rum4mo

I always just stick with whatever the manufacturer recommends when it comes to service items, the " 4 years" term will correspond with many engine starts for each 100 miles travelled and shorter journeys whereas the 40,000 miles will corresponds with fewer engine starts per 100 miles travelled and so longer journeys.

Depends on where you are located in Scotland and how far you are willing to travel. AVW in Edinburgh removed CP for me a few years ago, they have all the necessary VW Group equipment and licenses to do that sort of thing, so I'd reckon it would include these later ways of enabling retro fits/functions. I'm sure that there will be other VW Group Indies that have invested in all the necessary kit like AVW have done, it just makes sense.

The clutch pressure plate or "cover" might have suffered a failure like a crack/split in the diaphragm - although that would lead to the clutch slipping if you were hard on it, like "booting it" when in 4th gear at low road speeds.

@hetty1, I think that you have missed a trick there, as with most things, there are no "free lunches", saving money by getting repair and servicing work done outside of any marque's dealership circle will always end up saving you money if nothing else goes wrong, but when it does you will be on your own basically, I've never ever been in doubt about this and know I run the risk of missing out on out of warranty monitory help, but it suits me.

Sorry for not posting to this thread earlier, but I don't think that removing the plug to any spark plugs and then refitting them will have caused this. The reason why you are getting this warning I can't say, maybe the charge level was low in the battery when you next tried to start it.

I wonder if now you should buy one of these cheap DVM that plug into the "ciggy lighter" socket, and then keep an eye on the voltage while driving, typically (though that is if the battery is already charged up to its preferred roughly 70% level - my guess), while accelerating and in normal use, the voltage will be quite low maybe round about 12.4V but when you are braking or on the overrun it should or could depending on present battery charge state, turn the charging voltage up to at least 14.5V sometimes even more for a short time. Now if you find that it is never or not very often making use of the wasted engine power or momentum to charge the battery up, then I'd think that the charge control system dongle or that area of the car' controller needs recoding or replaced. Once you have that info you could approach Skoda with it, okay the cheap plug in DVM is not an officially approved diagnostic tool and it will not be 100% accurate, but it will be easily accurate enough and give consistent readings so you can still use that to gauge the car's charge control system performance. I'd think that Skoda has a well tested way of dealing with these issues:- during visit 1 check battery and recharge and sent customer away, if visit 2 happens now understand customer just can't be fobbed off so try something else - easiest one will be to replace the battery (at the customer's expense), if visit 3 happens you have a persistent customer that wants to pay for more - or maybe even start digging deeper and sort it out even if it means having to charge Skoda UK for your warranty support. I'd be resisting "replace the battery at the customer's expense" option as they have tested that battery and it seems to still be fit for use.

Take a look at your car's battery, it normally quotes the CCC rating in DIN and EN and others maybe SAE. CCC is Cold Cranking Current in amps, and that measurement can be used to make an rough assessment of that battery's health I'd guess that your car battery is a 59Ah EFB with a CCA of 320A DIN / 640A EN, so the test is just showing that your battery is still okay.

Yup, Panasonic, although for some reason I thought they were Sony! Anyway, from the opening posting, I was getting the impression that "the car not recognising this key" was an immobiliser issue and so nothing to do with the coin cell in the key which just talks to to remote central locking module in the car. Sorry if I'm wrong, so if it is only a remote central locking issue, then yes the first thing to do is check the coin sell voltage or just replace it with a new Panasonic battery.

In reality, for a standard manufacturer supplied spare wheel, the tyre width will decrease and the aspect ratio will increase quite a bit, as the plan is just to retain the same rolling radius and cheaply provide a safe temporary spare wheel.

In my and other's experience, these TPMS will throw up a false warning once in "a blue moon", once the system has tripped the warning light it will stay on even if that event was false. I think that all you can do is to stop or get off the road ASAP and check all the tyres, if they look and feel okay to a kick, reset the TPMS and continue your journey, if air is escaping the TPMS warning will come back on then you will know that you more than likely have a slow puncture. It is alarming and annoying when that warning goes off, but better having it than not having it I think.

