rum4mo

ECP prices for parts, I've found that at least for some parts, you should check the Halfords price, I don't have anything other than the free "motoring" membership, and many times I've found Halfords to be much cheaper than ECP - which is where Halfords use to supply their ordered car parts. Maybe not in this case though, but always worth checking before placing an order. Edit:- not many places tend to match or beat PIM for genuine OEM parts - plus very fast despatch/delivery.

I've just remembered that the "safety data ref" on the labelling of both these products are different, so must be a significant "chemical makeup" between them.

I've checked the Skoda parts listing that I use/trust and, for a 2020MY Octavia, if the car is 5E - L - 000 001 > then VAQ fluid is specified as being G 060 175 A2 If the car is NX - L - 000 001 > then VAQ fluid is specified as being G 065 175 A2. I'm not a Skoda Octavia owner so the model designation doesn't mean much to me - but it will do to you.

The two Haldex fluids that I have ended up with, are VW Group G 060 175 A2 and VW Group G 65 175 A2. I was buying fluid online for a 2019 SEAT Leon Cupra VAQ, SEAT listed G 60 175 A2 - but my seller sent out G 65 175 A2, now I think that he assumed that the "G 65" version superceeded the earlier "G 60" version as it turned out that VW quote the "G 65" version for similar aged VW Golf when it has a VAQ. In the end I got a refund and bought the "correct for that car" version. Checking on many sites I found nothing to confirm that, but, I discovered that the Febi offering does claim to meet with both these VW Group Haldex fluids - so how important that is I can't say, for my money, I'd prefer to buy the version that is listed for "that" model of car.

Just to clarify, Haldex is a Borg Warner product, VAQ is a "clutch for a shaft" using Haldex bits. The VAG branded fluid seems to vary from VW Group to marque, though some of the aftermarket brands use a common fluid - but there again, VW Group don't "make" these fluids. I deferred to using what, in my case, SEAT quoted in their parts listing. It could be that these VAQ parts manufacture has been licensed out to 2 different suppliers covering different VW Group brands, and they use acceptable but different materials or processes - and so VW Group quotes 2 different fluids for different marques.

My tip is to highlight all the mounting clips positions and take a picture of it - for my wife's 2015 VW Polo 5 door, I stuck small bits of masking tape to the outer surface to highlight where they all are - and took a photo - for making refitting it easier, and removing the next time less troublesome! I ended up with a metal clip escaping and "wandering" around the rear hatch door frame - that was maybe 6 years ago, every summer I consider taking that panel off to resolve that annoying noise!

One thing that you should add in by edit'ng, is, the current car "mileage" as that could help. M25 - what more can you say, horrible place to need to be both for vehicles and people in them! This might be the start of a failure of the oil separator efficiency and it is now, or sometimes, letting too much oil enter the inlet ducting. One thing that might assist you is, check the inside of the exhaust tail pipe, if you rub the inside of it with your finger, you should only get a slight mark of "soot" on your finger. My wife's 2015 VW Polo 1.2TSI 110PS 6MT is now at 60,000miles run from new, and initially when I ended up shining an inspection light up into the exhaust (accidentally), I was amazed that it looked "shiny" - I had considered that at that age and mileage, the inside of the end of the tail pipe would be coated in black "stuff" and that only cars with GPF or DPF end up with clean looking exhausts.

Yes placing a demand on the steering system will also force the engine to restart. For many many years now, I've bought and fitted a plug in 12V DC voltmeter - Chinese made bought via ebay, having one of them does let you see what is going on wrt the charging voltage, okay these cheap - roughly £5 voltmeters will not be extremely accurate - but in my experience, they are good enough to let you work out things like why the auto stop/start is or is not operational. The battery life of the original EFB battery depends a lot on how the car has been used over its lifetime, for reference (maybe) my wife's August 2015 VW Polo 1.2TSI never had any issues with its original battery, but I had fallen into the trap of "everyone says that these EFB batteries fail quite quickly" so I bought a new "next size up" Bosch AGM battery really to be ready to swop when the original battery failed at an inconvenient time during the winter. Well that just did not happen, so after storing it and "topping it up" every few months, for a "few" years, I ended up replacing the original Exide EFB with this "one size up" AGM when the car was 10 years old. My older daughter has a May 2019 SEAT Leon Cupra, again it has an Exide EFB and when I last tested it with my CTEK battery tester, it still looks very very healthy - which is okay, I'd doubt if she ever disables auto Stop/Start and only connected it to a CTEK charger during Covid lock down period. My younger daughter has a May 2019 SEAT Arona "bells and whistles" version - they badly under use that car and it bit them in as much as they needed to call the AA out to fit a replacement EFB battery after the original Exide EFB became unuseable - that was maybe 3 winters ago.

