rum4mo

I've always considered that not having a physical ESP button on newer cars is a bit of a backward step, okay normally you don't need to have to use it, but when you do, it helps if you can just press a button instead of searching for it in screen menus as time/momentum has been lost by then.

Good fun extracting pins from connectors, well, if you like doing that sort of thing. I've got a few extractors and also use sharp pins as when necessary. I've got a damaged ABS wheels sensor connector on my 2011 Audi S4, I think that the plastic used on that individual connector has aged badly, I've bought a new connector from an online supplier so will probably take the easy way out with this one as I have plenty access - ie, take my very small vice out to the car and carefully crush the body enough to make it crack, that cunning plan worked for me a few years ago in the same area of another VW car, it was brake pad wear lead that time.

Typically if it is a flap motor issue, you will hear the noise as soon as you switch on the ignition - even before engine start, as long as the cabin fan is running.

Checking the operation of the many flap motors using a scan tool like VCDS should reveal "what is being asked for" is not "what is happening" - and that should confirm if it is a flap motor assembly and which one it is. If it is a flap motor, what it is doing is "hunting" or has broken a bracket so the motor teeth are slipping over the flap mechanism teeth. Hunting happens when the system's positional feedback for a flap motor has become intermittent so when the system demands a position change, the motor responds but the system is not receiving good confirmation of the flap now being at that new position - so it changes the voltage drive to the flap motor and maybe it now has moved past the required position due to something like contamination on the positional feedback track or its wiper, and a correction drive voltage is sent out - repeat repeat repeat etc, so that flap motor and flap end up moving back and forwards repeatedly, hence the clonking.

Or what @Crasher suggested earlier.

I know where the dongle that the VW dealer's workshop left in my wife's 2015 Polo went after we collected that car after its first service - at least I think that I know where it is - and it isn't in the car, nor did I take up the AA's offer of a similar dongle. Edit:- just to make it clear, that VW workshop just left the box etc on the passenger seat, so they didn't feel the need to force it on us, just supply it as probably requested by VW.

Sounds like sloppy design - but who would expect any better from insurance companies as they are just looking after their own interests.

Good stuff, yes I know that doing this to your car costs quite a bit, but if like me you felt the need to add that to a car, then why not, I did this to my slightly used 2011 Audi S4, I didn't think much about wanting/needing front OPS - that was until I bought my wife a new Polo SEL and it had front and rear PDC, so I just had to have that on my car. Ten years on, everything still working as intended, the only weakness for my car's version of PDC is that if I drive, for instance, into a parking slot with a wall/fence ahead of me, I can't expect the front sensors to "arm" - I need to remember to use the "parking switch" - luckily I discovered that before stupidly hitting anything. From car starting when parked in a confined space they will "arm" but not when just driving from an open/clear area into a confined space, also once "armed" for instance carrying out a multi point turn around, they will remain "armed" until the car ground speed exceeds a certain limit. I've put that down to my 2011 Audi S4 having an earlier version of this sort of system.

The later cars tend to use 2Q0 819 422 or 2Q0 819 422 A, which is a much less substantial bit of plastic and does not use the sliding locking elements.

The pollen filter cover type/design has changed on some of these VAG cars, so used ones appear for around £40 - which is a bit of a joke, no longer a substantial thick plastic cover with 2 sliding clips. Very tricky to remove your first one, but I made a note of “how it’s done” and that worked this time.

My younger daughter’s 2019 Arona with the 115PS version of that engine, at some time of it’s life, ended up with the turbo inlet pipe (manifold) getting disassembled and so there was an air gap at that point! It could have been her local VAG Indie as they did record that they had checked the air filter element at its 2024 service. I checked the air filter last week and was pleased to see that the replacement turbo inlet pipe was still in one piece - they had replaced the air filter at its 2025 service. The cover for the pollen filter had a hole in it, ie a chunk of plastic missing, I applied strong fabric reinforced tape to both sides of it to seal it up. I’m not placing any blame on that garage for doing that as the plastic used is shocking for that application, but in both cases, surely the fitter/mechanic knew that they had broken something and just left it. Accidents/breakages can happen but an honest worker should surely report it and/or fix it either at the garage’s cost or the customer’s cost.

Probably just needs you to remove the top cam belt cover, and have a look inside and turn the engine over at least a complete revolution, also have a look to make sure that there are no signs of oil escaping from the variable timing cam sprockets.

I'm sure that I have added a couple of sellers of them to my eBay "watch" list for when I'll need to buy one or two!

While VCDS can be used to “calibrate” the movement, starting with the cogs in the correct position is essential. Crazy as it seems, that is why from day one of buying VW Group cars, I “needed” to have Climatronic! Then I needed to buy VCDS for other reasons.

At least that design of coolant reservoir has a cap that you can use a convenient sized bit of metal in (the slot), to help open it, I tend to wash the cap and that clears most of the solidified dried coolant off it and so it becomes a bit easier to open and close. Newer models of cars tend to have the later version of caps which are quite tricky to remove - in fact the tool supply industry has responded by providing "sockets" that fit the various sizes and shapes, I think that VW Group ended up using caps that have an odd number of flats on them, which is a bit challenging for people that use a set of pipe grips to help them open them! Ford, I seem to remember, chose an even number of flats on their later cars. Why has this become a difficult job, okay in an ideal world you should never need to top up coolant - but when you feel the need to, provoked probably by VW Group crappy plastic pump/thermostat assemblies, then life becomes annoying struggling with these later designs of coolant reservoir caps.

