Bizarrely my previous 2003 Superb mk I was about 3% pessimistic re on board computer. My current 2014 Superb 1.4tsi is more or less spot on re mpg - I compared using Spritmonitor for some time using figures when I filled up but got bored of doing this after a while. However I suspect +/- a few percent is close enough for most people.

Can you hear the pump whirring when you try to use the wash/wipe? Is there a chance the fluid has been frozen - it can sometimes blow a fuse?

I don't think it's a problem here - don't think the budget of £10k would be enough for a later 1.5tsi.

I have a 2014 1.4tsi Superb with the previous gen EA111 direct injection engine - 109kmiles and still runs as well and as economically as when I bought it nearly new. Hopefully that means all is well re carbon thus far. I drove the 1.6tdi version of the same car (both manual) and I thought it was awful in comparison to drive. Sluggish and noisy . Before you decide I'd test drive both versions.

Mrs BJ has a 1.2 Panda which has very little poke once beyond town limits. As for hills 😕. Handy thing in town though especially when parking! My 2014 1.4tsi 125ps Superb mkII drives well, feels surprisingly lively at motorway speeds and it has a relaxed/quiet cruise (2000rpm @60mph) . I thought it would have been hopeless until I test drove and subsequently bought it!

My old Octavia 2001 which looked the same colour was Diamond Silver. I still have the old touch up pen:-

Funny you mention Varta, my previous Superb mk I 2003 1.9pd was fitted with a Varta from new. It was still going strong when I sold the car to a friend in 2015 and battery carried on for many years after that under new ownership. Sadly that car recently went to the big scrapyard in the sky due to major structural rust. The Moll battery in my Superb mkII 2014 1.4tsi s/s didn't last so well. It failed after lack of use during lockdowns etc.

I'm guessing it's started fine as it's warmed up a bit - myself I'd say your battery's days are numbered. It's lasted longer than on my son's 2016 stop/start Octavia. That battery was changed 2019 - Stop/start batteries don't seem to last as long.

I wouldn't - I've been caught out by something similar in the past. It causes problems when you least expect - in my case I destroyed an engine. This was a long time ago. Newer modern engines can be more susceptible re problems with water loss as cooling systems can be zoned and designed with low engine coolant capacity to decrease warm up times.

I would imagine I'd get used to lane assist eventually but I had a bit of a surprise / fight with it when I test drove the Kamiq that for now has put me off it, although I may re-think as everything seems to have it now. When I test drive a car in our area I ask to incorporate a back road that formed part of my commute as it has a pretty bumpy surface(it was awful in Mrs BJ's previous Punto ) - the reality is you drive in the middle of the road and only venture left to the rougher surface when another vehicle was approaching - in the Kamiq this caused the lane assist to have a hissy fit trying to "persuade" me back to the middle of the road potentially into the path of the oncoming car. It probably felt worse as I didn't realise the car even had lane assist. Also probably less of an issue now as I no longer have a commute - retired!

Likewise I used to Swap summer/winter tyres to cope with the conditions on my awful commute. Latterly I moved to all season tyres - they seem a great compromise for driving in the UK, especially in the wilds of Yorkshire. I've had Vred Quatrac 5, Michelin Crossclimate and latterly Goodyear Vector tyres and all are good. The Crossclimates are amazingly quiet and are amazing in really wet weather and coped really well with some bad winter weather last week. Saying that the Vectors on Mrs BJ's Panda have transformed it's driving in the bad weather we've got at the moment - a small car with these on sticks to the road like a limpet negotiating roundabouts etc.. My days of swapping summer/winter tyres are over!!

To be honest it sounds like you've bought someone's previous problem so I think that's the best plan of action. A recon engine from Skoda will be lots of dosh(much more than £1300) - don't accept what some people call a recon engine that's just an engine out of a scrap car. Also with this sort of oil usage lots of things will be not so good eg DPF, Cat, exhaust sensors, EGR and turbo with oil/diesel contamination.

When my local independent garage swapped my battery they clipped on a battery pack with jump lead clips to the battery leads before they swapped the battery. No warnings on resetting things afterwards.

To be fair I used Tyreshopper to get a full set of Goodyear Vector 4 tyres fitted to Mrs BJ's Panda via National Tyres (Hull)- no issues but this site was selectable on the web site. However would I ever use trust my car to any fastfit site for service, MOT or repairs - never.

Check your battery. Failing batteries show up particularly at this time of year as it get colder causing low voltage derived strange faults.

Owned from near new my previous 2003 Superb mk I always had terrible headlights with H7 Dipped beam projector lens headlights so I tried various "brighter" bulbs including Osram Silverstar's. The bulbs never lasted that long with both sides failing within weeks of each other so I got into the habit of changing both if one had failed as it was a fairly fiddly procedure on that car. The headlights on it's replacement Superb II also with H7 Dipped beam projector lens headlights are considerably better so I never bothered with brighter bulbs. When the originals failed I was away from home on both occasions about to embark on long journeys so I popped into a local Halfords and asked them to change the relevant bulb and they suggested the long life H7 and to be fair they still perform well and have since lasted many years.

I'd get another quote! Although I found my main dealer to be generally good (Hull) I moved to an independent when my car was 6 years old and started needing things like brakes replaced as the cost difference was significant.