rum4mo

Sorry but I can't hear anything out of the ordinary.

I'd not bother using a "recon" or desulphate charging program on an AGM battery, that stuff is intended for wet/liquid batteries, the trouble seems to be that many CTEK chargers have a "normal" and an "AGM" program, when you read their bumf, the "normal" is to be used with wet including EFB and normal AGM, the AGM program is for specialised AGM batteries only. It has taken me a while to wise up to that I must confess. Colder weather will always result in lower battery health as they are just mini chemical factories, so carrying out battery testing at -10C will always give you poor results when compared with testing at 25C - both temperatures given being battery as well as ambient temperature. Using a smart charger in recod program, CTEK for example on an older poorly EFB does seem to liven them up quite a bit, I do that once a year with the EFB in my wife's 2015 Polo and it is still claiming to be in very good condition when tested using my CTEK battery tester - though I only tend to test it at its annual service time in late July/early August. I tend to stick with recharging with a CTEK charger on recon program over night, remove the charger at 08:00ish, and carry out a test after 8 hours has passed. Edit:- for anyone who is curious or concerned about what is actually happening battery charge wise while driving, maybe consider visiting ebay and buying a cheap (£5) plug-in DVM, regardless of its overall accuracy, it will give you an idea of what the charging level is and when the charging IS and IS NOT happening - these DVMs are have a "ciggy lighter" plug built into them, so easy to live with.

That sounds like being a completely different issue, the OP was only having an issue with the key fob's tx/rx remote talking to the car, your problem sounds like being an issue with the immob chip in either the key or the car, do you have 2 keys and is it only one of them that will not work? If you only have one key then maybe time to get a second while getting this fault sorting out.

To me this sounds more like, the overall alignment is out a bit, you took it back to a place which sounds a lot like KwikFit, who tend to now have proper alignment benches, they checked its toing, which is still okay, but the machine spews out all the other alignment settings. I did that to my older daughter's previous 2009 Ibiza SC, it was only the toing I was getting reset as I had replaced the TREs and track rods - and I did not know that they had a Hunter bench, I did go away slightly concerned by the well out of spec castor readings, but I reckoned that the steering wheel had not been moved about as the machine's menu would have demanded, so the castor result would be meaningless. In reality, a bit silly it seems to me having an alignment bench and using it only for toe setting/checking at a tyre place, which then results with the customer being handed a full alignment results sheet with most settings/measurements in red ie out of spec - and being told "everything is good" at the least I would have expected that place to comment on all these other measurements and give advice as to what to do next, even although they were being asked to carry out a simple toe check, some/most times customers do not know what else might be wrong or needing resolved. I got the impression that the KwikFit I went to - it was local, would not get involved with trying to sort out anything except toe errors, a bit of a waste of a Hunter bench, maybe operator training will happen later on and some correction of alignment where possible will get offered, though with these cars, short of moving the lower crossmember around there is not much else that can be done expect for replacing damaged parts.

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.