nick74

CO2 is produced directly proportional to the amount of fuel burnt over a given distance, so a bigger heavier car will tend to have worse CO2 emission figures, even if other pollutant levels are lower. Also some pollution control features, such as DPFs, can actually make CO2 emissions worse rather than better.

The only Skoda affected by the oil pump drive issue was the Superb mk1 2.0 TDi PD. The Octavia 2.0 TDi PD engines used a different oil pump drive setup (basically the same as fitted to the 1.9 TDi PD) which is much simpler and doesn't fail.

My 2007 Elegance had headlamp washers with conventional halogen headlamps too.

I don't think so. I once tried cleaning one with compressed air in a can and only succeeded in killing the valve completely! They are a totally sealed unit, not cheap either unfortunately.

Facelift tyres will fit a pre-facelift 😉 Seriously though, you need to be a bit more specific on what you are thinking of changing? It's all down to personal taste, I liked the look of the pre-facelift mk2 better than the facelift so wouldn't change anything, but it's up to you.

Not meaning to sound flippant, but does measuring oil temperature to this degree really matter? My understanding was that the only reason an oil temperature sensor was fitted was as a part the variable distance service indicator system. Then someone at VW presumably went 'Hey, we could use this data to display the oil temp on the dash, that might be interesting.....' Surely on a water-cooled engine any sign of overheating would be quickly reflected in the coolant temperature?The oil temperature just does what it does.

That year would have had a PD engine with a DPF.

It's hard to tell from the pic but that looks perhaps like a slow oil leak coming from somewhere. Is it definitely not coming out from round the glow plug? If the glow plug was loose you could possibly get combustion gasses escaping past it. You won't see anything of the injectors on a PD engine without taking the cam cover off, so whatever that black gunge is it's very likely nothing to do with the injectors or injector seals.

It's been years since I recalibrated one of these but from memory you can only adjust the MPG display by a maximum of 15% in either direction. Yours is slightly more inaccurate than 15% though so you will never be able to get it absolutely spot on. Basically the default value is 100 and if I remember correctly you increase that value to correct an overly optimistic MPG display, and reduce it to correct a pessimistic MPG display (someone please correct me if I've got that the wrong way round!). The lowest it will go is 85 and the highest is 115. So, to get your display as accurate as it can be you would need to set the value to 85.

The fact that it was on 90 suggests that someone might have been there and adjusted it before. Normally they are set to 100% at the factory and you adjust the percentage up or down depending on what % you think the MPG display is either optimistic or pessimistic. Anyway it won't do any harm to start at 100 and see whether that makes the accuracy better or worse.

I found after a cambelt change that a small change in the torsion value made a significant difference to the MPG shown on the dash display.... but no noticeable difference at all to the actual MPG measured brim to brim over a few full tanks. For some reason the torsion setting seems to have a big effect on the accuracy of the fuel consumption display. Worth checking the actual MPG for a while before condemning the current cam torsion setting. You may find its actually OK. If so you can do what I did and use VCDS to tweak the dash display MPG by a few % to make it accurate again.

When one of my LED mirror indicators failed, no it didn't put the bulb warning light on. Over the years I owned the car I did have an intermittent problem with the front sidelight bulbs having a slightly poor contact in the socket and putting the bulb warning light on however.

If the tandem pump was leaking diesel into the engine oil in a seriously big way it could possibly cause runaway of the engine. You would tend to notice a rapidly rising engine oil level before that happened though. By the way, the BKD is 16v and was one of the last of the PD engines. The newer common rail TDis don't have a tandem pump.

I used Goodyear Vector 4 Seasons on my standard front wheel drive Octavia during the bad winters of 2010-11 and 2011-12. They were good enough in the snow to convince me I don't ever need four wheel drive, so I imagine on a Scout they would be unstoppable! They were hard to fault in hot weather too, perhaps very slightly noisy on hot tarmac but that was the only issue. Got about 30k from a set I think.

Hey! I hardly visit this forum now as I sold my Octavia in 2014, but I got an email saying someone had quoted my post. Your problem sounds odd, particularly the intake hose getting puffy on acceleration. I wonder if you have a partially blocked intercooler? Or Perhaps the anti shudder flap is sticking partly closed?

I'm afraid I 'fixed' the problem with mine by part exchanging it for a Toyota! I still see my old car being driven around the area by the current owner, an elderly chap, and if I see him parked up I'll have to ask if he ever got to the bottom of this.

There is no test for NOx in the UK diesel MOT, nor are there any plans to introduce one AFAIK. The 'emissions' test for diesels is purely a smoke opacity test, nothing more.

Isn't that perhaps a case of the car being mistakenly registered with the wrong CO2 rating when new, rather than a subsequent physical modification to the car as such?

Yes, I think some people are implying that anything that affects NOx in this test would also affect CO2 emissions in normal driving.....but really, why would it? Equally there is no reason why it would have any effect on the smoke emissions test for a UK MOT either. I can't see why any of this has any implications at all for owners in the UK!

When I looked into this a few years ago even a subsequent change of engine still didn't change the VED rate for a particular car. There was literally no system in place in for a UK registered car to ever have its official CO2 rating amended, no matter what modifications subsequent owners carried out. Therefore all this talk of VED rates changing on affected cars is nonsense.

Yes some do now, but the 1.9PD doesn't fortunately.

Change the air filter element if it hasn't been done for a while. Then just before the Mot get the engine warmed up and drive it like you stole it! Find a nice bit of clear road and drop into third gear and red line it for a mile or so, then take it straight in for the test. Never known that to fail! There is no lambda sensor on these by the way, that's more of a petrol engine issue.

Some of the UK media seem to be implying that it affects the CO2 rating of European spec cars too, but that appears to be a misunderstanding on their part. Their is no reason why a software tweak to get round a specific US NOx test would necessarily have any bearing on the official EU CO2 emissions figure. It *may* do, but probably won't IMHO.

Good decision I think!

My stepfather did this years ago and despite me warning him about it, would not have it that he was in the wrong and genuinely believed that's how no claims bonus worked. When he and my mum bought a second car he simply used the proof of full no claims from their main car (which they still owned) to get immediate full no claims on the additional car. In those days (early 90s) insurers weren't so switched on to these things and it was never spotted. I very much doubt anyone would get away with that now however.