If just replacing the actual bare struts solves your problem, then that was the right thing to do - but if it doesn't, what next - starting with the cheapest to replace part and keep going until you have solved this? There is a sort of smart way to avoid re-working this area, and in my world where I don't want or need to revisit this area, I always replace the top mounting and bearing, the bump stop might not need replacing, but you will only know that after you have taken the car off the road, if you can live with repeating all this work a few times, then replacing just first the strut should work okay for you.

Just a though, are you in the AA and have included being helped from home as well as when out on the road? If so, after you buy and receive this new assembly of bits, log this emissions issue with the AA and say that you'd rather not drive the car in its present state, there is a good possibility that they would come out and fit that part FOC. This might depend on your local area as to how they handle this situation. Many years ago, I messed up or got into a mess after replacing the fuel filter on my 2000 VW Passat 4Motion - and ended up with a "non starter" - they did attend and sought help from another patrol who "knew V6s" - and he quickly solved my problem which was oil getting washed out from the piston rings by the injected petrol as I tried to get the fuel through, to the select few, a well known situation especially with Jaguars and Audi V engines!

Ah, I can see now that both the black plastic part AND the grey or now white part get changed as a single set of bits. I tend to get suspicious when a car manufacturer changes the body colour of a part, it is not normally just down to a change of available material, the change tends to reflect a significant change in that part, ie it required modifying, and to be easily identified when or if the later part has been fitted. Replacing the spark plugs on these engines, is, in my mind not a job for a beginner in this "car work" stuff, even a local VW Group Indie in South London managed to mess up the charge pipe assembly when taking the air filter assembly off my younger daughter's 2019 SEAT Arona - and either did not notice what they had done or just didn't want to report that that car now needed a new charge pipe! I only bumped into that mess when I removed the air filter to replace the spark plugs, but time did not allow for me to source a new part before they headed back down South. What had happened was that while the charge pipe is a single assembly, it gets fabricated from two parts and a sealing part, the 2 parts ad been pulled/ripped apart so there was now a gap in the charge pipe, not a good plan if you want to keep crap out of the turbo inlet! Taking the coils off requires using a specific tool or being very careful and new spark plugs need a ring of proper non conducting paste applying to the ends of the coils possibly to avoid the coil "contacts" from grabbing/gripping the ceramic on the spark plugs - which would need to extra work getting that off the plug after it had separated from the main part of the coil. All that is easy stuff when you have all the tools and paste - and an idea what you are up against. The strong constant tension clips on these air cleaner pipes are best removed using the correct sort of tool.

Now that you've been given a part number, maybe just what the part numbering is on the black rectangular part that I was directing you to earlier - the one shown in your picture with the brake fluid reservoir and coolant reservoir in it - that rectangular part sits between them. I could be completely wrong, but after you have checked that number against what is printed on it, I'll know for sure. I do agree however that the grey cylindrical part does look like purge valves used to look like - but I was being swayed by the shape of the part in the parts listing - which is exactly what you have now been shown, though sometimes parts diagrams are just generic. Air filter, fair enough, though not one area that I would have taken a chance with, Mann has always worked for me, and it seems VW Group.

Just one last thing(maybe), which brand of air filter did you fit, I'm only asking this as I remember a friend fitting what his local motor factor offered him, to his daughter's old 2004 VW Polo 1.2 during servicing it, and that car from that point on ran like a bag of nails, he re-fitted the old maybe VW or Mann equivalent air filter, and all was good, so he bought either a genuine VW Group air filter or a Mann equivalent(same item) and that worked like the original, money back on "not so good" air filter. I've not heard of anyone else having a problem with a cheap air filter - but I'm just asking the question.

I think that the fuel tank purge valve/solenoid has changed shape/look dramatically in recent years, can you work out what the flattish rectangular box is at the RHS of the car, as that is roughly where this sort of device would be located. The two pipes that appear at the area between the brake fluid reservoir and the coolant reservoir, one of them is the pipe that vents the tank or at least flushes the carbon canister - and probably the one that is cheap and nasty ribbed plastic and so has a rough inner bore, as opposed to being a more suitable and expensive pre formed smooth bored rubber pipe.

No, that is a pressure sensor - or in this case a vacuum sensor on the brake servo line.

The alarm horn unit has its own battery, so I'd think that the only way to silence it would be to locate it and unplug and maybe remove it. I've never checked to see what happens when the car battery is disconnected, in terms of how the alarm would react if the car was then mechanically locked.

Correct, the action of removing the entire fridge gas charge - and the recovery machine will note the recovered weight, is to be able to comply with the requirement to never load fridge gases into a leaking system as that just leads to a small extra bit of global warming. The by product or bonus in doing that is that any accumulated moisture is also removed. Loading back in the system design weight of fridge gas is essential when using these "dumbed down" fridge gas handling machines, as these AC systems are designed with a "critical" weight of fridge gas - which also makes using these "dumbed down" machines kind of fool proof to a basic operator who has had the training and so is certified to handle fridge gases, without having a lot of fridge gas system knowledge.

The only way nowadays that an AC car system is serviced is to fully recover the fridge gas charge and weigh it, apply a vacuum to the system to remove any accumulated moisture, and recharge the system with the correct weight of fridge gas. Out of interest they might tell you what the recovered weight was as compared with the newly charged weight - though you might not be interested in knowing that, my older daughter's 2019 Leon Cupra ended up with a "crap" AC system during the past hot weather, I told her to get it serviced and that sorted it out, perhaps she will buy a bio bomb to sanitise the evaporator now as well. So, that car had lost too much of its fridge gas over a period of 6 years, if your one is still okay, maybe play the system and get its AC serviced as an individual task - if that is allowed within your service plan, but don't do this until next early summer as that should give you a longer period before you will need to pay to get it recharged/serviced the next time.