rum4mo

Ah, I see, I thought that you were "coming" to this from the angle that you considered that you might soon have a similar issue, ie your car was suffering from a dying battery, that was why I answered the way I did.

I'm guessing that you have a situation where a locked car has a dead battery, or you are just trying to find out how to approach this situation? If you are, then the blade of the car key should be able to unlock the driver's door - and any other door that has a physical door lock, although normally it is only the driver's side door that now has a mechanical lock barrel. From reading of other's experience on this forum, after that with cars that have the battery under the bonnet and the bonnet release on the passenger's side - but it is blocked deliberately when the passenger's side door is closed, you need to force the handle out slightly to "encourage" it to pass over the door bin area and so open the bonnet. On cars that leave the 12V DC socket live at all times, yo could use that point to trickle charge the battery - and then fully unlock as normal if the battery can be charged up. Edit:- Audi and VW are less troublesome in this failed battery situation as the bonnet handle is on the driver's side but the 12V DC socket is not always live. SEAT seem to be the more awkward as the bonnet release is on the passenger side and the 12V DC socket is not always live.

It is always good for the forum when a member gets back and reports what solved their problem! Edit:- should there not be a dedicated earth wire from the rear of the car body out into the rear hatch - instead of relying on a good earth path via the hinges? If so maybe a wire has broken where the wires pass from the body out to the hatch.

I'd expect that to be the default condition - but only if the car had been locked with the bonnet open prior to this - and the bonnet switch had failed in the closed position. When we moved into our current house, it had an alarm system fitted, but the first time a winter storm knocked out the mains supply, the alarm, or at least the external bell box, kept alarming - that was because the alarm system's own battery had failed, replacing that sorted out that issue. The only thing I know is, I replaced the car battery in my old 2000 VW Passat 4Motion that had a working alarm, and I did not have any issues with the car alarm going off. Maybe buy a "memory saver" that plugs into the car's OBD2 socket and use that with a small support battery to stop that happening the next time, I have one of them and a battery pack for some reason. Your thinking wrt the button on the inside of the car is correct.

Excellent sounds a lot like when I bought a brand new VW Passat 4Motion, I just used insulating tape to cover the HIDs for the trip back to UK from Holland, but as we were on holiday to France in a month's time, I set about finding out how to alter the lights for driving on the other side of the road. First I talked to my local VW dealership, they would contact VW UK and get back to me within 3 days - that did not happen, so I contacted VW UK directly and they said that they would pass the required info onto my local VW dealership, that did not happen, so again I just used insulating tape. About a year later I discovered that like this Fabia, there was movable metal shutter on each light assembly, but I never ever tried to mess about with that while in queue for a ferry in both directions, really complete nonsense on the part of VW Group then and now! Both our 2011 Audi S4 and 2015 VW Polo with LEDs came with better systems - but nowadays we tend to fly drive, oh well!

@jonboy77, after passing this MOT, I'd be having a good look at your brakes, ie service them as normally this issue is caused by the adjusters not working correctly if that car has rear drum brakes, if it has rear discs, a good clean up might sort that out. Yes I know some people find that their handbrake cable has stretched but modern manufacturing methods tend to mean that you end up with a very stable cable over its life time - or a gorilla has been driving that car, or it has needed to be operated extremely heavily because there is a brake issue.

Seeing as this nut has been used for many years on Polo/Fabia/Ibiza etc, its P/N is 6Q0 407 396B and it is described as a "double hex nut", a 16 point, or bi-hex socket will fit it and the size is 36mm. One thing to watch out for is, the socket that you buy, typically a deep socket, should have a thin wall so that it fits inside the recess in the hub. I bought an impact deep socket from Draper and it worked okay, Laser Tools make a similar socket under the part number 0954. Remember to buy a new nut as these nuts are only meant to be used once.

I've only ever used the hollow tube type, same as the Laser Tools ones but much cheaper. Access is normally the issue, well access for the type of tool chosen, others have claimed to have replaced them with a cheaper and simpler tool type. Have you tried suing the search function to grab some threads covering this in the past - Mk1 and Mk2 Fabia much the same in this area, I've changed them on a 2002 VW Polo and a late 2009 SEAT Ibiza, so same system.

