rum4mo

I have a very gloomy view of working or resurrecting older cars, ie a hobby/project car, which is really a horrible situation to be in when you like working on cars! If that car was just a selected tin box, bought cheaply and needed to get to work etc, then making choices about its future can be easy if you can fund a replacement. My wife's previous cars were all household tools and required for her to function as a working mother, so when I finally totted up the price for me to get it back to being as reliable as it needed to be, as it needed 4 discs and pads, exhaust, another cam belt and some welding/painting and some other latent or current issues, at 13 years and 105K miles, I considered that having owned it from new, that it had served us well, though its early life was peppered with annoying "should not be happening" costly failures, so it was time to replace it - and we could afford to do that. Your car sounds like it was deliberately looked out for, so it can not be considered to be just a tin box for you - it would be handy if you could grab a horrible cheap tin box to keep you mobile and quietly refurbished this treasured car. I am retired so I could live with having a project/hobby car - but maybe with time that is what my 2011 Audi S4 is becoming, I'm just doing it in a different way, ie buying a pleasant newish car and keeping it for a very long time, I know that we will replace my wife's 2015 Polo before that S4 gets replaced, just over 11 years old and 27K miles, only used for "trips away" and circumstances over the past 2 years have sort of messed up that! I have a friend, also retired, he spent his entire working life buying and using well used SAABs, then ended up with a 1974(?) SAAB 96 as a treat/toy while still running quite old high mileage SAAB 9-5s one for his wife, a sedan and one for him an estate, well repeated reliability issues meant both of them ran out of life and were taken away by the local scrappy, to my amazement he then bought a 2 years old VW T-Roc, and then bought another project car, this time a SAAB 900 convertible, which needs serious welding and painting, but he never seems to have enough time to use or work on these classics, you can make life a bummer sometimes, I keep get pestered by ex work retired friends claiming that I need a project car in my life!

Yes, as I said that Aug built 2002 Polo did not have any covers low down, so it was just getting down and swopping switches. Now, I'd advise that you source a genuine latest version as this switch has been evolved a few times, in that Polo's life time with us, I think that the switch or its end changed colour to denote that a revised version was now fitted, then its design/shape changed and with that second change came a change in method to fit it, though this later one could be "reset" to its original setting/length which it was said the earlier ones might not have been able to do, so messing about after fitting the later version incorrectly is now possible - having replaced the original version with the first improved version, I did end up messing up fitting the second one, so I did need to reset it and refit it. As always, someone will have had an entirely different experience, but such is life! Edit:- there are or used to be many youtube videos on changing these switches, and even some threads in this forum.

My wife's previous car, was a 2002 VW Polo 1.4 SE 16V 75PS so that means having the low max power, useless soft torque curve and quite poor fuel economy Polo option - my error, her previous car was a 1.6Zetec engined Fiesta 90PS! As it was a 2003 MY SE, and I knew that the next refresh of UK was to include 15" Melbournes alloys, as I was doing the "save loads on personally importing", I spec'd it up with them and many other things that these robbers VW UK charge a fortune for. So, a few severe winters later I bought a set of 14" steels for winter use with winter tyres, it was only then that I realised just how crashy the suspension was in summer time with the 15" alloys on, her current car is a 2015 VW Polo 1.2TSI 110PS and all the previous car's issues are in the past and also, while it has 16" alloys on in summer and 15" on in winter, the difference in "ride" is not really as noticeable as it was with the 2002 Polo. I quite like a "firm" ride from a car's suspension, my old 2000 Passat 4Motion replaced a 1991 VX Cav GSI 4X4, that old Cav GSI 4X4 suspension was firm by compliant enough, the Passat 4Motion felt a lot like you were sitting on top of it and not part of it or in it, now I have 2011 Audi S4 and it feels a lot like the old 1991 Cav GSI 4X4 - which is good, so I finally got back to where I was 20 years previously. VW dealerships claimed that all the Passat "V" models had sports suspension, but that was nonsense, none of them got fitted with the sports suspension option especially when supplied via VW UK. Of course I could have thrown away all the factory fitted suspension and replaced with aftermarket options or VW sourced options, but I could not consider dumping usable parts, so I just tolerated it!

