classic

I’ve painted it. Not pretty but should slow the rot. Cleaned it up and rubbed it down as best as I could, then a couple of coats of zinc primer and some black engine enamel.

The brake disc probably looks the worst of all the things they reported, but the brake efficiency obviously passed mot. The light misting is normal. AC service, I do actually get this done every 3 years (which for me is 60k miles) but many people will have a good argument to say if it works it doesn’t need it. You can buy your own air con aerosol bomb to do the anti bac thing they charge extra for. Wishbone bush passed the mot. I would budget for new front discs and pads maybe next year, and that’s it.

There is a non return valve in the vacuum line for the brake servo to hold vacuum when the engine is stopped. I think it is possible that if oil is getting into the servo vacuum line and the check valve was faulty then oil could enter the servo and then maybe get through to drip into the footwell. Just my thoughts. Dooge has the best suggestion initially.

p0673 is a fault on the glow plug circuit of cylinder 3. On the 1.6 and 2.0 tdi Octavia engines I have worked on, the cylinder 3 glow plug is the one with a combined pressure sensor. You can test the glow plugs using a multimeter. They should be reasonably straightforward to change but in reality can sieze into the cylinder head and be extremely difficult to unscrew or snap off.

No worries, only 111,000 more miles to go !

There is a screw/bolt behind the interior trim of the mirror that holds it onto the door. The difficulty on these is you have to remove the whole interior door trim before the interior mirror trim can be pulled off and the wires to the mirror plug into a control unit more or less in the middle of the door. link to a video for the door panel removal, ;

It is about right maybe slightly high. I got a “major service” at a VW specialist for £265 which was oil and filter, inspection, air filter, pollen filter and spark plugs. I got it done there as it was still covered by a used car warranty, I could buy the parts and oil for £140, less if I got cheaper oil and didn’t use Bosch or similar quality parts. When you consider they get parts and oil at trade price they are charging around £150 for the labour on a major service which will no doubt only take their mechanic about 1 hour. This time I have just changed my own oil and filter 10,000 miles later for less than £50 using Castrol oil and a Bosch filter. I’m planning on running this car probably until 200,000 miles so I’m not bothered about a full garage service record. The fact is a service history is helpful if you’re going to be selling it later down the line, so maybe the £100 or so extra a year is worthwhile.

I guess so, but yet another thing a blind eye is turned to. Big fleets will state they use modern euro 6 vehicles or EVs whilst the old ones rumble on elsewhere, unseen by our masses.

Supposing (it isn’t going to happen) that every car, van and hgv in the UK was an ev and all the railways were electric and the power was all from nuclear and renewables. What meaningful difference would it make to global warming ? We are a very small slice of the cake. The USA is off the scale compared to us for numbers of vehicles. So are Asia, South America, Russia. Right now huge volumes of our used HGV tractor units, and certain useful smaller vehicles ready for scrap here, get exported to countries that keep them running for years. I guarantee that the dpf’s and ad blue systems will be removed. What about all the worlds agricultural vehicles and aircraft and ships. Parts of the USA are literally on fire and they are still only moving slowly on ev adoption. They have mass shootings on a regular basis and still (as a country ) won’t change gun control. They love fossil cars way more than guns… Even if the Green Party was in power here and transformed the entire infrastructure I don’t think it would move the dial much on global warming.

Good idea, I’ll have a look on eBay. I did see a new full length steel one that was £158.

Got a proper look at it today, with an oil and filter change, pretty bad in places.

At no time have I advised anyone to do anything which could result in a potentially lethal electric shock. I politely ask you to withdraw that remark. My advice was to make sure that BerkCo knew for certain what the wire was before they bolted it to the vehicle frame. I am exceedingly happy that they did this, and can now confidently have the wire connected. Anyone reading this thread will see that. My mistake was posting my thoughts as to whether such a vehicle ground was required for a mains connected engine block heater straying into your 240v territory for you to post a patronising explanation as to why it was required in your usual self righteous tone, rather than just explaining. All the best, I’m glad it is sorted 😀.

Sorry fella, I do not believe I have said any such thing. You made your point earlier. I would politely suggest you don’t over play your hand disingenuously twisting what I have put on here whilst I was genuinely trying to help a fellow member.

You can see it’s a defa system. Looks like this is the cable in your video with the earth and a description about connecting it. https://www.defa.com/content/uploads/Documentation/Downloads/Technical-information/Electrical-preheating/1920254.pdf I apologise if I’ve been over cautious but I stand by my belief that you need to be sure before connecting wires direct to ground or live.

JR, I don’t know what the wire is. I know it isn’t an OE ground wire. I wouldn’t bolt it to the vehicle frame until I knew what it was. Test, don’t guess.

I only know that I don’t know what I don’t know, if that makes sense ! Thinking further about it, if this an engine heater that is plugged into your house mains electricity then why would it connect to the vehicle ground ? The car is sat on tyres so isn’t “grounded”. If anything shorted out or became live from the engine heater and was connected to the vehicle ground then the car frame could be live to your house mains electricity and go to “ground” through you if you touched it. Maybe your house earth tripped for safety because that wire is or isn’t connected to ground, but I’d definitely want to know for sure first.

You don’t know exactly what it is. JR says it’s 100% always a ground, then exceptions being the main battery terminal or if someone bodged something. What if it is something connected to something that becomes live and you bolted it to ground ? Maybe it is a ground connection it looks like one. I would personally want to know rather than guess.

Why not, it’s 100% always a ground. If it melts when you a press a button one day……

100% always, that’s a lot of times, ok then.

I don’t know what it is but in my experience earth wires on Skoda are brown. That photo looks like a black wire. Not much help but I guess it could be a switched live for one of those heaters… ?

Yes, but I’m not sure I’d want to do one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDnt8N_0X5o

The picture doesn’t show the worst area, (these cars are so low to the ground) it’s pretty crusty on the flat bit nearest the crank pulley.

The oil sump on my 1.4 tsi is very rusty. I knew it was rusting but I’ve been ignoring it and looks quite bad now. It is due an oil change soon and thought I probably ought to give the sump some attention. Options are - 1. leave it until it starts leaking 2. fit a new sump 3. paint it. Can anyone recommend a decent paint for engine sumps ? If so I might clean it up and paint it. Thanks

The Gates part number for a czda is KP1TH15680XS-2 which is all 3 of the ones in your picture, so I’m guessing that the GAT/Q, GAT/AC etc is something to do with the ribbed belt or serpentine belt that seems to be included in those kits. I had to change the water pump on mine and I bought a genuine one from the local Skoda dealer, more expensive but it was the correct part, came with a new belt and included the plastic housings and thermostats. As for recommendations I use genuine Skoda personally, my local dealer parts department is good, I’ve just had so much bad experience with wrong parts from independent places I’d rather pay the extra. If I was buying a timing belt from somewhere I’d stick with Continental, Gates or Dayco. I believe Continental supply the belts to VAG group factories. There is a whole further question as to the need to change the all these parts, but that is up to you.

I think I’m right in saying these engines will do a passive regen when the engine load and exhaust temperature is high enough. They do an active regen when the ecu detects the soot level in the dpf is high enough to warrant it (I don’t know this value). It monitors the driving style and exhaust temperatures and decides when the soot load could be high enough and does a regen. It also uses data from the exhaust pressures sensors, temp sensors and other ecu data to trigger an active regen. If it starts doing a regen it will be due to one of these two reasons.