croquemonsieur

Resurrecting this oldish thread, I had noted that my aircon on my MY19 1.0 TSI DSG SE Tech Karoq, was making a certain whirring noise and I intended to get it serviced and that I would report back. I finally got round to doing this 2 days ago at a garage in Bristol and the whirring noise is gone - the garage said that fluid levels had been substantially down. At the same time got them to do the 'annual' front to back wheel swap to even out tyre wear. Going down to Bristol the day before on my monthly visit, it was 28*C outside and I set the heater temp to 22*C and was quite comfortable like that. There were big time traffic jams on the M25 around Potters Bar at the journey's start and it took me 1.75hrs to get to the M4 an hour longer than usual. This resulted in an economy figure of around 48mpg for the trip, which actually is not that much worse than I'd been normally getting recently (haven't quite been managing 50mpg on any trip). However on the way back with aircon properly sorted, I broke all records and did just about 55mpg (57mpg on the display - about 4% optimistic). This is 2mpg better than my previous record of a few years ago. This time the outside temperature didn't get above 19*C and I set the heater to 20*C both sides, which I suppose means the aircon didn't really have to work too hard, as it wasn't trying to lower the car air temp. Anyhow pleased to get the aircon sorted and at the improved economy. I must admit he aircon re-gassing may not have been the only factor in the better mpg figure. For my previous 53mpg record there was a big stretch or the M4 from Reading to the M25 limited to 50mph while the road was being Smartened and widened to 4 lanes. This time stretches of the M4 and M25 are now having works done again so soon after, to provide more refuge areas to the Smart motorways + there is a stretch of the M4 before Reading limited to 40mph for bridge strengthening works. All in all about the same number of speed limited miles, I'd say. The garage does note on its website that a poorly gassed aircon leads to reductions in fuel economy and my recent experience tends to confirm this - say 5% better mpg now + aircon is definitely a bit more effective.

I don't think my MY19 1.0 SE tech DSG has the coasting facility, but going downhill, it wants to stay in top gear and so their is little engine braking. Not quite coasting but a good 2nd best and I quite like this. If I want to slow, I use the brake. All my previous auto cars, including a 1.2 DSG Yeti, have wanted to change to a lower gear on anything but moderate downhills, which hasn't often been what I'd want to do. From past posts here, I recall the Karoq 1.5 DSG without coasting is differently set up to the 1.0 DSG and wants to drop down for downhills, like most other auto cars on the road.

This was a common complaint a few years ago and the wipers in my 2019 Karoq made the same graunching noises like everyone else's. The problem with the supplied wipers seems to be mainly down to Skoda fitting blades identical in both LH & RH drive cars. The way the blades clip into the rest of the wiper mechanism is a resulting fudge, allowing excessive movement 'wriggling' at the mounting point (curiously this mounting point is actually different [handed] on LH & RH drive cars). As noted, replacing with Bosch blades is the answer, is not costly and is a big relief, but make sure you get the appropriate LH or RH drive Bosch versions. If you get the wrong ones they won't clip into the holder in the wiper mechanism. There was a topic some years ago here describing and illustrating this.

I'll have had my 1.0 DSG Karoq 5 years at end of July & done almost 30,000mls - at the moment am planning to keep as long as it is still a viable means of transport. I.e. it remains ULEZ compliant, you can still buy petrol at reasonable price, the car remains reliable & I'm still able to drive, etc. EVs aren't really an option for me as I have to keep my car on the public highway, but I bet they're nice to drive - instant power, with no slight hesitancy / jerkiness starting off from zero that I reckon is the worst aspect of these incredibly complicated DSGs. Similar comments overall to you regarding ride over ripples and potholes etc., although changing the wheels to 16" and tyres from Bridgestone Turanzas to Hankook AWs did considerably improve things, along substantial reduction in road noise, but probably neither still quite in the Jag XJ6 class. The 1 litre engine remains remarkably smooth & quiet - performance plenty good enough for me along with good economy. I've got the commonly noted occasional dashboard rattle, but that's nothing like as annoying as having to put up with lots of constant road noise - used to drive me mad on previous cars. A few other niggles here and there. You could consider these Koni shock absorbers, once the originals wear out, they got me interested. Fitting adjustable dampers to my car assume, I would be too much of an effort, but reports here say they do improve ride on appropriate settings in those cars where fitted from new. https://www.koniuk.co.uk/products/special-active https://balancemotorsport.co.uk/suspension/shock-absorbers-dampers/koni