As above, my wife's 2015 Polo 1.2TSI, in deepest winter, from a cold, stored in garage overnight, start, with cabin fan left off and bright enough for headlights to be off, reversed up a driveway, then driven 1/2 mile, if the first traffic lights are at red, and I've forgotten to switch OFF auto Stop/Start, that car will normally switch the engine off.

Or was it VAG Commander or maybe both, another "thing" I just had to buy about 20 years ago - and never used! Which is okay as it was probably a scammed/cloned bit of S/W and I should have known better!

@aubrey, you were lucky, when I bought a new factory order VW Polo for my wife back in September 2002, VW had just discontinued providing that info, reason given was that the original customer usually bins that "useless" plastic tag - so it is normally never available when needed.

Humm, well I bought a new Polo for my wife back in 2015, and I picked the 1.2TSI 16V 110PS, so obviously I'd suggest the 1.2TSI.

We tend to treat the battery in my wife's August 2015 VW Polo 1.2TSI with a lot of consideration, well I tend to do most of the driving of this car and I certainly do as much as possible with the frequent use of the "Auto Stop/Start Off" switch, and I had been noticing a predictable drop off year by year in its capacity when tested using my CTEK (Midcounties designed) battery tester, and over the lockdown I've been treating it to occasional sessions with a CTEK charger/maintenance thing. So, having time on my hands, while I was servicing it, I hooked it up to the CTEK, then on the next morning, I removed the charger about 09:00 finished off putting the Summer wheels on and tidying up the garage - decanting used oil into a container and absorbing used brake fluid into sawdust etc. Had lunch and at around 15:00 I checked that battery using the tester, it was still sitting above the normal voltage for a fully charged battery, ie it read 13.1V but its capacity was up to its original rated value - so maybe the plan to fit a slightly bigger AGM battery along with a new battery tray and battery insulator will need to wait a bit longer, a pleasant surprise I must admit influenced slightly by the state of charge or PD across the battery. I don't seem to have recorded that batteries manufacturer anywhere - yet.

Other than the AC being on as mentioned above, or the BMS sensor lead being unplugged, or any of the other load demands being high, it might just be your journeys are very short with frequent engine starts, or that car might not be getting used much - or the battery is in poor health due to aging, compounded by the way the car is being used. Having a voltmeter and checking the battery voltage is a handy to have in situations like this as it would give you an early indication of what the root cause of this problem was.

The sign on the screen should come up with a line through it if Auto Stop/Start is not available due to power demands or battery charge health. Are you sure that you are seeing the Auto Stop/Start available or not available. Also, is the gearbox manual or DSG, and depending on which type it is, does the screen accurately report which gear or mode it is in. Also if it is a manual gearbox, when you come to a halt, take it out of gear and take your foot off the clutch, does it still continue running while the screen claims that Auto Stop/Start is available. Finally check the dongle on the battery -VE post, is its cable plugged into it?

I'm not convinced that @AGFalco was being completely serious about this by the way, I took the first posting to be a fact and a bit of fun - at the same time.

I'd think that your best plan is to get a good VW Group Indie to sort this out or get, I don't think that there is any DIYer level software to do this job, security is taken seriously.

@jojocity, why don't you just buy a good steering wheel cover/lock to protect that car, and organise a new second key - then the missing key will get removed from the car's ECU when you hand the keys you have in when getting the new one coded to your car. Only having a single key for a car could end up being extremely risky/inconvenient some time in the future.

