rum4mo

I understand why you don’t want full wheel covers, but, typically black steel wheels have only been given a quick thin cover of paint and will start to look nasty very quickly in winter - if they had been stripped back and repainted “properly” they might survive better. I just bought a used set that didn’t look too bad for my wife’s 2002 VW Polo, actually bought a set of used Golf ones and cut off the “inner” locking elements leaving just the bits out at the rim to keep them on, that worked for the remaining 8 years that she had that car. Next time round with a new 2015 VW Polo 1.2TSI 110PS, I just bought a set of slightly used 15” VW Polo alloys from eBay in Germany, 10 years on, they should get refurbished after this winter, but still looking almost okay.

No, that is the way they are built.

There is "Stainless Creations" in Falkirk, who could repair/replace a section for you. I was in this situation back in 2007 when the flexible joint started to leak on my wife's 2002 Polo 1.4, I got that exhaust place to replace the flexi joint.

The bolts as far as I know, ie from their part numbers, have never been revised probably as they were not the root cause of their failure - it was recorded as being down to incorrect tightening on initial engine assembly that provoked these in service bolt failures. Everyone working on that failure should know to replace all the fuel rail bolts because if one has failed then the others will already have been stressed, correctly tightening new bolts should, it seems "put that problem to bed" - as well as replacing the injector seals.

Oh, so it has a strong smell of petrol, is that from under the bonnet or the exhaust? It can smell a bit from the exhaust if the engine has just been cold started, if smelling of petrol from under the bonnet, then that could be leakage from the high pressure fuel rail due to some of the fixing bolts slackening off.

I'd think that in general, it is wise to replace the aux belt so that it does not fail in use, having a engine driven belt breaking up in a confided space can/could cause a lot of collateral damage - I'm just trying to read between you the OP's lines here. So far, unless it has started to look like it was cracking badly, I've just replaced "good enough looking" aux belts on our cars at 50,000miles or 10 years - whichever turned up first.

Yes you now need to upgrade your VCDS, I traded my old VAG COM and then VCDS Hex+Can back into the original seller (Gendan), but if you are brave, you might get a lot more money for it if you sell it on to someone. I think that it was when my daughter bought a 2019 car that thought that it was time to upgrade. Purchase options are a bit limiting though, I went for the "10 VIN" package and that has worked well enough for me over the past 6 years, there is a "3 VIN" package as well I think.

Sorry, it looks like that was wrong there, there never were bolts securing these brackets/boxes/enclosures, always pop rivets, on the later versions the diagram shows a captive threaded stud sticking out of the top of the siren assembly, that is what the self locking nut is used to secure to the bracket/box/enclosure. Edit:- so maybe there is just enough space to get the siren assembly out after you remove the self locking nut that is on the top of the bracket/box/enclosure.

I'd think that you will need to remove the air filter assembly to help you to dig deeper, the throttle body is what the RHS big plastic charge pipe is connected to low down at the front near the radiator. I've never tried to find out where exactly the brake servo vacuum source is - yet. Edit:- something makes me think that the long stiff/hard small sized plastic pipe is the one, as it has a pressure sensor - which you can see on your picture "near" the battery.

Going by a parts listing on the internet, there is a metal "bracket" which looks more like a metal box, it used to be secured to the car's body using 2 bolts but from 2015, these 2 bolts were replaced by 2 pop rivets - probably for security purposes. There is also a self locking lock on probably the top of this box, so maybe that nut secures the siren assembly to this box. Hopefully that helps a bit to letting you work out how to separate and/or remove the siren assembly, though it does sound like you'd need to drill out the 2 pop rivets and remove the complete siren and bracket/box.

I’ve just got the cam belt and tensioner replaced - and a new “fan belt” fitted to my wife’s August 2015 BW Polo 1.2TSI 110PS 6MT that cost me roughly £550 in labour. I only did that as I had considered that 10 years was an okay time to replace these parts. The guy at the desk said “that’s it for the next 5 years” - that was at a VAG Indie workshop, I said that it will be a lot later than 5 years before I get the cam belt kit replaced next! The car seems absolutely fine after that work, though it does now smell of “older lady’s perfume” as some cleaning/beautifying stuff was sprayed over all the black plastics! So I’ll need to clean that junk off!

I'm not sure that many places do offer just carrying out a front wheels toe check/correction, even KwikFit seems to have a Hunter bench, this sort of annoyed me maybe 6 years ago when I replaced the front suspension and some other parts on my older daughter's SEAT Ibiza 1.4 SC, it came as shock to find that I was hit for roughly £65 and ended up with a print out for the front and rear camber and toe, and some nonsense figures for the front castor - which I put down to KwikFit not following the instruction from the bench to turn the steering side to side. Moving forward 6 years, I replaced all the front suspension on my old 2011 Audi S4, so handed it into a proper German Car Specialist Indie for an alignment check/adjust, it also has a Hunter bench but I think that they know how to use it, got a before and after print out of front and rear camber and toe, but all the castor rough data was "*" and on the chart, castor was greyed out. Anyone know why that was? Before handing my wife's 2015 VW Polo 1.2TSI in for a tracking check, as the steering wheel is slightly out since I worked on the front suspension last year, I'll be making a few phone calls to check up on local pricing, there is a Black Circles approved workshop 12 miles away and again it is a Hunter bench that they use.