I've replaced the brake pedal switch twice on a 2002 Polo, for some reason VW never got round to fitting the lower covers on the dash which meant nothing had to be removed to reach that switch.

Fair enough, so back to trickier things causing this, a set of plastic concentric bore adaptors would have been a quick cheap fix, at least that question has been asked - good luck!

The acid test would be to find out what the VW part number is on these rims, I wonder what the centre bore of the Golf Mk4 is, or if it is the same as a 9N Polo, if it is just a centre bore hole in the wheels that is too big, then fitting suitable nylon concentric bore adaptors to these wheels should sort things out.

Not as far as I know, maybe in theory they are listed as being offered, but that was as far as it went. Okay they were offered on the earlier Polo GTI ie 6N last of the true "VW" Polos before the change to the Fabia based Polos, in late 2001/early 2002. Edit:- you will notice that none of the alloys used at factory on 9N Polo are on that list, these seem to be pre "new Polo" wheel options, or even dealer fit post sale options.

One other thing, what did things look like when you removed a 16" VW Montreal from your car, did you spot an adaptor to change the fixing bolt spacing from 5 X 100 to 5 X 11?, I've forgotten the PCD of these Montreal either 112 or 115, and if so, was it a VW specific adaptor that had built into it a bore diameter change to help centre these wheels? Normally when you fit wheels that have a different centre bore, you can fit a "bore changer" into the centre bore of the new wheels and that will then fit snuggly to the car's hub centre bore, but if your car has already got an adaptor on that hub, there probably will now not be an centre bore projection, so that easy fix will not work for you.

I don't think Montreal in 16" were ever fitted to these cars at the factory, Melbourne in 15" were! So I'd think that you have found the possible root cause of this problem - I ordered up a new VW Polo from round about that age, never ever factory fitted Montreals in 16" - they are Golf/Vento wheels. Grab the 15" Melbournes ASAP and fix your car.

@hadleybuff, remember that these engines are turbo charged so it will take a lot more clogging up before you notice the power drop, in the modern VW Group world, the worst offender of GDI engines is the non turbo'd ones they tend to be fitted into higher performance cars which it seems leads to double trouble, first the drop off in max power gets noticed sooner, and that type of owner/driver just can not put up with that, most people with a 1.0TSI or a 1.2TSI will probably just put up with it a lot longer, maybe even never needing to get it cleaned up - or so I'm hoping!

Maybe a silly sounding question, but what wheels size and tyre size are currently fitted to that car, the VW Polo wheels that @Annoying Pentium pointed you to would have been what was fitted to that car when it left the factory ie (5X100) ALLOY WHEELS 195/55R15 (6Q0601025L), I reckon that as time went on some of these Polos ended up with earlier Golf wheels and so bigger tyres, or same age Golf wheels with adaptors and maybe even without bore centre bore size "correctors". So, could you please tell us, or at least me, what size of tyres are on all 4 wheels and which VW wheels are on it now.

Yes, I agree with all the above, though I thought that at least Skoda and maybe SEAT actually did code their batteries correctly in the factory - I do know from checking a few VWs that they don't seem to bother so everything goes out with "JCB" and "1111111111" - so as suggested above, that car's battery system does look a lot like it has already been recoded from "1111111111" to "1111111112" and maybe even the "fleece" changed to "EFB", so yes, I'd try changing that battery serial number back to "factory setting", ie "1111111111" and change the technology from "EFB" to "fleece" - just changing it to "fleece" might force the battery to be seen as a new one, but just to be sure, change the serial number to anything other than what it is presently - so why not change back to "1111111111" the actual value of the serial number or its changed value means nothing to the battery system, it is changing it that forces the battery system to restart the battery learning system. If you are worried about your Skoda dealer discovering that you have made battery setting changes, just do as I suggest, then a day later change the serial number back to "1111111112" as that will have it back to what the garage changed it to and still prompted the battery system to "restart" it's new battery learning.