Same thoughts as above, I’m guessing that you mean if you press the clutch pedal down while stationary and the engine has auto stopped. The suggested gear playing up is wrong.

I noticed this being mentioned as now being part of the MOT checks in my usual car mag a few months ago, so checked wife’s 2015 Polo before handing it in - still acceptable so I might replace it soon.

Lucky you, when I removed the bearings from my 2011 Audi S4, I started with air hammering the 4 screws, then clamped the bearing pack with a suitable big 10.9 grade bolt, washers and nut to keep everything together, then used a hub press plate - that worked nicely! Quite a bit of the aluminium upright in that area was badly corroded and some came out with/on the bearing assembly!

I think that the ABS sensor ring will get "stuck" to the inner face of the wheel bearing by some means during the bearing's production - the 2 that I removed were certainly still part of the bearing pack, though after you're finding, I seem to have missed a trick by not seeing just how much effort it would have taken to prise them out - they went to the tip a month ago eventually. You are correct, the securing ball screws do just that, ie keep it in place - until corrosion takes over and seizes them in place. How exactly did you manage to get it out of the upright?

Yes, ticking time bombs, they will consume the wheel sensors though while breaking up. The wheel sensor ring is a series of small magnets, so the sensor reads them as pulses as it is a Hall Effect sensor. Edit:- I blamed the failure of the RHS front one on my 2011 Audi S4 on the fact that the bearing was not "handing out" any oil/grease to that area so rusting was to blame, in your case it looks like it is a crap bearing manufacture that is to blame as there is very little sign of serious corrosion - and so that maybe bonded on, series of potted magnets, has started to de-bond from the inner face of the bearing and end up lifting up into the path of the stationary ABS sensor "arm". I'm surprised that a car of this size has just the smaller version of wheel bearing, ie the 3 screw fixing version - maybe that's "progress".

In the past, what tended to annoy me most about dealing with Kwikfit was, I'd enquire about supplying and fitting brand X model Y - and they'd come back with what they had considered a cheaper/cheapest suitable alternative - but that was not the answer to my question! I like to pay as little as I can for exactly what I'm wanting - not too much for crap - there is a difference.

The thing can be, if they spot any marking on the inner surface of the tyres - like that that will be caused when a car has been moved with a flat tyre, then nowadays typically they will declare the tyre to be unrepairable. Kwikfit tyre pricing, at least in the past, Kwikfit can offer 2 prices, one for booking online and another for turning up and asking - you can easily work out which one will be lower without putting it to the test. Last time I had a slow puncture, I made sure that I stuck a trolley jack under that side/end of the car to avoid it even resting on a deflated tyre. My older daughter seemed to get lucky when she drove her car round to her tyre place last year with a very soft/flat tyre, I warned her not to plan to try that trick again as it could get expensive, it sounds like it happened again for her last week - I've not heard what the outcome was yet!

So your AC system has a leak! First in line will be the condenser, but leak source needs to be found before replacing parts. A trip to or a home visit from, your local car HVAC operator.”

Makes you wonder what sort of clown production planner demands that any labels end up being placed in that zone - I've noticed a label being there in the past and thought that that was a really really dumb place to put a sticker. My main, so far, problem with alloys is, where I get mine powder coated mainly to reduce leaks and improve appearance, they hang the cleaned/stripped wheels up using a steel hook through the valve hole - so no powder coating etc ever gets on a small area "across" the valve sealing point, but salty winter road does and then after only 2 or 3 years, I'm back to having a slow tyre leak! I handed in 5 wheels but only 4 had tyres on them, so when I found that on the 5th wheel I sorted it out before getting a tyre and valve put on it. The other issue with this "specialist company" is, they powder coat the inner hub contacting face on wheels - and VW Group factory fitted alloy wheels, in my experience, never have anything on that area of new wheels, so I strip that area clean before using newly powder coated wheels.

If it is the snap in plate nuts that secure the rear on the undercover - the 3 that is snapped into the "Assembly carrier" - ie the front subframe, I can give you the part number for them, I can't remember where I found the part number as the parts listings doesn't seem to list these bits, but I will have it written down somewhere as I bought a set of 3 new ones as at least one of the ones on my wife's 2015 Polo had rusted out badly and so was not gripping the screw for the undercover. The other ones on the plastic parts are just U shaped plate washers which are listed in the parts listing on line, I think that it was just Febi ones that I bought via ebay. Edit:- plate washers that I bought for a 2015 VW Polo were Febi 39092. Also I bought some of the U shaped ones for the rest of the screws VW P/N N90959101.