@J.R., right, your plan now needs to be to catalogue all your tools - seems like a completely stupid thing to do, but when I retired, I started doing that, and including "buying prices" which might come in handy if my garage gets raided. But don't despair, you might even find that you have "gaps" in your tool collection that you didn't know were there, so plenty scope for buying more tools. So, basically now every thing, except a few "odd balls" have their designated storage drawer or box, and all these drawers and boxes are labelled up and a printed out list is kept, only thing now is, I need to put my reading specs on to read the labelling on the drawers and boxes - which is a bit annoying! I think that I've handed out this story before in the past, but anyway, we used to have a Flymo which I passed onto my older daughter when we moved house, we went to a big garden centre and I spotted packs of spare plastic blades for that Flymo and as it was a bit old I thought that I'd be helpful and buy a spare pack. Maybe two years later I repeated that action at that same garden centre, went to stuff the spare pack of blades into the glovebox of my wife's Fiesta - and there was a pack already in there! I've never ever stripped these threads either, though I tend to service the brakes either annually or every other year. Edit:- I have ended up with a surprising number of Mole grips though, I tried to off load a couple to my mate, but he has the same problem!

Now and again get a bit annoyed by Laser Tools, as they tend to change some items to their own, or a UK based manufactured item, to a similar far cheaper version that I have spotted on ebay, but avoided by buying their better spec'd version - only to find what is supplied is not what was in their website, the coil puller for EA221 VW Group engines was the first time that happened to me! I still end up buying their stuff as lots of them address a need for a specific job, they, in the early days, were even open for "tool users" to submit their "wants" and they would come up with a tool to satisfy that need, probably they still do, but more often than not were they can get away with it, they do tend to switch to sourcing and repackaging 3rd (cheap) parties offerings.

I'd be a bit wary about getting a first service outside that car's marque's service circle if it was my car, if it was owned by a 3rd party, I'd be more wary about that as they might just consider that you are defaulting on your agreement concerning looking after their property while you use it. Ie for me, more trouble or potential risk than the money saving is worth.

If you demand "demist", at least with a similar VW Polo, all air is diverted to the windscreen and the chiller is switched on regardless if you had previously had the chiller switched off, this will be to maximise the demisting to the windscreen.

And now the hard bit - waiting for it to arrive!

Oh yes Unbrako has worked for me when I worked. My only beef was when jig designers, who were very aware where these jigs were being bolted onto, electro dynamic shaker headers and slip tables, and the fact that these jigs would be getting removed many many times, ended up designing them with counter bored holes with depths that meant lots and lots of bolts needed cutting down from standard lengths, complete nonsense. I could quite easily use 10.9 Unbrako to replace these bolts that are holding the fuel rail on to the alloy cylinder head - if the access to them was easier, but I'm trying to replicate the choice that VW Group wrt them not being high carbon steel, as I'm sure they picked them to be that for a reason. Locating some Nord Lock washers might be an idea to avoid these bolts slackening off and using a suitable paste to avoid galling - but at the moment I don't know what the clearance is in these 4 points which are just lugs or flanges welded to the fuel rail tube. A DIYer can take an "overkill" approach where a manufacturer must stay within safe/cheap price margins and stick with keeping the assembly easy and fast in the engine plants.

I have tried to find a re-sellers of Bumax items without any success, I can very easily buy a box of 100 Bumax 109 M6 X 16 hex socket cap head screws for £80 from my nearest Bumax distributer but as yet I am unwilling to sink £80 into what for me will be 4 screws that are higher strength that those used by VW Group, I know this sounds like I'm putting a price cap on this fix and if these bolts currently fitted to this Polo fail and the car needs "AA'd" to a VW dealer - to make a point or a good local VAG Indie, the final cost including labour and the complete new set of injector seals, will cost a lot more than that. If/when I do replace these screws I will just depressurise the fuel rail and replace these screws one by one, using an assembly paste or suitable low strength Loctite to prevent galling or slackening. If there were 3 or more other people around to share these bolts and their cost with, it would be a different situation, but I am so far alone here with trying to keep one step ahead of this issue, so I'm stuck with sitting on this for the time being. I can very easily understand why the official distributers for Bumax will not split up boxes for selling as these fixings are high quality and certified box by box, all traceability is lost when a box is then split between customers and as the main user of this quality of fixings is subsea, then traceability will always be required hence my quest to identify a re-seller who is selling to a completely different type of customer.