One thing, but maybe not your initial fault, I've found that a CTEK smart and expensive charger, can quietly go into a "safety operating mode" - which is a lot better than it over charging - but it can leave you with an under charged battery, I've forgotten what the lowest quoted charging voltage is, very probably round 12.4-12.6V it will be on the booklet with the charger as well as on their website! This seems to happen when you believe the instructions that when you switch it off - the next time you use it, it will automatically operate in the same mode, well the indicators will confirm that, but if you connect a voltmeter across the charging leads, you might just find the charging voltage is fixed throughout the charging profile, to the safe minimum level - been there done that and considered that it was U/S, though after cycling it through the different modes, it started working okay again - just a warning, nothing else!

Sheared wiring where the lines come into the hatch from the car's body? This sort of problem has been troubling quite a few Fabia/Polo/Ibiza for many years, even down to "trouble" inside a black plug<>socket within the hatch on some same age Ibizas - driving owners a bit mad especially after replacing the "obvious" parts. Good luck, hopefully either my suggestion turns out to be correct or others will chip in with a solution.

One strange thing that I discovered after owning and using my CTEK smart charger for almost a year was, at least in the case of CTEK chargers, normal AGM batteries should be charged using the same charging profile as WET ie EFB batteries, the CTEK AGM charging profiles are for special AGM batteries which have a different construction to normal AGM like used in our cars. After reading that info in the CTEK charger paperwork, I stopped using the AGM option when charging my normal factory fitted AGM battery in my Audi S4. Charging voltages especially when measured using a cheap 12V DVM in a power socket, seems to indicate a lower voltage level with the engine off, than when measuring across the battery, though, on our VW Polo and Audi S4 I can only measure that when the ignition is one. On either car, charging voltages tend to be the same as near as "damn it", getting up to even 15V on the over run at times - if the battery needs it or can accept it. If that dealer can see/check battery data using their other battery coding tool, then surely they can confirm to Skoda that it was set up wrongly at factory - I do agree that the intention is always to code a normal AGM as "fleece", as I intend to use when I eventually need to replace the EFB in my wife's 2015 VW Polo with a normal AGM battery. Edit:- I'm guessing that you know that the plan is just to keep that battery well enough charged to be able to restart that car the next time it is used, which tends to mean "quite low" battery voltage if you compare that with what you used to find with older cars.

Maybe the thing is, all/most of these dongles and self contained ones with a display, make it clear that they cover "engine malfunction" faults, as all new cars built since maybe 2000 onwards must comply with OBD codes for engine emissions faults - that makes it easy for simple engine emissions faults, but probably as you know, most newish cars have quite a few smart controllers in them that can assist with fault diagnosing, VW Group seem to be very good in providing an extensive list of fault codes for issues across the complete car. So, to make life easy, you should aim to get either a self contained scan tool that will give you assess to all VW Group smart controllers - that will be in the description, maybe look on the Gendan website for examples that will allow you to read steering system faults on VW Group cars. Unfortunately some time ago, there were a few self contained scan tools for VW Group cars including up to the age of your car and they only cost £35, as they could only be used on VW Group cars up to a certain age maybe 2011 in some cases, they have disappeared from sale and very few seem to appear second hand, I sold mine years ago for what I paid for it. Diagnostics moves on as well as VW Group probably trying to move ahead of the DIYer/non franchised workshops so that cars need to be handed in for fault finding, I've had VW Group scan tools since 2001ish and so far had to trade in and replace with a more modern version of VAG-COM now VCDS twice which costs quite a bit of money, but it does allow me to do what I feel that I need to be able to do while I own VW Group cars.

It is good that your scan tool has been proved to work for checking other controllers like steering, I'm right in assuming that you have used it for that on a Micra? So, it must be down to lack of compatibility with the way that VW Group cars use (Protocol) for their "other" controllers, reading basic engine fault codes will be possible though. Edit:- I've only ever used Carista with my BT dongle, have some others on my iphone but never felt the need to use them, so I can't comment on how they would work on VW Group cars. I would have expected that your scan tool would have reported other unknown to it fault codes as "manufacturer specific fault codes" which would not comply with OBD2.

Do all or any of these scan tool progs that you have been using have the ability to check ALL smart controllers on all cars? Or, in the past have you only been checking for EOBD engine emissions faults?