I'd think stopping after you have been running the car and the AC for a short period in time, and connect-run your scan tool, then restart the car+AC will give you the answers that you need to know, just record ambient temperature and AC running pressure while "asking for more cooling" - then keep that info for when you check again maybe at lower temperatures so that you have a range of ambient temperatures and AC system running pressure "while working under load" - and use that for the future to access your AC's current health. I realised after I had posted that you did give the date of build of your car, so guessed that it would be R-1234yf - but just left what I had written "as is" while adding R-1234yf as the option to R-134A.

I probably meant using Google etc to answer the question "what is normal high side pressure in a car AC system?" - or similar, the cruel thing is, someone probably on briskoda.net has quoted expected high side and low side running pressures - but I've forgotten where I read that. You need to know which fridge gas is used in your, ie R-134A or the later fridge gas R-1234yf , a label under the bonnet will tell you which gas is used. Edit:- for example what is the high side and low side running pressures for a car ac system - Google Search

I reckon that using chains is a "last gasp" activity, involving getting numb fingers and hands, using lots of time to fit, then finding somewhere to pull over and remove when conditions dictate that. I've only ever used snow chains on one car, a 1979 Ford Escort 1.6 Ghia and they were used with "normal tyres" - they served their purpose, but I never ever bought new ones for later cars. Winter tyres on "one size down" tends to be the smart solution for people that think that they might end up in trouble, or want to attempt to stay in control - typically if you need to resort to using snow chains, your probably attempting to drive on unploughed snow covered roads, and eventually the underside of the car is going to make contact with the snow and so slow you down or stop you, and now you've blocked the road for snow clearing teams and emergency vehicles. Would Snocks ie snow socks not be a better idea?

Doing this will only be a first look at the system especially while it is running under load, you should be able to check for typical running (high side) pressure for the fridge gas in your system, online - ambient temperature dependent.

I've had a rusting bearing wreck an ABS wheel sensor, it was on my 2011 Audi S4, for a few years prior to this failure, I could hear a slight scraping noise, initially only using that car after it had been left unused for a few weeks, then after maybe a mile or so, that noise stopped. Then it never stopped - then when driving it out of the garage to go for its MOT, the ABS etc lights came on, game over! So, what I discovered is, that all the bigger VW Group cars do not have any protection built in for the, at least, front, ABS sensor from road grit etc - small cars like Polo/Fabia/Ibiza have a plastic shroud to help avoid this to an extent. What does help, I discovered, is that if the wheel bearings "bleed" out a very small amount of the oil in the wheel bearings, hub and bearing inner face rusting is not normally an issue, if the wheel bearings do not "bleed" out any of the oil from the wheel bearing grease, then hub inner face and bearing face rusting can be an issue, especially when combined with only using that car periodically in winter weather. After getting the ABS sensor replaced by the MOT garage, I removed the new ABS sensor, cleaned its hole in the hub carrier out, then used a piece of dowelling cut at what I thought was a suitable angle and forced that down to contact the inner face of the wheel bearing - then rotated the wheel a few times in both directions, then applied lots of ceramic grease to the ABS sensor and refitted it. I examined the new ABS only a few days/miles after my MOT garage had replaced it, and it too had started to show signs of scoring - from contacting the rust on the bearing inner surface, so I'd expect that that new ABS sensor would have only lasted a few thousand miles if I had not cleaned up the inner face of the bearing. Getting access to that inner face to do a proper job on your car will involve removing the drive shaft - if you want to avoid a repeat of this issue. As said, you need to drive the car to clear the stored faults in some of the controllers even although you have removed the fault and cleared the ABS controller fault code.

Yup, typically Mahle rebranded to VW Group item at initial engine build and typically only Mann rebranded to VW Group item for service parts. I tend to look for VW Group at sensible prices and also for current Mann prices, and buy which ever is cheapest at the time.

Just a comment from personal experience:- I contacted my local Fuchs oil sales rep as I had considered buying a "suitable/correct" oil for my cars, but from a aftermarket brand that were known to use Fuchs as their source, the question I (naively) asked was "is ***'s product ABC the as your Fuchs XYZ ?" and the answer that I got was that the additive package that they use in customer's oils is closely matched to the area of the market that they are selling into - ie price dependant. So I think that that answered my question/suspicions concerning aftermarket brands when comparing them to main stream oil brands.