rum4mo

Why have they not applied common sense, oh, silly me "they" are a UK GOV activity, that is not what I and probably you did not expect!

Maybe if he is the guy with the old Subarus and a VW badged Mitzi or Isuzu.

Someone I used to work with got one of these Buture jobbies, after buying a basic battery based jump pack, he thought that the battery based on took up too much room in the boot, so needed to buy this compact Buture one - I had suggested that buying the basic battery jump pack was just to get him out of trouble and like some other of his ex-work friends, what he needed to do was to get that car battery checked and replaced if it was the root cause of his problems and not lack of proper use of the car due to lockdown. Well he got this Buture via Amazon, possibly misread the instructions or the Buture array of LEDs mean the opposite to all other devices, ie "full" array of LEDs lit = discharged, or so he said and found out, so first time he took it out with him, his car failed to start when he had completed his shopping and still the same with the Buture fitted! That as you can imagine caused him much inconvenience and annoyance needing to get a jump start to get home - all this after handing over £50 + £80, so he charged the Buture and it worked very well very frequently so he did what he should have done after his first "failure to start" - and got a new battery branded as Dtech which not many people will have heard of, and it is extremely small, so now having spent £50 + £80 + £95 = £225 he has a car that currently starts first time and no doubt the Buture and Halfords basic battery based jump pack will be sitting in the garage, hummm, I wonder what next winter will bring for him, time will tell! The other thing was to add to his misery was that the muppets in the Tyre and Battery place needed him to show them how to remove the battery and they did not use a memory saver which meant the remote lost its mind and needed to be reset when he got home, it could have been worse, he could have been in a hurry after getting that battery swopped, I sent him a link to Tayna to let him see how much a quality correct size battery costs, well I did that early on with the suggestion that he swopped the batteries himself.

I fitted these discs to a 2000 VW Passat 4Motion 3 times, I did that because that car had the front callipers mounted behind the from axle centre point so especially in winter, the salty cold wet road spray caused the front brakes to "wash out" and the biting point happened maybe 50 > 100 metres after I applied the brakes, horrible feeling. Fitting ATE Power Discs with their elliptical grooves helped throw the water of the disc and the pads as soon as the brakes were applied, I also added shrouds from later cars to reduce the quantity of water hitting them. That car was heavy and only had 288mm front discs, which curiously is the size of front discs my wife's 2015 VW Polo has, so it needed as much help as possible to slow down even in dry warm weather! With the typical usage I have for my own newer car, I'll just leave it with standard discs, as I found only using a car in winter once every 2 or 3 weeks meant that salty water sitting on these grooved discs really messed them up, which was why I had to replace them once more I should have!

From what I've read on car forums, people are either not reading what has been written about this on official pages, or are trying to be clever and move their MOT date on a bit, I've never ever been in doubt that what has been extended is the "must be MOT'd by" date. I'll be attempting to get my wife's 2015 VW Polo MOT as soon as possible, ie just within the month before it is due, although in its case I would not be expecting any extension to the "must be MOT'd by" date.

If you get really really bored maybe Google what you have bought, the best and maybe only "big" youtube contributor for that jump pack seems to live in either Northern USA or Canada, oh and he did two reviews maybe a year apart, he still raves about them, so all good!

Good, and of course you have kept a record of the code stamped on that new adaptor, and removed a security bolt to make sure that the VW Group coding is the same, as some aftermarket supplied ones use another car marques coding system, like 3 numbers instead of a single letter, which is what that car's security bolts will have stamped on the end of the threaded section.

@ukgnome, did you manage to source a replacement security bolt adaptor?

Have you ever looked at the youtube video about these compact jumper packs, they do seem to work and work and work - etc etc!

If you are meaning that you will be using a slave battery type jump pack, yes, -VE to body earth bonding post beside battery -VE post. If you are using a super capacitor type jump pack I can't say, but using the body earth would be my chosen point for the -VE side.

I've known all that for many years, but the key lock does deadlock the driver's door lock as does the remote central locking function. The only time that these cars can not be deadlocked is when the battery is dead before the car is locked up, or the battery removed before the car is locked up.

Well that is the same for any "distress" purchase I'd think.

As above and probably the "first click" removes all the deadlocks as well as unlocking the driver's door, for it not to could put the driver in a tricky situation as being in car with 3 doors deadlocked and unable to open the 4th door for any reason, could be a death sentence.

Good enough, not easy sorting things out during lockdown, and must have been even worse while you were helping an NHS frontline worker, not a nice situation to be in, but luckily you have got out of it now.

@Ranf, why were you thinking about fitting an oil catching system, is it because that engine is "using" engine oil? These engines of that sort of age did have issues with one of the oil separator O-ring seals failing and a new version was made available and some people got them replaced while still under warranty - ie they complained about oil appearing on the underside of the manifold area and maybe even dropping down onto the floor/ground. I cleaned up the underside of the manifold and other wetted areas, and bought a pair of new O-ring seals - but never got round to fitting them before that car was sold, though that small amount of oil was making a mess but not enough to show up as it "using" oil. What I did do to cut down oil usage on an earlier version of that engine, was to replace the oil separator, and that cut back the oil usage and the engine pinkiing under light loads.

