ArisaigDavid

It is not possible to clock the mileage on a S3 Superb, and that statement is my justification for another long-winded story. When I bought mine at 6 months old from Arnold Clark, the salesman took it to the nearest fuel station for £25 worth of petrol. When he came back he said that the fuel gauge wasn't working, and the workshop decided that there was nothing wrong with the tank sender. This, apparently, meant ordering an entire new instrument cluster from Skoda - they'd let me know when it arrived. I subsequently got the phone call, and arranged a date for the work. Now, it's at least a four-hour drive from my home in the highlands to the dealership in Paisley, and they want the car for 8am, so we drove down the day before and stayed in a hotel for the night. The job was done by mid-afternoon, BUT when they entered the mileage into the new instrument cluster the car assumed it was kilometres and converted it downward to miles. This meant another four hours each way, and a night in the hotel, for another new instrument cluster. This time I suggested that if they increased the the mileage input by a factor of 8/5, the car would make the same assumption as before and convert it to the correct mileage. Of course, me being just an ignorant punter, the suggestion was ignored, the same thing happened, and yet another new instrument cluster was ordered - it has been suggested by another dealership that these things are probably about £1000 a pop! So, another four hours each way and a night in the hotel. This time, though, because this problem had never happened to anyone before, a guy called Radic in the Skoda factory in the Czech Republic was going to write a special programme to overcome the problem and instruct the Arnold Clark technician live over the internet - Radic was the only person in the world who can do this! On the day, I got a phone call from the dealership, while I was enjoying my hotel breakfast, to say that Radic had called in sick. I was given a rental Passat 1.6 diesel to go home in, presumably so that they didn't have to put the Superb's dash back together again, and got a call a month later to say that my car was ready, with the correct mileage showing at last. So there you are. They wouldn't have put in all that time and effort, plus three grand's worth of instrument clusters, plus a month's car rental, plus reimbursing all my fuel and hotel costs, if it was possible to just clock the mileage reading ....... WOULD THEY?

I don't imagine for one second that I'm the only person that Santa let down this year, but I did send him very clear instructions as to the car I wanted from him! This forum is for Skoda owners and, at the risk of being pilloried for heresy, the Superb is not the choice we would necessarily make if money was no object. Evidence of this lies in the number of posts here about alternative brakes, lowering kits, light bulbs, remaps and so on. My choice of a 280 was from the very short short-list (Superb, A5 Sportback quattro and 4-series GranCoupe X-drive) that emerged from some pragmatic box-ticking (ugly cars were excluded), and I am very pleased with it in terms of looks, performance, comfort, all-weather security and almost everything else. But this brings me to a story that I wanted to tell (but which you may find too boring to read) about a holiday in Crete a couple of years ago, where we untypically used taxis on three separate occasions. On the first occasion it was an Octavia, and very nice it was too, but the driver wished he had never bought it because the Russian tourists filling the expensive hotels at that time insisted on Mercedes taxis and would refuse to get into his Skoda - he was getting hardly any business, and would have to change his car for a Mercedes like all the others. On the second occasion we wanted to get from Ag.Nik. to Heraklion, and a taxi driver offered us a very reasonable price to take us in his Mercedes S-class. We spent the whole journey clinging to the door handles to keep position on a back seat that was far too big, far too flat and far too slippery - it might have been a great car from a taxi-driver's point of view, but as a passenger I just didn't get it. On the third occasion we got a Mercedes E-class to take us from Ag.Nik. back to our apartment. It seemed better for being smaller than the S-class, but nothing special. However, the driver started telling me about his 1980's Toyota Celica, and since I'd had an MR2 from the same period it was car-related conversation all the way back. When we arrived, I paid him (plus tip, of course) and he got out to open the door for my wife when, just to finish off the conversation, I told him that I now had a Superb, expecting an appreciative comment from a fellow driver. That is not what happened. Instead, he threw his hands in the air, said "NO!" in a loud voice, got back in his car and drove off without a backward glance. I was mortified - there I was, exposed to my wife as a pitiful excuse for a man in the ultimate test of manhood, by a Greek taxi driver. The thing is, four years after I bought it I still think my Superb is great - just not a "if money was no object" car. It was a restomod Jensen Interceptor FF, by the way, and I had said that he could just leave it on the driveway if the chimney was a problem.

OE Skoda wiper blades are unfit for purpose. I can confirm what unclerichy said - Bosch Aerotwin Flat A864S for the fronts, and Bosch Specific Fit A403H for the rear (on the hatch, at any rate). I got mine from wiperblades.co.uk and they are perfect in every way.