I could be wrong, but I thought that all main dealerships of all major car marques kept a small bit of "slack" in their workshop loading, maybe even paid to operate like that, to be able to attend to this sort of "in warranty" breakdown situation, okay that would not stop the owner being carless for maybe a day while they sourced parts, but it would mean they got better/quicker attention than just any old "walk in breakdown". The paying for this repair will initially be the only way that you get your car back quickly, after that, time to get tough/rough with VW Group and after a rejection letter to your letter requesting a refund, time to use other means, but make sure you issue them a letter and get a letter back. Edit:- in this case that Skoda main dealer is not helping you as a customer as you are not their customer, but they should be helping you as a Skoda owner!

I'd be talking to the dealership that you bought it from, which will be your Ford dealer, it will be them that provided the used car warranty and them that you have an issue with for that car failing so soon after you bought it. Does that warranty provide a loan car, I'd doubt it, but no harm in contacting them about this asap as you were in no position to truck it or drive it back to them. Edit:- I'm assuming that any extra Skoda warranty that that car had, if in deed it still had when sold, would have run out or is soon to run out, otherwise Trust Ford would not need to have given you a used car warranty.

That sounds a bit strange for an engine of this age - my Audi S4 has the similar vertical oil filter, but a cartridge element inside a plastic case, and the plan for removing that filter is to slacken off the plastic casing a couple of turns and that allows the retained oil to drain down into the sump, meaning that that oil filter assembly, after it initially fills up after a filter change, holds at least most of its oil until it gets slackened on replacement.. I thought that with these chain driven camshaft 1.2TSI engines, they had a non return valve below the filter and it was when people left the old seal in the engine side when fitting a new filter, that that non return valve stayed open and caused issues.

You can remove the top plastic cover, it is only held on with 2 screws I seem to remember, it might seem like it is being tricky to extract the cover but it is very possible to get out of the way completely. Two things to look at when that cover is off, is the condition of the belt surface and edges - obviously, and look around for any signs of oil leakage which would indicate that the inlet valves variable timing pulley bolts were slackening off - that should not be an issue now but was an issue with the early batch of engines and lead to a change of design or supplier of that pulley.

@Peskyparttimers, sorry to heat about your problem, I'm afraid that I'd be "quite" annoyed if that ever happens to any cars I or my family and friends drive! Magnetic stainless steel, from an engineering point of view, maybe it is a good thing that these bolts are exhibiting some ferro magnetism as that probably leads to this stainless steel alloy being stronger than most non-ferro magnetic stainless steel alloys - which is why these cap head bolts are marked 8.8 as they will have similar strength to high tensile steel bolts of that size. I had not noticed that they were magnetic until you mentioned it and I went out and checked the set of new bolts that I have bought but not used yet. Other A2 and A4 bolts, screws and nuts I have are certainly not exhibiting any ferro magnetic tendencies. I would hope that some government standards department would show some interest in this problem and take VW Group's approach to it not to be good enough, but how to make initial contact to the correct department, the service history of any vehicles involved does not sound like being relevant in this sort of problem as these bolts tend to be out of view and out of easy reach - so the only in service fix for this would be to replace these bolts and even the seals on a general recall program and mark up the service pack either physically or digitally, it sounds like VW Group through its engine builder Skoda, do know about this problem and the engine plant time frame that this error could have taken place, and so serial numbers of engines, both 1.2TSI and 1.4TSI involved. I have not worked out VW Group intended the locking of these bolts to work, I just guessed that the seals in the injectors would in essence provide enough damping to be enough - they must have tested all this out and so far it seems like engines built out with this problem period in production are not having any problems with these bolts. How much did you remove from that engine to get to these bolts and the fuel rail, I had considered splitting the water cooled section away from the inlet assembly, but maybe that makes no sense? ( I still plan to replace these bolts one at a time with the fuel rail depressurised, really just to prove that that engine in my wife's car does not end up with this fuel leakage)

I think that as in most aspects of life, you pay your money and/or take your chances. One thing that I would think that you should consider is, "how long do you plan to keep this car in years as it seems that the average annual mileage is quite low?" - it seems like you might see 6 years as an acceptable change period with your average mileage in mind, if so, if you plan to move this car on before its 12th birthday, then why not just get it replaced within the next 8 months. In my case, "mid life" of ownership of the 2015 Polo will be mid 2022, so I'll probably get the belt changed then.

