PetrolDave

I was taught by BSM in 1975 in Guildford (which has quite a lot of steep hills) and was always taught to leave the car in neutral and apply the handbrake when parked.

As a Chartered Electrical Engineer since 1988 I have to say that any claim that you can make a live connection/disconnection without generating a spark is probably made by someone who also sells snake oil.

I spent several years working on a system that electronically cancelled boom caused by 4 cylinder engines - at first it was really surprising how many people just don't hear the boom, but it seems that some people just aren't sensitive to those type of low frequency sounds.

When jump starting it's always advisable to connect the +ve leads first and to the battery terminals, then the -ve leads to somewhere on the body or engine away from the battery so if there are any sparks they will be away from any hydrogen produced by an unsealed battery.

When you put the new card in it takes a while to read and check the data on it is maps and is OK. There's nowhere for it to be downloaded to in the Amundsen, the maps are read directly from the SD card so it must be left in the slot all the time.

I've got 3 Skoda SD cards (all bought off eBay for a fraction of the official price) and use them in rotation - works like a charm.

Had the handbrake come off once, in the Aldi car park in Bideford - hasn't happened again since.

I use copperslip with good results, just use it sparingly.

No idea about that eBay one, but the Amazon Basics ones are fine with all our Apple devices including my iPhone XS.

If it's a USB to Lightning cable it should work - I use a mix of genuine Apple cables and Amazon Basics cables with my iPhone, SWMBOs iPad and our Apple TV remote.

Simple answer, yes. Keep the old card and when the next map updates happen you can download the updates and unzip onto that instead of buying another SD card.

We've averaged 45mpg in the 4 years we've owned our 1.4TSI Elegance estate, which equates to around 450 miles before I feel the need to find a petrol station.

I use a 256GB SD card to hold all my music (currently just over 192GB used) organised as \Artist\Album which works well for us as we have all our music with us and can play whatever we fancy for the mood/situation.

I think you would struggle to find any car except an old banger with a CD player - some don't even have "normal" USB sockets now (only USB-C).

Same here the sensors have always been active when stopped or moving slowly - which on a single track Devon road with passing places means we hear the side sensors beeping a lot when squeezed into a passing place!

Or this could be fun...

Here's the instructions I followed using VCDS: Controller 09 – Central Electronics 16 - Security Access - enter 31347 10 - Adaptations Windshield wiper-Anzahl Betaetigungen Frontwaschanlage pro SRA Aktivierung - 10 Windshield wiper-SRA Verzoegerungszeit - 0 ms default, change to 2000ms (delay before headlamp washer activates) Windshield wiper-SRA Waschzeit - 600 ms Windshield wiper-SRA Einweichpausenzeit - 2000 ms Windshield wiper-SRA Nachwaschzeit - 1100 ms Windshield wiper-SRA Pausenzeit - 0 ms Windshield wiper-SRA bei Waschwassermangel - not active

Have you had your car 'chip tuned'? Some tuners disable some of the diagnostics checks...

My wife's insurance premium REDUCED when she added me to her policy as a named driver - I'm male, younger than her, had a fault accident 2 years earlier and at the time had 3 penalty points so go figure???

I passed my test in 1976 in a Ford Escort - which was changed just two weeks before my test, previous my BSM instructor had a Triumph Toledo which had a much "friendlier" clutch pedal so it took a while to adjust to.

Mk2? Then you've posted in the wrong forum as this is the Mk3 forum.

Currently I pay a total of £50 VED for our 2 cars (£20 for a 2008 Citroen C1 109g/km and £30 for a 2015 Octavia 1.4TSI 119g/km), in October I'm scrapping the C1 and getting a new Toyota Aygo which has lower emissions (99g/km) but the VED will be £135 the first year and £150 subsequent years so our VED bill will rise to £165 then £180. Hardly an incentive to buy less polluting vehicles....

I've been using the VW maps in my Octavia for the past 3 years - why? Because they are available much sooner on the VW website that on the Skoda portal.

Can I ask why?

True, but IF (which I very much doubt) you don't have airbags in your A pillar then you almost certainly have the only Octavia III in the world without them as they were a standard fitment and are one of the reasons for the 4 star NCAP rating.