vegit8

Yes, I have had the same sort of conversation recently. His initial response was that my car was ‘in the system to be built at the end of May’ and that I should speak to the dealer for more updates. When I pointed out that SUK are the importers and the dealers are merely the sales arm of the process my chatty buddy then went off and consulted with someone else. The result? My car had in fact been built, but was ‘awaiting parts’. When I asked where the vehicle was physically, he would not be drawn, even after I said that I had heard they may be parked in fields. Now... I am not overly bothered that it could be sat in a field, cars spend the vast majority of their life just sat around and I doubt they are aware of their surroundings. I will however be paying close attention to battery performance as I have read that there can be issues with batteries that do not get a regular charge, especially when the cars are first delivered.

Many hundreds of years ago I was taught that when you are sitting at lights you always engage neutral and apply the parking brake. Sitting with the clutch depressed and the foot brake applied puts unnecessary wear on the clutch release bearing, and if you have been braking heavily before coming to a stop the brake pads will be putting all that heat back into the disc.

I always open my chat conversations with the order number... this helps avoid the sort of issue you mention. Is your car on order from Heritage Yeovil? I am 3 months ahead of you in terms or order date. No sign of mine coming any day soon or later...

Hmm.. My build week was 22 (the end of May)! Hate to dissappoint, but you may be waiting a bit more than 6-8 weeks.

Indeed, delayed by lack of semi conductors. We are due to go to France at the beginning of Sept for 2 weeks. Our dealer is lending us a ‘fleet’ car, and arranging adequate insurance cover for driving in Europe as they cannot guarantee our car will be here in time. Ah... that would explain it! Enjoy.

Interested to know when it was ordered... Ours ordered on 26th Feb, is still nowhere to be seen, and with no date as to when it might arrive either.

Think I would invest in a cheap set of roof bars. Having had many Skoda’s over the years all with rails, the bars have come in handy, even if rarely used.

We, too, often go to France. Next trip due in a month! My preferred navigation method is to use Waze on my phone (which uses google map data) as this gives me realtime traffic info. I combine this with a zoomed out in car nav screen. I then get a long range view of major town names, which helps with diversions etc.

Our Karoq was ordered in Feb and built (mostly) at the end of May. It is now 'stood' somewhere awaiting an ECU chip. I will be logging concerns over battery performance and other such things when I eventually take delivery. If it turns out to be a dog it will be going back toute suite!

Depending on your confidence and skill there are ways to overcome this... Check this post for details on how to do it... Switched power hint. As an extension to the above I changed (in my Octavia) the way the 12v sockets operated. Each fused circuit consists of a 12v power side (known as a bus) and the load side, which is connected to whatever device requires power. The fuse acts as a fail safe bridge between the two sides. Using the piggy back leads described in the linked post, you connect (using a proper crimped connector) a second piggy back lead so that you now end up with what looks like a powered set of blades. If you do not insert any fuses into this new lead only 1 terminal will be live. It is protected by the fuse at the source end of the piggy back lead. you now take power from a switched circuit (47 being one option) and then use the fused fly lead connect that to the LOAD side of the 12v socket. The unfused side of the fly lead will plug into the bus side of the circuit, but the power doesn’t go anywhere. Et Voila, 12v sockets are now only live when the ignition is turned on. If this all sounds too complicated, there was a post somewhere on Briskoda that I used as a reference to do this, but I can’t find it any more.

Herbie...

My wife (Jacks mum) sang on Grandad - the single that Herbie wrote as the result of a challenge to pen a number 1 hit. He doesn't like to be reminded of the fact...

Hah... I started writing a longer piece about how session and touring session players get paid and then opted for the ‘one liner’ reply. But as you raised the point... here goes. Those of you old enough to remember may or may not know that the bass line on Lou Reeds classic ‘walk on the wild side’ was written and played by Herbie Flowers. He is a long term family friend and Jacks god father. Herbie got paid £34 for that performance (which was actually double the session fee because he played a double bass and an electric bass which was overdubbed). He got no royalties or residual payments. Lou Reed on the other hand still gets a small payment each time it gets played. Herbie is now in his 80’s and despite playing on over 500 top 100 hits, lives a very simple life. Jack who started performing live at the age of 14, has toured the world for the last 10 years or so with James Bay and James Arthur as well as others. No matter how big a star the artist is the going rate is £250 (less tax and insurance) a day (when you are performing), on non playing days you get a ‘per diem ’ ’ which may be £40 (before tax and insurance) or so. This has to pay for food, laundry expenses, cabs etc. You do not get paid for time taken to ‘learn the songs’ and rarely for rehearsal days. Whilst a performance may be 90 minutes or so, the actual time you are tied up may be as much as 20 hours or more per day. You cannot go home between shows, more often than not you are stuck in a tour bus with 10 or 12 others in very close confinement. The musician is expected to provide his own instruments (including spares in case of failures). Then at the end of the tour you may find your equipment (and your ability to earn an income) stuck in a shipping container on its way back from America. It being too costly for the label to fly it back for you. These days it is the record label who control the finances (and the’ artist’). Record labels are just a small part of an even bigger conglomerate. The artist gets an advance from the label based on potential earnings from (albeit small) physical sales, and income from touring. Playing the biggest venues (stadium gigs) means big money for the label. Thankfully Jack ceased touring and doing live performances at the end of 2019, just before Covid killed any opportunity to earn money. He now works in a recording studio as an engineer and also gets to play and contribute to the writing process. This studio has some big named acts on its books such as James Arthur, Bastille, Rag n Bone Man, The Wombats, James Blunt and so on. As mentioned previously his contributions are now electronically embedded in the end product and there will be a small but ongoing revenue stream for his efforts. As consumers of music I think it is our duty to reward those who entertain us day in day out. If any of you are sufficiently interested in this aspect of the music industry, Jack did a podcast a few years ago where he talks openly and frankly about the perils of being a touring musician... Podcast link I know from personal experience that the road to being at at top of your game in the music industry is a long and hard one. Cheers

