BoxerBoy

Gee, a brave man Long ago I tried - and gave up very quickly - talking to a car. Absolutely no ****in' chance of making any sense. Never again. Give me big buttons every day.

This thread prompted me to press the button on my phone App out of curiosity. Pleasantly surprised that it woke up and showed me my Big Red Bear. But do I use it as an every day, useful tool? Of course not. My grandchildren may be entertained with such things, but it's not a relevant part of my day to day life. It displays a disjointed assortment of numbers associated with Miles and MPG and MPH. As a number geek, all my vehicle data is tracked accurately on simple spreadsheets. I know my mileage and brim-to-brim consumption over the lifetime of each vehicle. Temperamental trendy Apps are not for me.

Turn the car in and take another one. They fall apart as soon as the warranty expires. On the MOT issue, I got my wife's previous Octavia MOTd at a garage a few hundred yards from home just before its 3rd birthday and end of contract. And - it failed on a leaking front shock. I obviously was not expecting any problems at all on a mint low miles car. If I'd taken it to the dealer further away then I could have argued the cost of new front shocks. As it was, I was over a barrel and it cost a bucket for instant new shocks. And the dealer naturally blew me away when I mentioned my disappointment. Bastid. ps - I've never had Extended Warranty, so can't comment. A previous Superb ran OK for 6+ years without problem - routine maintenance. After that I've been "renting" cars for 3 years at a time. The world around us is changing and no one will buy expensive cars privately any more. Its all PCP, PCP. And I'm running a bike into it's 6th year and it hasn't disintegrated and many bike riders ask all the same questions around Extended Warranties. Often the advice for a long term owner is "put the insurance premium in the bank and fix any repairs as they may arise". But - I honestly believe that modern cars are NOT built to last, no matter the badge.

I’ve met other GPS devices that ask clear questions, like Town, Street, House Number. In various sequences. The OEM Skoda system seems happy if you simply enter the address as you would write it, e.g. 21 Main Street, Anytown. I always wary of simply entering a post code as it will often drop you in the general area. I know my own post code would send someone to a dead end street within sight of my house, but in totally the wrong place. ps - I still stick my Garmin on the screen for serious navigation duties, inc. much more data and route functionality - esp. MPH

Does that mean every possible piece of loose equipment has been removed then road tested? If an empty car still rattles then you can consider suspension and/or stuff inside door panels. If silent when empty, then replace things one at a time till the offending article becomes obvious. Good luck.

Don’t bother. Or did you buy the wrong car?

****, I laughed. RTFM I turn mine off a lot these days when leaving the car parked for days on end. Occasionally I forget to turn it on immediately, but get reminded when I reach the first roundabout from home, when the car gently rolls forward

Finally cleaned up the OEM Triglavs and stacked them in the garage. Used up a whole bottle of Elbow Grease to remove an unusual amount of tar spots from inside the rims. Now like new.

You just know what the answer's gonna be . . .

Cost per mile must be pretty high.

As above, you're probably sitting on a very nice car. One careful owner. Low miles. Full history. I'd look at keeping it by simply crunching the numbers. Everything hinges on the annualised cost (monthly if you like). That's the starting point from a Captain Sensible point of view. But if your heart is ruling your head and you fancy a change for the sake of it, then go for it. But crunch the numbers anyway. We are all biased.

Discs or pads - good luck with that one. Let us have a full report when you’ve tried them.

17” Nanuqs. Running on 215/65x17 Contis. Significantly taller side wall gives a very different ride. In fact, I run with suspension in Sport mode most of the time as the tyre walls give me much more give on poorly finished roads.

in simple terms - built in satnav has very limited functionality. OK telling it to go to A. But very laborious to build a route with multiple waypoints - or Via points. And it doesn’t display speed or Via data. Have you seen the difference between dash speedo and GPS speedo? I don’t like dimwits who hold up traffic at less than speed limit just ‘cos their speedo is reading low. As they all do. meanwhile, my stick on screen Garmin device displays current Speed, count down to turn, distance to via point, distance to destination, time to via point, time to destination. And lets me download trip data to pc. And lets me plan trips on pc and upload to device at my leisure. anything I missed?

I have built in GPS and still stick a Garmin on the screen for all the additional functionally.

When I know it’s gonna be a cold night, I lift the blades. Saves time and effort. Plus gratuitous winter snapshot.

For these obvious reason I’ve always switched off the auto-fold option. I only need to fold my mirrors when I park in someone else’s street or other tight parking space. Why would I want to wear out the motors and/or be caught out on a cold morning by letting the mirrors fold in unnecessarily every time I step out of the car? Crazy.

It’s a long time since many of us drove RWD and the experience wasn’t always positive, in winter especially. I think it’s generally accepted that FWD is inherently “safer” fir most of the people most of the time. We don’t all want to drive The Ultimate Driving Machine all year round. Especially granny, who just wants to trundle here and there. So - I don’t envisage buying an RWD leccy car. But I will seriously consider a small leccy car to replace her Polo in a few years. The VW ID2 will be top of the test drive list. A hybrid is out of the question. The ****** child product of a liaison between an ICE and a leccy. As are the IC cars currently (pun) rushed into production to prop up the manufacturers emissions figures. Also ******ised ICE vehicle designs that give no advantage in space utilisation. I believe some big Audi hybrids are actually lugging around a 1/4 ton of motors and batteries when in ICE mode. What a nonsense. Minimal electric range combined with **** poor ICE performance. Where we’re gonna find the charging power is anyone’s guess.

We’re in the middle of winter, waking up to ice on our cars. What’s it like to warm up on a sub-zero cold start morning? Hot seats? Hot screen? Hot wheel? But more importantly, what’s the basic passenger compartment heating / AC like to live with?

I used this link and downloaded my 3rd file for radio logos. Loaded my USB stick and plugged in. All looked ok as I refreshed a handful of radio channels that refused to display on the Big Screen. Hey ho - the big logo showed up. But - when I switched off then switched on again, all my efforts had been in vain. The logos just won’t stay put. I’ll not try again. Obviously not mission critical, but disappointing in the 21st century.

Skoda APP!! What a piece of nonsense. I just wasted time re-setting password only for the APP to tell me that my car was unlocked with it's lights on. Neither was true. What little data it had for display was all disjointed. Figures totally wrong. Why do they bother. I shan't any more.

I use 17” Nanuqs with Contis. Unstoppable (almost). 19s in summer. OK, it’s a Bear, but you’ll get the idea.

Woke up to a beautiful day. Was reminded I should fit the winter wheels. So that was the afternoon job. Times 2. Hubs & wheels look like rusty crap as usual. Only done 9 months and 4,300 miles. OEM wheels cleaned up nicely with half a bucket of elbow grease. Just need an oily rag to finish them off and stack ‘em for a few months. 2 stacks of wheels make a nice storage table 😀

And if/when you get a logo installed, there's a bonus prize if you can get the logo to show on both the central (big logo) screen as well as the digi dash (small logo) screen. I gave up wasting time on our cars after downloading logos from web and labouring through the installation to car from chip.

Much as we may have wanted the biggest boot badge, the reality for some of us is simply that the VRS just priced itself out of contention for day to day use in the ever more restrictive UK roads. VFM was a non starter.