I buy a cheap bag of sawdust/wood shavings and soak up the old brake fluid in that, as that seems to be an accepted way of preparing it for disposal in the grey landfill bin. Edit:- our "landfill" gets fed into a furnace for conversion into heat energy - so the story goes.

From looking at various official VW Group workshop manuals, it seems every possible car from the smallest to the biggest "uses" 1ltr for an auto and 1.15ltr for a manual trans. I've always managed with 1ltr though. I just remove as much as possible of the old fluid, "take" 0.35ltr from the longest rear line, 0.25ltr from the other rear line and 0.15ltr from each front line. The official quantities are 0.3ltr from each rear lines and 0.2ltr from each front lines, and if you include the clutch, 0.15ltr from that line. Not an issue, just a comment, I normally buy brake fluid from any VW Group dealership - it is normally cheaper than buying on the high street, so, today I dropped into a Skoda dealership as I was passing by, "we have never ever sold brake fluid in 1litre tins, it is always bought in in bulk for the workshop", oh well, different person than that that served me 2 years ago! My local Audi dealership was near there but I didn't really feel the need to go through the "meet and greet" and being shown to a seat and offered tea/coffee by a pretty lady, then waiting for the parts guy to appear from behind the glossy showroom, I can put up with that if I need spares though. So, on the way home I stopped off at a VW Van Centre, where I had bought brake fluid from in the past - same story! Finally I gave in and found that D Cox a dealership in Morecombe was selling brake fluid at a very good price, so I bought a couple of tins. I had heard about VW not selling brake fluid maybe 2 years ago, from an old guy down in London, but my local VW dealership, when phoned rubbished that story and said that they still stocked plenty of 1litre tins.

As BASF are using different colours for their differing "brews" - though maybe the differences are not too obvious, if I was guessing, I'd think that G12+ was also a G40 product.

Check to see what technology your current battery is, it should be EFB, note down its capacity in AmpHours and cold cranking rating in Amps CCA EN, just so that you are comparing like with like. If your car has a standard battery due to a previous owner saving a bit of money, then don't repeat that mistake, either source an EFB or AGM. I'll second Tayna, never used them but if local sources did not provide me with a good price and brand, I'd buy from Tayna.

One other question, and maybe a question that I asked first, what is the reg date of your Fabia, as VW Group seem to have a habit of running through their stocks of reservoirs before changing to the next one, so a late car with G13 on its reservoir, could well be an early car with G12evo, the car's documentation will be up to date though. Edit:- always remember that while you should never use an earlier version to add to a later version of coolant, in the range of VW Group, or BASF versions I've listed in my posting above, the worst thing that will happen is you will end up with a slightly "lower" form of overall protection and that will be due to "newest version will always be best" - that in this case of G30, G40, GG40, G65 will not be a disaster like it could be with other mixes.

Glysantin BASF make the coolant for VW Group, G65 is to VW spec TL 774 – L which is G12evo Glysantin BASF make the coolant for VW Group, GG40 is to VW spec TL 774 – J which is G13 Glysantin BASF make the coolant for VW Group, G40 is to VW spec TL 774 – G which is G12++ Glysantin BASF make the coolant for VW Group, G30 is to VW spec TL 774 – D/F which is G12 So, for your car I'd think that G40 is the "oldest/earliest" version of Glysantin that is best to use. Currently, as far as I have found, Comma do not provide any later version of coolants for VW Group, but when they do, as before it will have the name of the BASF coolant in it, which will be G65. The better plan will be to find out where the coolant leak is and fix it.

If it is an EA211 engine, ie 1.2TSI or 1.0TSI, then it is only the washer that needs replacing, though from memory that crush washer costs same or more than the previous plug-washer combo used on some other engines. Though I tend to keep on buying these washers from a VW Group parts department. Edit:- initially I did buy a new/spare plug as well as washers, but that was only for convenience in case I dropped the fitted plug and washer into my oil basin/catcher, ie so that I could fit the spare plug and new washer etc while waiting to retrieve the previous plug and washer from the oil while decanting it into an container prior to disposal.