I'm beginning to get the impression most people don't think this is a good idea. Well all my Karoq tyres were substantially down recently all by more or less the same amount, presumably why TPMS didn't register it and I do also recall that my nitrogen inflated Yeti tyres some years ago stayed near the same pressure for quite a while, which was convenient - no ride improvement but wasn't expecting it. A quick Googling did reveal that most non tyre fitting sites agree with most of you that Nitrogen is not worth the bother, even though one such site did go on to say that Nitrogen only filled tyres naturally deflate substantially less than ordinary air filled tyres. £5 a scam - doesn't sound like much of one to me and I can't actually see how Kwik fit (think it was them) actually made any money out of me on this, with the time my Yeti was blocking off a tyre fitting bay + the admin & paperwork it created, when they could have been making much more money fitting new tyres to the numerous customers who were also waiting that day. Anyway maybe enough on Nitrogen, it was only meant as a passing remark.

So up to 22% could ultimately leak out!!!! - sounds like quite alot. Come-on.... we're only talking about £5, though admittedly a few years ago + free topping up if you could be bothered to go back to the same place. I imagine the weight of air in a fully inflated tyre is many times that in a tyre at atmospheric pressure, so most of the air and accompanying moisture would be removed when initially deflated before refilling with nitrogen. Twas worth a try.

They were supposed to remove all the air, so I hope they did - they wouldn't let me into the workshop to see what's going on. Actually, my experience was that afterwards the tyres didn't lose pressure anything like as quickly. Also the nitrogen doesn't expand as much when hot, I recall reading somewhere + all the moisture in ordinary air filled tyres is absent with nitrogen. Anyway they fit nice green caps to the valves, which makes me feel smug.

I've never had any malfunction of the TPMS nor problems resetting it on my Karoq and am actually glad the car has this facility. It did come on once and told me the problem tyre which turned out to have a slow puncture - I couldn't detect that in the way the car handled. So after that I checked that tyre weekly and pumped it up regularly, which was a bit of a bind until I changed all the tyres to the all weather variety. I know... I should check the tyres weekly anyway. Anyway recently I thought I'd better check the new set of tyres after too long a period over winter and they were all too far down by quite a bit, so I got the electric pump out. I might consider getting the tyres filled with nitrogen soon, like I did on my previous Yeti - they hardly ever needed pumping up after that and then it only cost £5 for all 4 tyres. I do actually set the tyres near the lowest recommended pressure to keep the ride as smooth as possible, so yes I should be keeping an eye on the pressures more frequently, naughty!!

Apologies. I was talking about moving the gear shifter back from D to S as I don't have the centre display facility. Likely to be a similar overall effect though I expect. Thinking about this now, moving the gear shifter back seems to me a less distracting selection/deselection proceedure, whilst driving, than fiddling around with the centre display settings.

Sport is particularly desirable with the 1.0 DSG due to the high gearing in combination with the small engine + it's tendency to want to stay in as high a gear as long as possible. Presumably less of an issue with the 50% larger 1.5, which anyway seems to be somewhat differently set up with the transmission and how they behave together, that's from what I've read in Briskoda here before. I never used sport mode on my previous 1.2 Yeti (not sure it had it, actually) as that car seemed lower geared with enough umph for overtaking, without having to think about gearing. Still, I only use Sport now & again with the 1.0 Karoq, just enough to make driving a little more involving, but without all that dancing around with the gear lever and clutch I was so glad to leave behind, once I graduated to automatics.

