Dave1953

I changed the 9 year old battery in my 2014 Octavia III this afternoon, swapping the OEM Varta 68Ah for a Bosch 70Ah. The local "cheap" garage wanted £40 to do the change, including the coding, and said it would be a half hour task. Thanks to mshere and his CarScanner tip I did the whole job myself in a leisurely twenty minutes, start to finish! I thought I might as well cough up the £4.69 to get the full app as it appears to be quite capable - so far I've only turned on the needle sweep feature to test it, but I'll be looking through the list to see what else I might try out (cornering foglights might be useful).

I've got it around the front bolt on one passenger side track. It's been there for the six years I've had the car without getting any worse, but it's the job I never seem to get round to sorting out. Maybe this year?

I was lucky enough to be working at RAF Waddington for a few months in 1981/82, just before the Falklands War. At the time, the Cold War was still at its height and the Vulcans at Waddington and Scampton were always on alert. Needless to say, there was lots of flying to watch, but the best times were when the pilots were testing their planes after being serviced, when they used to throw them around the sky like WW2 fighter planes in a dogfight. The noise and spectacle was unbelievable, and you could feel your insides vibrating as they carried out full power steep climbs directly overhead before closing the throttles and rolling into a vertical dive - repeating the manoeuvre several times over (just for fun, I think)! I also saw XH558 several times afterwards at various air shows (when it was still allowed to do a pretty impressive routine, but nothing like the test flights), the most memorable being at Fairford about 1989. The temperature was well into the 30s and I was standing near a USAF bloke who was eating an ice cream when the Vulcan took off. It lifted straight into a 45 deg. climb before the pilot eased back the thottles until it almost came to a stall, then just swung the plane round through 90 deg. with hardly any roll, and roared off on full power directly away from us, still in a steep climb. I glanced at the Yank and he was standing wide-eyed, mouth open, tongue stuck in mid-lick, probably unable to believe what he'd just seen! It was the most impressive take-off I've ever seen, and undoubtedly the Yank's as well. An SR-71 and a B-52 took off just afterwards, the B-52 only impressive because of its sheer size, and the SR-71 singularly disappointing because of its total lack of display-flying ability: it did two straight line flypasts at 30 minute intervals (flying in a 100 mile radius pattern as I recall the tannoy saying), before shooting back across the Atlantic to get home in time for lunch. Definitely Britain 1 - USA 0 that day!

I had exactly the same symptoms and used to go the same routine most mornings, especially when it was cold. The odds are that the battery has never been changed and it's long overdue replacement (even though it will still start the engine, it can't deliver enough current to start the power steering system as well). A new battery will only cost £40 or so online, and will probably sort out the problem. Halfrods will probably charge you about £80-£100 to supply and fit a new one, but you can swap the batteries yourself in five minutes. I changed mine 15 months ago and have not had a warning light since, whereas beforehand it had started to stay on almost constantly - as yours will certainly do before much longer!

I haven't tried the brute force method with a pry bar, but just used a screwdriver to make a gap in a couple of places and squirted in some WD40, waited a few minutes for it to soak around the outside of the bush, then tapped it out from behind with a hammer and piece of wood. They just slide out like wine corks - and certainly aren't the big deal garages and the Haynes manual make out!

If your ARB bushes need changing then your drop links will probably need doing as well, just because of their age. I think you need to undo one end of each link anyway, from memory, so you'll end up needing new links regardless! (Look in the drop link threads!) The drop links are cheap and come with new nuts; the ARB clamp bolts can be reused (but use threadlock and be careful not to overtighten them, as you are screwing them into aluminium). Best to measure the ARB diameter yourself before you order, just to be safe.

Well, after two days without fogging, the snow this morning caused a very thin condensation on the front windscreen. The only difference the Fog Clear gel made was that some of the moisture formed into little beads which ran down the glass, rather than building up into big beads which clung to the surface. Roll on the Spring!

Except that ten polar bears and a snow leopard will suffer an early death because of it (or so they say )

Yes, the heater/blower on the Fabia is rubbish, and it can take a long time to dry out a heavy layer of condensation - it's better just to use a few sheets of kitchen paper to soak it up first, then let the blower finish it off. If you are seeing water on the rear door seal and the car is a few years old, you've probably got a failing door carrier seal (a very common problem), about which there are endless threads on here. The problem isn't difficult to cure yourself, if it's done right, but my advice is to stay away from sealant gun "solutions", as they are messy and very often don't work. I used soft rubber draught excluder in place of the old crumbling foam strip to make a proper mechanical seal and it's been fine for the two years since I did it. You'll know the old seal has given up when you see puddles of water on the rubber mat in the rear footwell, or the carpet is distinctly damp below the wet patch on the door seal after it's been raining.

Money well spent - I put Meyle HD links and Powerflex bushes on mine last Feb, and the difference they made was incredible!

I forgot to mention last night that I put a half cover over the MX5 hood yesterday evening to keep off the expected frost. This morning the Fabia was completely frosted up outside and fogged up inside, whereas the MX5 was completely clear inside, and just had a couple of condensation streaks on the outside of the windscreen where the cover had been in contact with the glass. Maybe all it needs, if you haven't got a cover, is just an old towel spread over the windscreen at night, covered with a plastic sheet to keep it dry, and the condensation will be stopped? As an experiment, I've now dried out the inside of the Fabia windscreen and treated half of it with Fog Clear gel, just to see how well it works tonight. I'll let you know tomorrow.

The right size! Get a caliper on the ARB and measure its diameter, then buy bushes with the same diameter hole. Never heard of "link bars", but I'd be 99.99% certain they're otherwise known as drop links.

It could be nothing to do with leaks or trapped water, just the incessant wet weather, high humidity and cold mornings we've been having for the last few weeks. Both my Fabia and MX5 have been bone dry inside throughout last year, despite the record rainfall, but since the frosty spell we had at the start of December both have been fogged up nearly every morning. I noticed today that the MX5 has even got moisture inside the headlights and high level brake light! Every time you open a door you are letting in moisture-laden air, and the moisture condenses every night on the front and rear windscreens, both of which appear to be getting an extra chilling every night from rain or mist standing on the outside of the glass. I've tried silica gel dehumidifiers to dry the air inside, but they are having no effect at all. I was going to apply some anti-fogging gel to the inside of the front w/s to see if that helps, but I haven't got around to it yet ..... If you are sure that everything is dry inside the car, then I'm pretty sure it's just down to exceptional weather conditions, and something we'll just have to live with for a few more weeks.

Plusgas would have released the nut initially, but it still takes a long time to unscrew those OEM locknuts off a badly rusted bolt by hand, even after you've got them moving. A grinder is more often the quickest and easiest solution in my experience, as you could have had them all off in the time spent waiting for the Plusgas to penetrate the joints.

Sadist!!