Manske

This weekend I removed the front bumper of my 2016 Octavia III 1.6 SE L TDI Estate. I used my TRX 25 bits in my socket set. At the bottom there are 8 bolts instead of 6 on my car. Removing the internal bolts on the side, behind the headlights was a struggle. The reason I could not get the TRX 25 bit in was that they filled up with crud so I used a small scraper to clean them out first. In my 1/4" socket set I have a 15cm flex extension bit which I mounted on the socket screwdriver (?) together with the TRX 25 bit. With one hand near the bolt I guide the bit and the flex extension to its place vertical on top of the bolt. The screwdriver is almost horizontal when I start to turn it anti-clockwise. This is how I unbolt the hidden bolts. In that same location there are 2 additional pesky lugs that hold the bottom bumper to the top front side panel. I prised those carefully loose with a small screwdriver. This connection is a weak point and there is a good chance the connection breaks at some point, with small cracks becoming big cracks over the years. I attach a photo of the front bumper left side where the yellow arrows indicate the location of the TRX bolts, the red arrows indicate the lugs and the blue arrow indicates a metal clip. Just underneath this bumper ridge is a small metal bracket with screw threads for the bolts.

I had a similar experience: after changing the keyfob battery from a duracell DL2025 to a maxell CR2025 the keyfob would not work any more. When I pressed a button, the little red light on the fob would not blink. The car would not react to key presses with the fob. Then I put the Duracell back in but no luck. The Duracell measured 3.0 V, the Maxell 3.3 V. After reading up on this issue I swapped the battery to a Maxell CR2032. This is a bit thicker but said to have more power. It will still fit in the keyfob. Now the key is functional again: the LED blinks when pressing buttons, car unlocks / locks. I did't need to reactivate the key. Hope this helps.

Thanks for the link, that has all the references to get started. I have one question though: for the front side/parking lights you have bulbs with 8 LEDS and I have bulbs with 5 LEDs. While my new LEDs are a vast improvement over the standard bulbs, of course 8 LEDs gives more light. Are you not concerned that the brighter 8 LED bulbs "drown out" the light from the orange indicator light?

It should be at the back of your owner's manual which size bulbs you need. For the sidelights I bought: CANBUS 501 (W5W) 5 SMD LED ERROR FREE SIDELIGHTS BULBS from HIDS-Direct. Recommended.

I wouldn't clean the valve in-situ because 1) you can't really get all the muck out that way 2) any muck or carb cleaner might roll via the manifold into the engine. This brings me to question why there is so much muck in the first place? I guess in 9 years a lot of it can accumulate. Cleaning it should be a service task, like every 60k miles or so. It looks to me that there are two contributors to the EGR Valve muck: 1) Engine oil vapour flows back into the air intake. 2) Sooth from the exhaust gas via the EGR pipe The two mix together and pollute EGR Valve, IMF and Manifold. I tried to scrape some muck out of the manifold and squirted carb cleaner in it. That was a bad idea. I am thinking of ways to get the manifold off for cleaning. Another lovely project.

I just had a Cam belt + waterpump replaced. The recommended interval for my car is 80.000 miles. I booked my car in for a service and the person at the service desk alerted me of the cam belt job. They don't often send letters. I would love to go to "VIP Events" but my dealer is not really interested in me. Probably thinks I am a cheapskate driving a 2005 135k mile car :-)

So there you have it. This job took me longer than needed because I had to figure out how things hang together in this car. I am glad I have a few socket sets with suitable extensions. I also used a short stubby Allen key to access the 6 mm Allen bolts. All very fiddly. I also found it hard to get the electric connector to the IMF off. Mmmm. I removed the rubber air hose and then found it hard to push it back in again. Somehow it has to "click". For the cleaning I used a toothbrush stick first, then paraffin and finally carb cleaner. The man at the garage had suggested that "some customers" use Mr Muscle degreaser. So the first afternoon was spend cleaning and reassembling, then I reset the fault codes but the next day the fault came back of course. Then I bought a new EGR valve to replace the old one (as suggested by the garage). The next Saturday I was meant to fix the new valve but the mityvac and vacuum testing idea came to me. I can't put a price on my time here. Obviously a cleaning job like this makes everything dirty, hands, clothes. It takes effort to get it all off. So perhaps the £260 that the garage was going to charge me does not look so bad after all. Plus they collect and return the car to my house. All good service from the local Skoda dealer. But we learned something...