Some people are nervous or just don't want to try anything different, like a friend who had a fairly upmarket a Karoq. He wouldn't go anywhre near standard fitted cruise control and as for automatic cars, no chance. It takes me a while to familiarise with new features - I started off using ACC just on quiet motorways and slowly graduated to incorporating it in more competitive situationss like the M25. Then onto non motorways. No doubt I'd have taken a similar approach with Lane Keeping.

Yep, shame they didn't throw those in too. Following Rory's message & referring to driver assistance aids, whereas as the Karoq Adaptive Cruise Control attracts maybe 50/50 for or against comments on this forum (I'm definitely for), I don't recall any positive comments on the Lane Keeping feature as implemented in Skodas. I was keen to have this in my Karoq, but circumstances didn't allow, so maybe that was for the better.

PS it's fairly easy to fit a reversing camera to the SE, but costs a bit and I wouldn't be without that extra bit either.

I'd probably go for the SE as the rear seats are fixed which means it has a more solid and thus more sound isolating rear parcel shelf, meaning less road noise. However if the rear seats will be used alot, I suspect the lift out adjustable-back-and-for seats in the SEL are more comfortable, as the seat part is 25mm higher off the floor. The boot cover here is a roll top to allow for variability in seat position. I certainly thought the rear seats in my previous similarly equipped Yeti were better than my current Karoq SE seats, but I don't often have passengers in the rear and so glad of the extra noise isolation.. If you can find an older SE Tech, that version has some rather nice alternative features to the SEL - it had the same Sat Nav but also Adaptive Adaptive Cruise Control which I really like and a couple of other things & it didn't come withe KESSY which I'd rather avoid if at all possible. Also smaller road wheels with higher profile tyres meaning nicer ride and cheaper more readily available replacement tyres.

Regarding economy in the various modes, I regularly drive from East London to Bristol and back via the M25 & M4 in a fairly well laden 1.0 DSG SE Tech Karoq and typically get 50mpg in Summer. The car doesn't have the 3 option driving mode feature as being discussed here, but it can be easily changed from Normal to Sport mode by pulling the selector back and revert to Normal by pulling it back again. I suspect Normal is more or less equivalent to ECONOMY mode as the car does want to stay in as high a gear as possible most of ther time and I do find it better to be in Sport when going up hills and for overtaking. Anyhow the point of writing is to note that my best ever Bristol run for Economy achieved 53mpg actual (55+mpg showing in infotainment) on the return leg, 2-3 years ago. It was only halfway along the M4 that I realised the car had been in Sport position since the start of the motorway - the car was in top - 7th when I checked the speedo at 70mph. Just to note, I did get the car up to 90mph a couple or more times to get past clumps of traffic, as I generally do on this journey. There may be contributory factors - prevailing wind is Easterly and maybe it was a bit stronger than usual (return trip is usually a bit more economical than outward) + I do seem to recall there was a fair amount of M4 traffic that time, so a slight hypermiling effect maybe (Actually, economy on most return journeys starts to notch up a little more once I get onto the final busy M25 race track, I assume due to so many vehicles slip streaming me along) + the engine oil must be nicely warmed up by then. It does point to the fact that being in Sport mode doesn't impact on economy, to say the least. I keep meaning to try doing the whole trip in Sport - maybe this Summer.

Fabill, you'd have to revert to a manual Karoq if you want a newish 1.0. They stopped doing 1.0 DSGs in 2019, I just got mine in time that year and I couldn't go back to a manual. I'd go for a newer 1.0 DSG Karoq with even more bells & whistles than the SE Tech came with and was hoping they might bring out the mild Hybrid 1.0 DSG that was being talked at one time about. However that doesn't now seem likely, so I'm hanging on to my current car a good many years yet and that's no hardship. I must try a new 1.5 DSG sometime though, just to see how it compares.