I just used some HT Bearing grease on the bearing carrier/knuckle as it does not have any added metallic content which might annoy the ABS wheel sensor, used Moly grease on the forcing screw thread. I got lucky and only broke the ABS sensor on the second side - the RHS, increased the slot in the bearing rear plates to try to avoid that next time if ever that comes, also putting a lot of effort into clearing rust etc from the inner side of the hub carrier/knuckle improves your chances of avoiding bending/cracking/breaking the ABS sensor - buying Bosch ABS wheel sensors from places like PIM saves a lot of money over what I did and panic and buy from ECP, buying from VAG as you'd expect is a lot worse, from memory almost £100 4 years ago - and VAG dealers didn't hold any in stock, probably no call for them at that price!

Wow, no doubt this is all due to the steering knuckles being aluminium alloy, and was me thinking that I'd change the weeping/leaking front dampers on my older daughter's 2019 SEAT Leon Cupra - which like the VRS will have alloy knuckles! I'm still recovering from this horrible "steel bolts in aluminium parts" after replacing too many bits on my 2011 Audi S4, a truly horrible job that got bigger and bigger and bigger - and so a lot more expensive ending up with me throwing the towel in with a car "now off the road" due to a seized then shearing lower pinch bolt on one upright, a rusted wheel bearing assembly that was eating ABS sensor on the other upright - that annoyingly, I had managed to get the lower pinch bolt out of the other upright before this - so wallet took a hammering in and I just ordered in 2 new uprights. I've still got the original aluminium uprights in the garage for when I feel up to the challenge of convincing the really really nasty long pinch bolts that they should just come out - really now just an exercise for me proving that given time, I can do it. Getting the wheel bearings out is also a tricky job, but I have now removed one of them, again just to prove that I could do that - and putting into use tools bought specifically to do that job on the car. I used a lot of PB Blaster, used blu tac to create bunds to hold/store PB Blaster around the affected areas, using an induction heater a few times, used an air hammer a lot, used a Mapp Gas torch as well, a long and not very satisfying job during the summer months - really leaving a lot of time for the PB Blaster to do its job in between the air hammering, induction heating and gas torching. One point, blu tac, after being in contact with PB Blaster is horrible stuff to handle and once the PB Blaster breaks through your blu tac barrier due to poor application, nothing much will seal it back up other than removing the blu tac and applying a lot more new stuff! One problem with the pinch bolts, I think, is, they are all very low strength bolts, so 8.8 as they only get torqued up to a very low figure to do their job - this ends up being a bit annoying when you need to get them out from aluminium lumps that have corrosion in these bolt holes, I used aluminium grease on all the new bolts and tried to seal up or close the pinch areas to try to hold back future corrosion. Luckily for me, the pinch at the bottom of the front dampers on B8 Audi S4 and others is steel, so easy to remove that pinch bolt tap it out and open the pinch area with the usual VAG "hub expander" without worrying about cracking any aluminium parts - same when working on Polo and Ibiza. @Richard80945, One bit of advice when handling aluminium knuckle pinch areas, maybe a good plan to make up shims from halved washers to fill the existing pinch gap - doing that should stop you ending up cracking the aluminium "lugs" of the knuckle. If I had known or experienced what I have now concerning this job, I would have headed straight to the stage where I bought in 2 new uprights, yes very expensive but I would not have felt the need to buy an induction heater, new hub puller/slide hammer, new gas torch or new hub press tool - but really, after you've had time to reflect - where is the fun in doing it that way? Mind you it would have freed me up to do many other household maintenance jobs and use my S4 to go away with my wife! Edit:- I did try drilling into the soft sheared bolt - sheared off cleanly exactly where the shank changes to the threaded section which was exactly inline with the "lug" that the threaded portion passes through before exiting to where the nut gets screwed onto. While the Audi B8 S4 upright was still on the car, access was tricky, made worse by the fact that this model of car does not have "free to rotate" struts, the front suspension is 4 unequal alloy arms with bonded bushes, so the tendency is for the steering to self centre rapidly when you take you hand off the steering wheel, not very handy/helpful when working on this model of car!! I ended up needing to buy longer drill bits and try to drill through "from the other end" using the sheared off bolt with a pilot hole drilled down through it as a guide - well that did not help me achieve what I needed to so drill wandered off and so my new set of "easi outs" did not get used - my plan was to use "easi outs" instead of normal bolt extractors so that I would be applying an "unscrewing" action to the sheared off part of that bolt, but not getting the holes perfectly in the centre obviously destroyed that plan and an upright!

The mirror surfaces do end being "warmer than ambient" to the touch, I normally only need to use them to demist the mirrors in winter after driving out of a cold garage into milder wet air - or when driving from a colder drier air area into a warmer and wetter air area.