Try ebay and just make sure that you pick one exactly the same as that one, probably I posted some suggestions earlier on in this thread, that one is a McGard security bolt by the way. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1-Genuine-VW-Audi-Seat-Skoda-VAG-Locking-Wheel-Nut-KEY-ONLY-Lock-Bolt-A4-Golf-A6/184275139360?hash=item2ae7a77b20:g:9y8AAOSwLdterJvA The above is one link, but there will be many more, maybe send that one your picture of the head of that security bolt, or if you have the code of the end of the adaptor that is good enough. Tip, if you do not know the code of that security bolt, then once you have got a new key, record its code, it will be a single letter, though other marques use a 3 digit number for the same range of McGard security bolts.

Current clamps will be available for a range of current measuring capacities and for what form of supply they are used on both frequency and measuring form, like "true RMS" or just RMS or DC, The Claude Lyon current clamp I have was bought really more for use on domestic appliances so it has only a couple of ranges that suited me when I bought it also it was chosen as it suitable for DC use as well - at a guess it has a 200Amp and 5 or 10Amp range and a jaw opening big enough for any of my car's I've owned main leads. I'd be happy using it for measuring down to 1Amp but below that I'm not so sure. Unless you have a need or a desire to mess about with domestic appliance checking and repairing, I'd not bother buying one, most domestic work and cars can be covered with good DMM as can this searching for battery draining, just as I think was said already to watch out for the initial higher current so that the DMM is not damaged. Edit:- part of the problem you can be up against here is having a DC current clamp with a jaw big enough for these high current leads then trying to measure a range of currents that these leads would not normally be running while being tested. Small jaw clamp + small diameter wire + small current should be okay, but not big jaw clamp + big wire + small current.

I'd always make sure the ignition key is out of the switch and all doors closed, the bonnet, in my experience being open will not stop the controllers from being put to sleep and is really essential to be kept open to allow you to take some measurements, remember as well, even leaving doors or hatch open for an extended period will also allow the controllers to go to sleep, that is why the interior lights go out after roughly 40 > 60 minutes. DC clamps just do not work well down to the current levels you are looking for, well a small current DC clamp might be okay but its jaws will be too small to clamp over the main battery leads. I have a quality AC and DC current clamp and its minimum range is 5 amps and on that range it can not discriminate between small ranges in low currants or noise, been there done that already. Edit:- again consider getting that battery checked for poor health, a friend was having trouble with his C4, so as he did not have power in his remotely located garage, I suggested that he bought a basic jump pack that had an internal gel battery as a cheap way to make sure that his car could be started when used once a week during lockdown, with the warning that his battery might be in poor health. After a few weeks of using that cheap jump pack he found the inconvenience of having a big jump pack in the car too much trouble so I suggested that he got his battery tested and replaced if necessary, he ignored that and bought an £90 capacitive compact jump pack, that worked well its seems but every time he needed to use his car, and every time he had to restart it during his shopping trip he needed to use the jump pack, so after handing over maybe £50 for the battery based jump pack and then £90 for the capacitor based jump pack he was forced to hand over £100 for a cheap low quality battery via a fast fit outlet. I had suggested buying a quality and big enough battery from Tayna and fitting it himself, but he rubbished that idea, so no doubt this fix will work for a few months. It seemed that in his case, buying a "safe" charger and charging the battery up once a week/month was never going to happen, neither in the car or out of the car!

From my experience of chasing an excessive battery drain while the controller were asleep, on a late 2009 SEAT Ibiza 1.4, it did not make any difference if the car was locked or not. Is the radio a genuine Skoda one, ie like what would have been fitted at the factory? I've found that some fuse values were changed in some of my VW Group cars when compared with the owners handbook listing, only reason to drop a fuse value back down would be to protect the wiring , if you think that the present value could compromise the safety of the car then yes change them if not I would not bother. Edit:- while that drain is higher than spec or is desirable, with a battery that was in good health and regular use of that car, this problem might not have been a show stopper.

Not a Fabia but a VW Group small car of the age group that MK2 Fabia is in:- my daughter was complaining about a noise like a heat shield coming loose under her late 2009 Ibiza 1.4 16V 85PS SC, so I got her to bring it to me, kind of expecting the front flexi to have failed so checked up on the availability of a front exhaust repair section to save paying to replace the cat as well - although being quite happy to need to fit some bits of tin under some heat shield retainers. In the event, the front flexi looked okay as did the heat shields, but what had failed were BOTH clamps on the exhaust joining sleeve under the centre of the car! Now one failing at that age is okay, I had that on my old Passat 4Motion when it was that age and I just replaced all 4 clamps - they just rot with salt and water. As I had initially bought the wrong size of joining sleeves for that 2000 Passat years ago, they were still available to use and the clamps were the correct size - nice when something only takes 30 minutes to fix! I'm just bringing this up as it might be the right time for some people to check the condition of these clamps - before they fail and cause other problems/inconvenience, just have a look under the car below the line of the front seats.