Some years ago, as part of quite a few noise reducing measures on my 1.0 DSG Karoq SE tech, I attached a SS exhaust pipe short extension piece, bought from Amazon. The original car was pretty quiet, but I do like car journeys to be as serene as possible and one noise source among several I was aware of, was a modest low frequency drone from the engine / stroke exhaust system, around 1500-2000 rpm when going uphill with engine working harder - otherwise, save the 1st minute idling from cold, the engine is unaudible (the 1.0 is said to be the quietest Karoq). I saw that the exhaust pipe ended under the car rear and thought it might help to terminate further back + I did wonder if their was a risk of gases getting into the car through the rear hatch - no doubt a totally unfounded fear. Whether this exhaust extension made a difference I don't know, but another modification that I've noted before in Briskoda, amongst the several I did - damping down the solid rear parcel shelf (mine thankfully isn't the roll top variety) with fairly heavy materials, almost eliminates that slight drone + also noticeably reduces road noise from the tyres. Of course scientifically one should do modifications one at a time, to really determine the effectiveness of any single measure, but I couldn't be bothered taking the exhaust extension off now, to check if it actually makes a difference.

Auto Express No 1,823 Special Issue has some details of a forthcoming small Skoda electric SUV, suggesting it brings back the spirit of the Yeti - actually a little shorter yet with a bigger boot. It will cost around £22,000, presumably base model, and they say it will be available next year. I've got to say that I find the current Kamiq if OK, a bit ordinary and unadventurous to look at, so as far as I'm concerned, it's nice that the artists impression of the Epiq indicates an attractive, interesting & modern appearance, both inside and out (not too keen on the 'thin grill though but back looks good). Here's hoping this Epiq has a more compliant quieter ride than the Yeti. In the meantime in around 6 months, a smaller version of the Enyaq, the Elroq, will be introduced (EV equivalent of the Karoq maybe), but no pics in AE. It's a pity there's no talk of hybrid versions that could use the same electric transmission rather than old style mechanical DSG etc. - rather in the manner of the original BMW EV with range extender. Not having a drive, as is so for a considerable proportion of the population, I'd be more or less dependant on public charging points.

I wonder whether it would be worth considering these Koni special active shockers when my 4.5+yr Karock 1.0 dampers begin to wear. I'm hoping they might further smooth out the ride over broken road surfaces. However, they seem to work more on the rebound than the initial compression bump, according to a graph I saw on Amazon. Reviews though suggest they do seem to improve the ride on a range of cars. https://www.koniuk.co.uk/products/special-active https://balancemotorsport.co.uk/suspension/shock-absorbers-dampers/koni

Red is my 2nd favourite Karoq colour and your's looks really good with everything else black. I really wanted my MY2019 1.0SE Tech DSG to be in creamy white, but had no choice but to accept the metallic red car they offered (& pay quite a bit extra) as that was the only one still available, with no more 1.0 DSGs coming into the country. White has 2 practical advantages as well as looking good to my eyes - it's the most visible colour to other motorists, so just a little less suscepible to collisions and it reflects a bit more of the sun's heat away in summer. Grey is probably the worst colour for visibility, particularly if driven without lights, but some of the more subtle non metallic greys I reckon do look rather smart. White's downside is it probably needs washing more frequently & I do seem to be getting away with doing that just 2-3 times a year nowadays with my red car - I'm not proud. I could black out the grill surround and paint the wheels and mirrors black and people would then think I'm driving around in a Sportline too, except the 16" steel wheels with high profile tyres are a giveaway.