Old EGR Valve: Part number 038129637D Wahler WAO Germany New EGR Valve (£64) Note: the VW mark has been cut out for some reason and the Wahler box:

After a few hours of cleaning: Inlet Manifold Flap or Throttle Body (part number 036128063 / A2C53099815) EGR Valve I know that it was pointless to clean the EGR valve. The truth is that I had no idea how to vacuum test the valve until I saw it mentioned on this forum, someone saying mityvac and when I looked it up I saw something that looked like the vacuum pump in my motorcycle brake bleeding set. That is when I made the connection. Duh!

So there you have a condensed version of the useful bits that I learned from two Saturday afternoons. I read many EGR topics but I found this topic of particular help for dismantling the EGR valve and throttle: http://www.briskoda.net/forums/topic/212548-egr-valve-cleaning/ Here some photos: Throttle or "Intake Manifold Flap" after 135k miles EGR Valve after 135k miles: This is how the EGR Valve fits with the Intake Manifold and the EGR pipe: The IMF and EGR are connected to each other and to the Manifold with 5 mm Allen bolts. The EGR pipe is connected with 6 mm Allen bolts.

I will show you how I did the vacuum test of the EGR Valve. I used a Sealey vacuum tester which is the same as a mityvac. The reason I do vacuum testing is that the valve is operated by a vacuum hose. This is not a valid way of testing an electrically operated EGR Valve (obviously!) I disconnected the vacuum hose and connected the Sealey vacuum tester. No matter how hard I pumped, the valve would not hold vacuum. Here is the result (after much toiling) with a new EGR Valve. You can see that the valve holds good vacuum at -550 m Hg which would be ~0.3 bar. Vacuum testing the new valve on the bench: Note the metal rod moves up, opening the pathway to let used exhaust fumes into the air intake.

A few weeks ago the engine warning light came on. Last month I already spend near £1000 pounds on a cambelt + waterpump replacment and glowplugs replacement. I was feeling poor so I set out finding what the problem was myself. It appeared to by fault code P0401 - EGR flow unsufficient. I asked my local dealer what they would suggest doing about it and they quoted me £260 for an EGR valve replacement. In this topic I wanted to share my experiences in finding a solution for this problem. Just a bit of background: I spanner a bit on my motorcycle but in my 5 years of Skoda ownership I have never lifted the rubber engine cover. So I am pretty much a novice at this. To get started I purchased a cheap OBD2 bluetooth dongle (£5.95) and the Torque Pro app for Android (£3). Bluetooth pairing the two devices was easy. There is a menu that says "Fault Codes" and when selected will scan for fault codes. This gave P0401 with an option to read what that means. There are many good threads on this forum about P0401 and possible ways of tackling this fault.

Report them to a wider audience in the global village: Road and Driver Safety - Road Rage | Car Drivers Number Plate Registration, Don't Get Mad... Get Even!

It's that time of year again, dark in the evening and all those people with failing headlight are shaken out of the woodwork. Ratio seems to be 1:20 cars, just one lightbulb away from total invisibility. I admit, I give them often a quick flicker with the headlight, once or twice in quick succession. I think it's only helpfull. People alerted my wife by flickering and when she realised why they were doing that she had the lightbulb changed quickly. Cheers, Manske

I can see the reasons why manufactors are pushing for low-capacity high output engines. Fuel economy and pollution are now big issues. The question with these small but powerful engines is really the long-term reliability of these high-tech components such as injectors and turbos. A car must surely cost a lot of energy to produce so what's the point if the motor only has a lifetime of say 150k miles maximum? My mate showed me a 10 year old Vectra with 400k miles on the clock. It might have mediocre fuel economy but certainly has earned it's keep.