Rifleman

Followed the Škoda website link to book a test drive. My local dealer got in touch 10mins later with a time and date next week. Great I thought until he sent me a mk3 brochure, I called him back and was told they won’t have a mk4 on site until late April/early May and they will only get 1 so it may be destined for showroom display… 😞

Sorry about that, I was speccing up an L&K.

If you look on the Carwow website and spec up a Superb there is a tick box to add the digital dash at a cost of £450. I’ve had a few quotes on an L&K from them already circa 21 to 27% discount.

Ahh, the good old days. Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be...

The car went into the dealers today for the coolant contamination to be investigated. Their conclusion, it’s definitely contaminated again but they don’t know why! They ran a diagnostic check which didn’t show any other problems. They spoke to Skoda UK about what to do next as it will be a warranty claim. Skoda told them to repeat the flushing and try again. They’ve booked it in for 2 days on 20th August. That will be 19wks after they first found the contamination. It’s getting very close to the day where my trade-in takes place on a new car (which is not a Skoda). I can see this being a real problem...

A question for you tech-savvy guys (sadly I’m not one of you), if the head gasket is blown would you expect cross contamination i.e. oil in the coolant, water in the oil?

No smoke, no obvious water underneath. I’m no mechanic but I suspect the water level warning was due to them not fully tightening something when they performed the flush causing a very slow leak somewhere.No problem at all with coolant level until that was done. Any slight drips would have evaporated very quickly in this heat. I may be imagining it but I get the feeling that the engine does sound a little louder than usual, hard to describe but a sort of low growl/grumble sound under load... Fingers crossed they will put a mechanic who knows what he’s doing on it ;0)

Always in my keeping apart from when it goes to the dealer for servicing. Added water was from a sealed 1.5l bottle of drinking water bought at a motorway service area....

When my 2yr old Superb went in for its annual service the dealer found that the coolant system was contaminated. It is a cloudy, murky dark olive green colour. A bit like muddy green puddle water. There is no evidence of any oil in the coolant. If you dip your finger in it it just feels like normal runny water. Oil level is normal, it’s not used a drop from new. Likewise for coolant, never needed topping up. The dealer had it back in for a warranty service to flush out the system and replace the coolant but they made no attempt to discover the source of the contamination. 1000 miles on, during a return trip through France, the car started beeping a warning and flashing warning signals saying the coolant was low and needed refilling. It took 1.5l of water to top it up. That was 3 weeks ago. Checked the coolant level again yesterday and it took about 250ml of water to get it back to normal. I’ve booked the car in so the dealer can have another attempt at fixing it. Anyone had a similar problem with contamination and if so did you find the source of the problem?

I’ve been on a driving holiday in the Loire Valley for the last two weeks. No evidence of reduced speed limits anywhere either within the valley or on the way down. The local ex-pats are telling us that the breathalysers are no longer required, the law has been dropped. I have two in the glovebox though just to be on the safe side. It’s been wall to wall blue sky and sunshine for the last two weeks, mid 30s temp but with a lovely cooling stiff breeze. BBC weather app has been 100% inaccurate for the whole two weeks! Local weather forecasts are about 90% accurate, showing rain and thunderstorms for latter part of next week...

Just tried flumpie's python script and I'm happy to confirm that it works for me. Thanks very much flumpie, perhaps you could make a few quid by selling your fix to Skoda! ;0) Only slight glitch is that the speed camera icon bmp that comes with the PocketGPSWorld speedcam database doesn't work with Skoda's poi creator. It works fine with the old VW poi creator but with the Skoda one it shows up blank on the Columbus. The workaround is to resize the speedcam icon bmp from it's original 22x22pixels to 39x39pixels and save it as a 24bit bmp BEFORE you import it into the POI creator. Maybe one day Skoda will get their act together and fix their software at source to save us all this hassle...

My L&K is at the dealers for a service and they have loaned me a courtesy car. It’s a Superb Estate Sportline DSG and the colour is “Dragon Green” metallic. IHMO It’s the most hideous colour I have ever seen on a car. I’m embarrassed to have it sitting on the drive. It’s so nauseating my wife has just asked me to close the curtains so that she can’t see it lol! I’m all for something a bit more colourful than the drab greys but this colour is way too out there... I guess it’s one of those marmite love it/hate it things. Sorry for any offence caused but I just had to get it off my chest ;o)

??

The old one from the VW site does not work with the poi file from the SKODA MyDestination site. As of this time no one has been able to upload POIs to their SKODA since last weekend as far as I am aware.

For your information If you get an error message when you're updating your device, follow next steps. Insert the SD card into your computer again. Copy the file named 'metainfo2.txt" contained in PersonalPOI/MIB2HIGH folder into the root of SD card replacing the meta2info.txt file that should be already there. Extract the SD card from your computer and insert it into your GPS device again. Repeat the installation procedure. tried that Hozz, no luck I’m afraid...