In a way and probably being a bit simplistic, that was what I undertstood to be the original idea of radial tyres, from Michelin X onwards. The tread very rigid across the width so as not to squirm on the road surface and where all the reinforcing wires are located, yet very forgiving up & down when hitting bumps, due to nice soft sidewalls that flex easily. I recall years ago while waiting around in tyre service stations, often examining tyres lying around and they all seemed to have surprisingly soft sidewalls. At more recent tyre changes and so looking at later tyres as I still do - something to do while waiting around - sidewalls seemed to be more rigid than I recall in the past. Of course these days all tyres are much lower profile but often with big wheels and the tread cross-sectional widths are pretty enormous by old standardss. This means wheels & tyres stick out more & so more likely to scrape against kerb edges etc. suffering sidewall damage. So they now generally make tyres XL rated with reinforced sidewalls, so that presumably makes the sidewalls stiffer and ride a bit harsher. Doesn't this remind you of old style cross ply tyres with reinforcement all the way round the tyre (but of course without the tread squirm that these old tyres suffered). Maybe the Goodyear Vector 4 seasons harks back to the original radial concept, in which case I should maybe have considered these more carefully, when i did my tyre change 9 months ago.

Routemaster1461. What you seem to have is ACC+, I thought it was actually called Predictive Cruise control, or something like that, can't remember, and there had been much criticsm in a thread some months ago (or was that years ago now) about the extra features, particularly about it slowing down too much in bends. People were glad that you could at least switch it back to an ordinary ACC system. However I can't now see anything other than ACC on the Karoq website, so maybe they now simply call the new system ACC, incorporating all the extra poorly implemented features that at least you can switch out. Haloween1, as I noted before, my ACC (MY2019) has only failed once a couple of years ago for a short while, in very heavy rain. The other failure to operate recently in freezing weather is the only time that this has happened to me in 4.5yrs, so not too worried my ACC is going wrong, anyway it does seem to fail safely.

Routemaster, I didn't know that you could turn off ACC and just run it as a normal cruise control, how did you manage to do that - not that I'd normally want to as I find ACC, although not perfect, is safer than just using on ordinary dumb CC and certainly makes for a more relaxing drive. Anyway, it sounds to me like you still have ACC running, as surely slowing down so you don't crash into traffic in front, is it's main feature.

Ahhh, thanks for putting me right. Same thing applies though - it's best to keep the sensor area clean and clear, I often wipe the 4 front emergency stop + parking sensors before setting off so must add the centre front grill to that. Like I said, ACC only seems to reset after restarting the engine.

Regarding SE v SEL, to my mind not all the extra features on the latter are desirable, so the SE might actually suit suit better. The lift out rear seats are probably more comfortable in the SEL as they are 25mm higher but because they are adjustable back & fore a solid rear parcel shelf is not then practical, only a roll top is provided, so more road noise gets through to the cabin, which I'd hate. Also the larger wheels, lower profile tyres worsen the ride and increase road noise even more. I didn't like the finish on the seats of the SEL I tried, much prefering the basic cloth of the standard SE seat, but that's a matter of choice. However I do like the extra SEL brigtwork round the SEL side windows, the Sat Nav and I think it comes with a rear camera. I reckon I did well with my odd ball specced SE Tech I got from new, but you might have difficulty finding one - fixed rear seat and solid boot cover as I now prefer - I don't often have passengers in the back so that's OK, higher profile tyres that are cheaper to replace and more comfy, but additional to the standard SE it does have a Sat Nav and I had a rear camera fitted, which I'm glad of. The other SE Tech feature I really value is the Adaptive Cruise Control or ACC, the SEL doesn't actually come with that as standard, but I find it makes long distance motorway driving more relaxing but not in a bad way, as I seem to remain more alert using it on such long runs. Likely not a consideration for you, but I'm also very pleased with the 1.0 3 cyl engine in my car, it is really quiet and not audible at all on motorways and it also performs surprisingly well, long distance journeys are no problem whatsoever. It has the very nice DSG auto gearbox too, I wouldn't consider a manual car these days. I got the car a few months before Covid came along, so have only been doing around 6,000miles PA, down from the 13,000 I used to do when I was younger and travelled abroad. I thought I was beginning to have trouble with the ACC cruise control (see my recent message), but now think that it's functioning properly. The engine and car all round has been trouble free in the 4.5 years from new - regularly serviced.