A very old story, I used to have a 1991 VX Cav GSI 16V 2000 4X4 (yes all that was on the rear badging!), heated mirrors only worked when the rear window demister was switched on, so in autumn/winter the mirrors were probably left switched on. Moved onto a new VW Passat 4Motion in 2000, so when autumn came, I just left the heated mirrors switch on thinking the way they operated was the same as in the old VX Cav GSI. Near the end of the first winter, I came across a thread in the world wide Passat forum - folk in USA talking about ending up with burned out mirror heater tapes - oh! Checked the resistance of the mirror heater tapes on my Passat - very very high resistance, oh bother! Bought and fitted new mirrors and from then on used them "sensibly". The high resistance was not from along/through the heater tapes but along the blackened/charred PCBs. I've read somewhere that some Audis had protection against this, ie used a thermal sensor somewhere - but I'm not placing my trust in that as heated mirrors can be a bit expensive.

You've also got to be open to the possibility that it is just a wiring issue, ideally this car needs scanned using a VW Group fully compliant scan tool and start from using what it thinks is wrong. These systems tend to have only a signal/output wire, one for each of the sensors, a Ov which is a single wire coming from the controller branching out into a wire to each sensor and the same with the 12V supply. Factory fitted parking sensors equipped bumpers tend to have mounting plates bonded/welded or sticky taped to the bumper, these mounting plates have clips that the sensor pushes into and locks in place along with, for most models, a soft sealing washer/gasket. You can buy new suitable mounting plates if you break any of them they tend to be in "flat" form for the centre located sensors and "curved" for the outer sensors, though these outers are "sided". On the cost of buying new sensors, these sensors, and there are only a few versions across the VW Group marques, tend to have had their part numbers changed a few times over the years, if you can gain enough knowledge on that, you can usually buy genuine VW Group sensors for a lot lower price, unfortunately as usual, it can down to knowledge or willingness to learn and use it. I started from scratch and ended up after using up quite a lot of time, being able to pick up new sensors for a project for a lot less cash than VW Group sold them for, but as usual, each to their own, how we spend our time and money is up to us. Using or relying on parking sensors possibly reduces your driving capabilities, but I don't mind that, if it saves me touching something then that can't be bad, can it.

Its job is to separate crankcase oil/oil mist from the air being scavenged through the crankcase, it does that by having a cyclonic separator built into it - that causes the oil to drop out of the air, or at least quite a lot of it to drop out, and drop down into the sump instead of getting into the combustion chamber and burning along with the fuel in the cylinders. One thing that it does is effectively cause the fuel mixture to lean back and also to now have a mix of petrol and oil, which has too low an octane rating - and that will cause pinging/pinking - been there and needed to replace the oil separator though I didn't exactly work out what had gone wrong, though possibly the innards were now coked/coated and so not dropping out the oil as well as originally. Edit:- are you hearing pinging/pinking under load, especially at lowish revs?

It is okay to change from having an EFB to AGM in petrol cars, some scan tools with "battery registration" function offer Fleece as an option, so just use that and not AGM where it is also offered, as that is more specialised versions of AGM batteries, typically the AGM version that people retro fit is just "the AGM equivalent of an EFB" - and that is what battery sellers tend to offer as an alternative to EFB.

Which engine does your car have, knowing that might help, my wife's 2015 Polo 1.2TSI which is from the EA211 family of VW Group engines, is currently at 52,000 miles and obviously just over 10 years old, I'm planning on getting the cam belt etc replaced very soon as I think "enough is enough". It might depend on how long you plan to keep this car, ie why wait until just before you hand it in or sell it to pay to get the belt etc replaced when you can "enjoy" hopefully the benefit of not needing to worry about the belt starting to fail - or even worse find it has failed.

Warning:- some versions/ages of this 1.0TSI engine have a single small bolt holding the air cleaner down, not looking for that first, and removing it, will end up with something getting broken.

It just looks like junk, ie small bits of "system rubber" that is sitting on the floor of the strainer, I've tried to get these strainers out of there and found it a bit tricky - so left it in place. "Gulping" the excess fluid out using a new "turkey baster" might work to remove some of that junk and fluid.

I think that it is 4 years for "single Iridium" spark plugs and 6 years for "double Iridium" spark plugs - these EA211 engines tend to get "single Iridium" spark plugs. I changed the spark plugs on our younger daughter's 2019 Arona 1.0TSI 115PS just because they were up visiting us and it was over 4 years old, their VAG Indie had left them in as they don't do many miles per year, but I just felt the need to go with what the car manufacturer recommends.

Reusing old TTY bolts seems to be something that some proper VAG Indies and even main dealers do, not really good enough! Okay on some jobs the cost of using a set of new bolts does cost quite a bit, I know this, but it is the way that VW Group recommend - and probably others where TTY bolts get used.

Hum, I'm guessing that you are expecting that the pinch bolt passes through the hole in that bracket - I would.