@J.R., in respect to my reply, yes not much chance of shiny V pulleys or sides of belt, but in this case something is causing an initial squeaking, and it could be the tensioner roller bearing or the alternator bearing, though at that age and mileage, I would not have expected it to be that. So to OP, in your position, the first thing that I would do if you handy with working on cars, is to remove that belt one morning before running it, spin the tensioner roller and the other "free to move" pulleys". Edit:- then start it up with the belt off to see if there is any noises. The only thing that should be wrong with a micro groove drive belt at that age is that it has been deluged with salty water from road spray and the salt has glazed it enough to cause that, I've had that happen but it normally eventually vanishes as the salt wears off the belt's inner surface.

Humm, I'm old enough to remember when Ford and possibly other car makers, tended to fit quite a few sort of similar master cylinders to the braking system, the only way to get the correct size of seals was to read off the info on the plastic tag fitted to each master cylinder!

I'm guessing that that was an indicative quote based on what you (remotely) told them what was wrong, at the end of the day that exhaust needs fixing if you are to keep on using that car, so you don't have many other options open to you. They might have included replacing the next section of exhaust as that is usually cheaper than spending a lot of time and gas on welding in bits to close it up correctly.

This sounds a lot like it has been caused by "progress/evolution" and unfortunately that can mean "good/better due to much cheapness". Any idea who is the manufacturer that VW Group have sourced that hydraulic cylinder from, I'd guess it is that OEM supplier's design that has changed and is causing this as VW Group will normally just be buying what is available ie a "hydraulic clutch control mechanism". Years ago, I read about something similar happening with the clutch on B8 Audi S4 with 6MT and there was a (performance related) company in USA that bought in new master and slave cylinders and replaced lots of the plastic innards with alloy parts to address a few issues including this - the Audi S4 and similar powered Golfs etc also have these "delay/damping" fluid return restrictors which it seems lots of people just love to get rid of, for me, so far so good.

Can you check the condition of your battery, normally an auxiliary belt squeaking for a short period, in cold weather after a cold start is down to the extra loading on it due to the battery being needing recharging - which in turn could be due to lots of short journeys or lack of use, and that might be killing the battery which has become very "charge needy". Other than that, I've only ever had a squeaking auxiliary belt if I had been a bit over zealous with a hose pointed into the engine bay - I can't remember the last time that happened.

Are they available in such a small size for that job, I'd doubt it - but I could be wrong.

The best plan is to get the car up in the air and take a few accurate measurements, like the pipe OD at both ends of where the flexi is fitted and the length of the actual flexi section of that "flexi section" as it will have a flexi part and tails, even measure the OD of the flexi itself. There are a couple or more versions or qualities of flexi sections depending on where in an exhaust they are located, the one nearest the cat needs to be the higher quality due to the temperatures. Hopefully things have moved from when I got a flexi replaced on a 2002 Polo back in 2005 or 2006, the first flexi my expert exhaust fabricator fitted was the next size or more up in diameter and the next size or more down in length of the actual flexi part - that was a total failure that I had to pay to get sorted out because I am not an exhaust specialist and so must have been wrong and there was no reason why that repair left that car with a serious exhaust resonance on the overrun and the exhaust touching the underbody when reversing up a steep driveway probably due to it now not having enough flexibility. I recovered the situation by asking for someone on this forum to measure their original flexi section, then I bought the correct flexi repair section from Senioraftermarket and got that expert exhaust fabricator to fit it. Experts are not always good at doing things!

I've just remembered that the last front calliper bleed valve that I had trouble with, I used a smallish Draper clamp on bench vise, that worked quite well, I managed to get a really good grip on the bleed valve and freeing that valve up by rocking/rotating the vise CW<>CCW it freed up without snapping off. That method might sound a bit crazy, but it did work for me.

Anyone considering making up 2 washers or tubing to serve as end stops, would be carefully measuring up and marking both sides, then removing the 2 mounting brackets and sliding the ARB across one side - and then the other and so giving themselves plenty room to weld these new parts in place without causing any damage. It just needs some creative thinking - or just source a new later version ARB, I'd think the first option would be easier in your geographical location. Another way round this is to source 2 split shaft collars and fit them to serve as end stops, that was someone else's idea in another section of this forum - not mine.