numskull

As a final update, anyone with a MKIII with a beige interior who has a mark on their seating and wants to buy perfectly matched dye, if they place a custom mix order with Gliptone, then call John Severn on 01244 888658 Option 1 and tell John that you want the colour he mixed for order number 19117, that’ll tell him the correct mix specification.

The entire seat base and bolsters, together with the centre section of the squab and bolsters are leather. The top of the squab, where a logo is embossed, or stitched on post Aug 16 cars, plus the squab sides, the top and backs are leatherette… whoops, sorry… “artificial leather”! I now know this as John Severn, the guy who mixes the dye at Gliptone gave me a great tip; if you press your finger nail into the seat firmly (NOT hard) and creases form into the indentation, it’s leather. Leatherette looks like when you push your finger into a balloon, so there’s no creasing which, given its basically plastic-coated fabric, makes sense. Yes, the dye will work equally well on the leatherette/vegan leather/NuLuxe/SofText/SensaTec/MB-tex/blah, blah… 👍🏻

Quick update. After the rubbish I received from Scratch Doctor (still no refund from them BTW) I contacted Gliptone last week and they confirmed they could match the leather colour of the car. I said I’d tried to find a large enough piece of leather to send them without success and they suggested I sent them a headrest which, although it’s not leather, in their experience the colour of the leather and the imitation leatherette in Skoda vehicles are identical. I sent the centre headrest to Gliptone last Thursday and yesterday, I received the 250ml of mixed dye, a free small bottle of leather cleaner and the headrest; brilliant service. More importantly than all this rubbish, is that I applied the dye this morning and once dry, the colour match is absolutely perfect. 👍🏻

Probably won’t work, but did you try disconnecting the battery for 10 mins or so?

This was told to me by Lookers in Guildford. This was not by the delightful service advisor who called me a w@&ker under her breath for me daring to suggest that the 280 doesn’t have a cambelt - which was confirmed to her by a tech - but by another numpty behind the service desk. Anyway, I’m happy to change the oils more often than the schedule states given the vast majority of miles I do is to and from work and all the wet mechanics barely get warm, especially in the winter.

Ahhh, right. Yeah, we don’t really have those here in Blighty, mate!

On 43k with the 250 DSG and no issues, except it has a bit of a sluggish up change for the first 30 seconds when really cold. No idea why it does that, so I’ll wait for the doomsayers to day it’s fecked! DSG service is 40k or three years whatever comes first, but I’m getting it changed every two, regardless of mileage.

I’ve got the stop/start defeat module and it doesn’t make a difference to the ACC stop time either. @JR RS, you’re a brave man using lane assist for steering the car for 60 seconds; even at low speed I wouldn’t trust it.

Guess they found ‘em…

Yeah, engine braking is effectively non-existent on our 280.

I didn’t get that opportunity. What arrived was a pre-mixed “all-in-one Skoda beige leather dye”, which, I’m guessing, was mixed by a colour blind person without a colour reference in room with blackout blinds….

Having driven cars and buses with those so-called smart screens, trying to find anything simply and safely is almost impossible; we have the latest Gen Transit buses at work they are a nightmare, having to combine commands from the steering wheel controls and the screen itself to make adjustments.

Yeah, thanks for the tip, but it’s that’s that useless Scratch Doctor lot.

Nope, only the NS mirror Colin. You can programme one of the seat memory buttons to dip the OS mirror, which I’ve done on #3. Manually move the mirror to the dip position you want, push the mem button, then the seat button you want to assign to the mirror, car “dongs” in response and voila.

Have you tried resetting it?

How come your 2016 L&K didn’t have an OE cam fitted, Colin? Nevertheless, seems like a bargain for £35! Use mine every day and wouldn’t be without one now.

Thanks J.R., I’ll give that a go and see if it’ll get rid of the muck. Anyone else on the dye front? Thanks in advance.

So after helping 2nd born replace roofing felt on one of his garden sheds last weekend and unbeknown to me, a small amount of the adhesive got on the back of my T shirt at some point, which carefully transferred itself to the centre bolster of my drivers seat. So I removed the main bit with tweezers. I then tried Poorboys leather cleaner to remove the remaining product which did nowt. So then I tried meths which proved to be a disaster,. No only didn’t it remove the bitumen, but it managed to begin to completely remove the top layer of the material and in one tiny spot, the colour of the imitation leatherette - or leather, not sure what it is now - has gone completely, leaving a dark brown material exposed - brilliant. Now I’ve used meths to successfully clean cr@p off leather on the MKI, the MKII and the the steering wheel of the MKIII without any problems whatsoever, so what this stuff is I really don’t know. So now I have a bolster with a lightened area, a small area with the top coat missing and I still have the two black blobs of bitumen on there too. I ordered a Skoda Beige dabber pen from The Scratch Doctor and this bared zero resemblance to the seat colour (useless service BTW; couldn’t have been less interested) so I was wondering if anyone has used a dye product which successfully matched the MKIII Ivory/Beige leather colour and if so, the name of the supplier etc.?

Yep, one of the first things I did, as the original reversing lamps were useless and did the blinkers at the same time.

Front or back door, or both?

No it’s not. 90% of them have never seen the inside of a bodyshop, let alone worked in one. They buy a franchise, get a few weeks “training” and they’re qualified. And the big boys dictate the standard of the work, the customer does not, with clauses like “as long as the repair cannot be identified by a lay person from 3 metres, it’s a pass” or words to that effect. Also, they’re worked on outside, even worked on when it’s raining without putting up a gazebo (I saw that this week in my road - another triumph of Chipsaway (“Like it never happened” my ass!) and with that the paint can get contaminated with dust, water et Al. They overcook the paint to save time, which means the outside of the paint dries but the inside remains tacky and that can cause crazing and shrinkage. And boy do they overcharge too. Yeah, a slight scuff on a bumper which hasn’t damaged the plastic is one thing; in regards to the subject of the OP post, forget it.

Couldn’t get mine to work on non matrix lights!😂

The issue as I see it with these "smart anythings", is that drivers can easily get distracted from driving, due to having to faff around trying to select the correct function to change the zoom on the map/change it back to lower the volume etc. which could lead to the vehicle drifting lanes, rear-ending someone. The designers think they're being smart by introducing MFD like these dials when, in fact, they're being dim; anything that distracts the driver for more than a second or so to make an adjustment is "simply stupid".

I'm sure that bove 50/60 it'd drop to 7th, so it'll be a 6 speed.

Oh dear - now that is truly dreadful.