rum4mo

Mintex, I seem to recall, is the "aftermarket only" member of the TMD Friction family of companies, the main players are Textar and Pagid, who both operate in the OE and aftermarket sectors - though some might consider that Pagid have a bit of strange agreement with ECP concerning the supply of some items, as, it seems, that ECP claim to be the sole importer of their parts into UK. Maybe by now TMD have themselves joined an even bigger auto parts groups, most things tend towards ZF it seems. I've used Pagid a few times with no issues, so, at least for my wife's 2015 Polo, I'd probably buy their bits for when that car needs new discs and pads, but that time has not come yet.

It does sound like being quite a bit early in the life of a car to have a faulty rear wiper - I hope that your garage fitted a suitable "like for like" replacement - as most of these small wipers are. My wife's previous car, a 2002 VW Polo did end up at maybe 8 years old, with the washer fluid spray bar rotating with the wiper arm, but I managed to sort that out with a repair kit of bits, so far, that is the only car with a rear wiper that I've ever had trouble with with the rear wiper.

My point wrt the pricing of Valeo wipers for the SEAT Arona was that they were unusually more expensive for the "exact fit" aftermarket versions for that specific car when compared with the price of Bosch "exact fit" aftermarket ones, for most cars Valeo aftermarket and Bosch aftermarket are the same price or close, just what I discovered when pricing new aftermarket wipers for that Arona. Also, but not relevant here, the recently released Valeo bacterial pollen filters for that specific car are seriously more expensive than the similar established item from Mann - but I put that down to just because that model of car and its other VW Group stablemates, are reasonably new to the market place and so prices might level out given time. I too don't plan to buy cheap or not so cheap "fit all using suitable adaptors" wipers, in fact I've found that buying NOS genuine VW Group wiper blade packs, can mean not paying much money - but doing that involves a bit more time and patience than I'd normally have. Remember Bosch is or was, or can be, a factory supplier of wiper arms and blades, just like Valeo can be. Edit:- my additional comments about "Valeo bacterial pollen filters" is probably total ba--ocks - I was thinking about Mahle's newish offerings, so ignore that bit. Valeo, in terms of their at least rear lighting assemblies that they manufacture for SEAT, have a very high failure rate in that they end up leaking, now you could say that that is down to SEAT desiring classy/stylish rear lighting cluster designs, but most smart manufacturers would try to force their customer to change their designs if it looks like the final assemblies will end up failing and so, in some way give the supplier a bad name.

I used to aim to replace like for like, sometimes that meant Bosch and sometimes that meant Valeo. On my younger daughter’s 2019 SEAT Arona, I thought that they were Valeo, but the price for Valeo wipers for that specific car were crazy when compared with the correct Bosch offering - which were slightly longer than the originals, but fitted and work perfectly. I think that VW Group, for newer cars tend to fit GM or is that MG, ie General Mogul/ Mogul General which include Champion!

Not quite, but when I went looking yesterday, I did see that site, the Vodaphone Automotive website certainly didn’t seem to be aimed at the buyer, so buying from there or another seller should work okay. I noticed that the front sensor kit requires a button to switch it on if not moving backwards, that is the same for the front genuine set I fitted to my 2011 Audi S4, after driving my wife’s 2015 VW Polo, that has front and rear sensors from factory, it can be quite easy to drive close to something in front, forgetting that the front sensors on my S4 will not be switched on - so far I’ve escaped touching anything!

I'm not up to date with this, but, when I last looked, at least VW and SEAT offered an aftermarket kit initially a re-branded Cobra Alarms kit, but then Vodaphone Auto, I think, bought over Cobra Alarms or that part of the Cobra business, and so these kits became VW or SEAT re-branded Vodaphone Auto kits. I might be wrong with this Vodaphone company name it might even be Vodaphone Automotive or similar. These kits should give the same visual appearance as the factory fitted VW Group kits, but again they will not integrate with the car's infotainment system, but, because of this, they will be seriously cheaper to get fitted to your car. I went down the "factory fit" route for my car when I bought my wife a VW Polo 1.2TSI SEL, it sort of became a project as I was interested in retro fitting as close to factory fitted as possible, and even in parts, some bought used, it cost a serious chunk of money, but it kept me happy! If VW Group, or as in your case, Skoda, do not still sell these kits, then maybe look up Vodaphone Automotive or Auto and see if they still sell these kits.

Absolutely, I've never waited until wiper blades get that bad, it is one thing expecting quite a few years of use out of wiper blades on a car that gets garaged and is only outside for short periods, but another for cars left outside at all times, sunlight will be the main reason that they go hard.

As per @AGFalco posting, that is what I did back in 2015 when we replaced my wife's 2002 VW Polo, I think that I got quotes to supply from 3 online brokers, but, if you have a car that still has quite a bit of value, then off loading that first some way out with the dealership chain must be the way to go, if I were you I'd be approaching a dealership for a price to hand that car over and walk away, doing that will get you see how little you can claw back by doing that!

Hummmm, some of the time, as some people have discovered, Carista have not got things right, most people using VCDS, hopefully, will only be making changes that they understand, some people using Carista will be trusting that Carista have fully tested all these "one click" changes as they probably know zip all about how it is being achieved by Carista. By the way, I do have VCDS and use Carista - but I only use Carista for simple and hopefully well tested and fool proof changes like service resets.