Here is a story about my door handle, a Skoda dealership and my dealings with Skoda UK Customer Services. It is probably a boring story, and I only relate it for the benefit of those poor souls who have absolutely nothing better to do than to read it. I don't really need any advice on the subject, thanks anyway, as I don't intend to waste any more of my life on it after this. Here is the letter I sent to SUKCS on their official "contact us" form. I would point out that when I mention that the dealership is 100 miles away, that isn't an hour or so on the sort of lovely motorway that you privileged southerners enjoy - it's three and a half hours of not very relaxing driving, each way, and it would be at least once to get the problem diagnosed, and again once the parts were in! "Dear Sir or Madam, I am writing to you about the front passenger door handle on my Skoda Superb. In early April last year, the outside door handle seized in the open position, and I could only open the door from inside the car. On May 8th I took the car to Arnold Clark Inverness to have a new engine start button fitted under warranty, and to have the door handle fixed. Their Mastertech said that the handle wasn't covered by the warranty (even though it would be an MOT failure issue), but that he had removed the handle cap and done something, and explained that you have to operate the handle in a specific way - this doesn't seem necessary for any of the other door handles. This "fix" lasted only a few days, before the handle seized again, so on September 2nd I took the car to a local independent garage where they ordered a new "door handle carrier", involving the fitting of a "support" and bolt and producing a bill of over £150. This worked until May of this year, when the handle seized again, so on July 9th the same garage supplied, painted and fitted a new outer door handle, door handle cap and inner door lock, at a cost of over £400. I hope this replacement lasts better, but I would point out that the driver's door handle gets far more use, and so far that has operated perfectly! While I appreciate that you may not look kindly on my use of an independent garage for this work, I would like to say that the Skoda dealership in Inverness was the nearest to my home at 100 miles away, that they didn't repair the car properly, and that I understand they are not re-opening after Covid 19, meaning that the nearest dealership is now in Paisley - 140 miles from home. This is not an isolated incident, judging from owners' forums on the internet, and it doesn't seem fair that I have spent over £550 on repairing a fault which was an MOT failure issue which occurred within the original 3-year warranty period, and which wasn't repaired properly by the Skoda dealership in the first instance, so I am asking if Skoda will cover my costs on this?" I sent this letter on 16th July 2020. On 9th September, having received no response at all, I phoned SUKCS and spoke to someone who took my phone number and said I would get a call from one of their managers. It turned out that this person hadn't written the number down correctly, and a couple of weeks later they found my email address in their records and sent a message asking me to phone them. I did, and was informed that they had no record of my letter! Having then spent some time explaining the whole story to this "manager", I was informed that nothing would be considered without me taking the car to be diagnosed by an official Skoda dealer. So, basically, I had a problem with the car (MOT failure point within the original warranty period) which I had to pay for myself. I could pay a Skoda dealer who couldn't fix it, or an independent who did. Guess who I'll stick with in future! I would at least like to add my name to the list of those who have thanked SportlineBri for his illustrated explanation of how to get the handle back in it's correct position - I made my tool from the wire handle of a bulldog clip! Best wishes to all for the best Christmas that you can safely manage.

This might be a bad idea - there was a thread here a year or two back about folk who got tree leaves trapped between the shade and the glass, with no way of getting them back out again.

This all seems very complicated - why don't you just turn the wipers off before you turn the ignition off? The engine is the last thing I turn off before I get out of the car.

You, Sir, are a genius! I have just done what you suggested and it works, although the maximum wipe frequency is quite slow. That may be because I've only tested it on the driveway in the dry. Hopefully it is still speed-sensitive, and will improve when I'm actually driving in the rain - since I'm in Scotland, I should be able to test that any minute now! Many thanks.

I would swap the automatic wiper system for proper manual adjustment - this piece of rubbish never works properly, wiping either too much or too little whatever the circumstances, and often seeming to be totally random. Before we got the Superb my wife had a Mazda6 with auto wipers, which were as bad as the Superb's, and my Mazda6 MPS had the manual system (even though it was the top of the 6 range) which could be adjusted to perfection for any weather conditions. I think it might be auto wipers which finally tipped my mental balance over the edge, although she has other theories.

I just came across a quote from someone totally unrelated to all this ..... "I used to have a handle on life, but it broke."

I also have green stuff under the edge of the foglight glass - it is algae. It doesn't get much worse, and it doesn't affect the performance of lights that have no practical use anyway, in my experience. I also have moss growing on the outer window seals. The car is turning green. It is, therefore, becoming eco-friendly - this is a good thing!