Hi Guys,
A bit of background before hand. About a year ago (October 2021), I hit a fox late a night whilst driving on a country road. The point of impact was precisely where my front assist/radar was and the fox also went underneath my car, causing minor damage to the undertray. The radiator and aircon condenser holder was also slightly damaged. The dealer wanted to replace it all and charge me over £2,000; I obviously did not take them up on the offer! Fast forward to today and the aircon still works fine, the cruise control still works fine and all is good except the front assist/radar, which is now giving me a check engine light.
After I hit the fox, the front assist unit survived and remained plugged in, but was completely ripped off of the bracket. I managed to zip tie it back onto the bracket (most of the bracket survived, just the screws were gone and the metal bent) and it is now secure and does not move whilst the vehicle is in operation. Obviously the sensor needs re-calibrating (or maybe even replacing) and hasn't functioned properly since October 2021. It appears to work fine for the first 5 minutes of any journey, but then an error flashes up on my dashboard to say "Front Assist Not available", which is fine and does not concern me since I rarely use it, but now I have had a new issue prop up.
For just over a week now I have had a check engine light appearing on my dashboard accompanied with a "Start-Stop Error" warning message. I took it to my local Skoda dealer and they've told me that my engine is fine(the tech guy stated "no loss of power or difference in drive") and that the error is related to the adaptive cruise control unit, more specifically, the front assist radar system. I am not sure why it is now affecting the start-stop system, but apparently it is and since that is linked to automatically restarting the engine, I can only presume this is why the check engine light is now coming on. They've told me that in order to fix it, they will need to re-calibrate the front assist radar.
I asked them if they could just remove the check engine light warning for that error. I really don't care about the front radar system if it is not affecting the engine (it's something I can live without!!!), but apparently they cannot remove it. They have stated that the car can no longer detect the front assist and for that reason there is no way to remove the check engine warning light. This is odd because it still states 5 minutes into my drive "Front Assist Not available" and works for the first 5 minutes, so it clearly can detect it.
I guess my question is does the diagnosis of my local Skoda dealer sound correct and if so, is there really no way to remove that check engine light without re-calibrating the front assist? I may have got the diagnosis slightly wrong because I never got to spoke to the technician 😞 It's the usual setup with a local Skoda dealer where you deal with somebody customer facing and they are the middleman/middlewoman between you and the technicians....
Kind Regards,
Phillip.