Audi use closed cell preformed hard foam stuff in these positions on my S4, and the mice just loved it, they also loved the exact same material under the wheel arch in my daughter's previous 2009 SEAT Ibiza, and the field mice loved that as well. Well at least the local field mouse family that hung about in Winter 2017 did, so all got trapped! I always thought that the plan was to make sure that all "external" materials in modern cars repelled rodents.

Sorry I was being lazy, the last letter. So CJZC = 90PS and CJZD = 110PS. I suppose all plastics age and so either flow or go hard, so that I think, is just a cop out answer. I thought that after a certain date, all MOT stations needed to have a means to assess dampers, maybe not. My wife's 2015 VW Polo got its latest MOT in late July/early August, and passed as usual with no advisories, but 14 days later there was a clanking sort of noise coming from the front right hand side suspension, I examined the suspension while the car was up on wooden ramps and could not detect any issues, a week later I raised it up off its wheels onto 4 jack stands, and then I spotted that the TCA rear rubber voided mounted was starting to separate from the metal insert - so maybe that is what was causing that clunking, which has not returned over the past month - and that means that that MOT person did a good job as it was not yet starting to get to the advisory stage in its service life. I am going to replace the rear bump stops on that 2015 Polo soon, and I'll not be grumpy if the rear dampers are not now dampers, they look okay with no misting, but doing that job will give me a chance to check them both and replace if necessary. VW Group seem to advise against warranty replacement of dampers, especially front ones if they are misting, to me, I'd think that is oil is misting out, then gas will also be getting out! My daughter's 2019 Leon Cupra has misting front dampers, that was noted back in May, but I'd rather she got a VW Group Indie to replace them as they are adaptive.

I'll just add in, as the question has been asked, that I tend to fit "Audi TT Jacking Point Protectors" to the 4 points on these cars where it has been deemed safe/suitable to use a trolley jack on - then use jack stands with suitably shaped and padded at the 4 side sill strong points.

By the way, the 90PS is a "C" and the 110PS is a "D" - to answer the question why 2 output power ratings for one engine code.

I tried a couple of versions of these springs and preferred the ones from the MK1 Sharan etc which are now listed as being 7M0 615 295 (LHS) and 7M0 615 296 (RHS), I fitted the same versions to my wife's 2002 VW Polo and her later 2015 VW Polo - I'm just adding this info in case someone else has yet to feel the desire/need to fit these return springs.

I agree but as that age of car, Polo was fitted with droplinks that might have U profile plastic “rods” I wanted to replace with that or whatever was the latest offering - the note in the parts listing made it clear that both sides must be replaced when one side is being replaced, so I interpreted that to mean that this item had been revised. Anyway latest version seems to have quite a large(er) pair of ball joints and maybe tubular rods.

Talk to your local Skoda dealership parts department, I’ve rebuilt my wife’s 2015 VW Polo when it’s mirror got trashed, maybe that plastic window is part of the indicator assembly, I’d think that all parts are available maybe even from stock, if not they will order them in for you.

I bought mine from ECP, branded as Lemforder and with that VW Group part number moulded into the rubber, £13.50 each a couple of weeks or so ago. Edit:- for some reason I bought VW Group drop links, and doing that hurt my wallet a bit!

I bought my download from easymanuals.co.uk, so you’d be better to buy a download for your car as there would be more relevant info in it.

I have downloaded a copy of the official VW workshop manual for my wife’s 2015 VW Polo 1.2TSI, these bolts are the same part number as for your Fabia, and the recommendation is “replace” these bolts and nut, so I’ve gone with that.

Well I can only go back as far as 2000 in the VW Group world of motoring, and all 6, 3 VWs, 2 SEAT and 1 Audi, have all had that feature, so its been around for a while now.

I would think that a proper Car AC fixer would be able to change that leaking valve insert from his stock of bits, and if that went okay, vac out and recharge the system, maybe even a mobile AC fixer that comes to you.

You can get a copy of the official workshop manual from www.easymanuals.co.uk - which will be just a copy of whatever they grabbed from erWin at an earlier point in time, or reg with erWin Skoda and get the latest version.

Yes, seems like most people use an OE spanner to get that nut off, also VW say that it is okay to crosswire inserts if you end up damaging the thread in the captive nut for the front bolt. I’ve got PB blaster and PlusGas to try to avoid ending up with that happening.

Some of the aftermarket parts suppliers do offer a "support" parts kit and reference this in their online catalogue - well Lemforder do anyway, but, their kit of bits for this task includes what to me, seems like a couple of extra bolts which going by the picture of the kit are a couple of subframe fixing bolts - though it could be that on some Fabia/Polo/Ibiza/A1/etc variants/ages these extra bolts are required. Also, they offer the same extra bolts for the cars with the earlier version of TCA.

Yes, I bought the only Haynes manual in paper form when my wife bought her VW Polo 1.2TSI back in 2015 - or as soon as Haynes had launched one that sort of covered some aspects of that or earlier 6R version of Polo, it seemed to be better than nothing and I used it to get torques etc when working on a 2009 SEAT Ibiza, but the other day when looking through it before replacing the front TCA rear bushes, Haynes certainly seemed to have "lightened" their approach to repair manual writing! Luckily I already have erWin for all our cars.