And rightly so...

If I remember correctly, back in the days when i first ripped CD’s there is a fair bit of additional data embedded in the file that includes such things as artist name, album name, track name, running time and so forth. Nowadays it also includes digital records of who contributed to the creation / production of the track for PRS and PPL purposes. My stepson is a professional musician and sound engineer, this is how he gets paid (fractions of a fraction of a penny) whenever a track gets played commercially. If you think back to vinyl days all you got was the music, all the additional information was on the album sleeve, hordes of pen pushers in the BBC and other places had to manually record plays and who should get a credit. If during the ripping process any of the identifying data got missed the system reading the track will have no idea who and what it is, hence the ‘unknowns’. If you get the original product and re-rip, all this information will reappear. The file name that you see is created by the ripping software. In windows Media Player you can choose what information is included in the file name.

Yep... Your PC, doesn’t care what the destination is as long as the path makes sense. I have all my CD’s ripped to a NAS (network attached storage) box, this has 2x4Tb hard disks in. All data that we, as a household, create goes on there. The disks are mirrored copies of each other, so if one goes bad my data is still safe.

Hi yes - you can make Media player automatically rip to a specific location. Open Media player and click on the Organise menu, then choose Options Click on the Rip Music tab Click Change Your USB drive will be listed in the window that now appears Click on that then OK Your new location should be shown like mine below (F:\ in my case) If you have lots of CD's to process you may wish to click on the Rip CD automatically option and the Eject CD automatically option Click Apply - to save your changes. Thats it, job done! Make sure you only select the highest level in your USB device (known as the root), this will ensure that each album is stored in its own folder, if you choose a sub folder (named music for example) then everything will get put in there and I am not sure how the infotainment system will deal with that.

Each album has a folder with all the tracks from that album inside it. If you stick one song file at the same level as all the folders (you will need to inspect the contents using file explorer / manager (depending what you call it and how old you are!!!). If your play this file first and then select random, you then get a never ending selection of tracks from all of you albums. Of course this is of no use if you want to hear an album in the traditional sense, but this overcomes the need to have to fiddle with the player looking for a new album when one finishes.

I have used this technique for a long time. 1 trick is to place 1 track outside the folder structure by album. Play this track then select random play, it will then go through the whole library playing tracks from any album..

Quite so, and not even that ancient. We are in the process of modernising a 60’s house. The current (no pun intended) consumer unit replaced the original fuse box some time ago. As we are adding more circuits we now need a bigger one. Our ‘leccy has suggested we go for one with RCBO’s (Residual Current Breaker with Over current) on each circuit as the next revision of the regs is going to specify these as standard. Replacing MCB’s and RCD’s. Whilst these are not a requirement at the moment, once the new regs are published then any works on properties where consumer units are not up to spec, may require additional work over and above just installing the charging point as @SurreySlowCoach has said.

Does your car have the varioflex seats as mentioned by the OP?

I am not convinced that the ‘setting by GPS’ feature is that reliable. In newer vehicles it wont even advance the clock by 1 hour when entering Europe. Despite the infotainment system advising you of new speed limits. My old (2015) Octavia used to manage this feat without intervention. The 2018 replacement does not. SUK have told me I need to drive further east for the time zone to be recognised!!!!

Hooray... Just had a call from the dealer, to confirm that if our new car is not available then they will loan us something equivalent or better from the dealer fleet (may be a Skoda / VW/ Audi) and ensure that insurance is all sorted. Just goes to show that a 'valued' customer does have some 'value'.

Indeed, when i first started driving everything was manual. Steering, brakes, indicators. No form of assistance whatsoever. My parents old Ford Pop, used to have vacuum powered wipers, which used to slow down to a halt when going up hills.

Or worse still in that gap between the windscreen and the dash!