slidejules

Thanks :-) Carl - I don't think so, I found the sticker with the engine type and it said it's an ASV = 110hp. It's not going to set the world on fire, but it's plenty quick enough. I had my old golf 115 remapped which was great, and maybe I'll do the same for this one eventually, but it'll have to wait for a while until funds permit. For the minute I'm just happy to have something that even around the roundabouts of milton keynes is still giving me > 50mpg. Love it! Just got to get a new boot liner and take out the false floor which I'm not really a fan of... don't need it, and it stops my guitar amp from fitting under the load cover upright ;-) Sweet car! J,

Bad luck man! Did you pick yours up from somewhere near Sheffield by any chance? I phoned up to test drive that L&K the other day after seeing it on autotrader but it had just gone about 5 minutes before I phoned! Enjoy - I'm loving mine :-)

Afternoon all! So after 3 years away from Skodaville, and in the meantime having owned a 400 quid Jag XJ6 (awesome barge), an 800 quid Saab 9000 (loved it), a VW Golf GT TDI 115 (economic and quick, but blew its head gasket in a very expensive manner), and a new shape Kia Sportage (48mpg? yeah right!!! Best I could get was 37 out of it...), this morning I picked up a 2004 Octavia TDI Estate, Laurin Klement, with 105k on the clock. Great condition! Although the ad said 130hp, it's only 5 speed, and feels very much like my old one, which was a 110bhp. I test drove a couple of 130s and this one definitely isn't one. Actually I'm not gutted at all, driving back from J7 on the M4, round the M25 and up to J14 on the M1, averaged 68.7mpg! I'd forgotten quite how insanely economical these beasts could be :-) Good to be back! (as my wallet heaves a sigh of relief...) J.

Thanks for the pointers guys - I'll give them a buzz now and see what they can work out. Lesson learnt - don't use Mr Clutch!

Well herein is a sorry tale... My tdi (W reg 110) just popped over the 120k mile mark, so needed it's cambelt doing. My main dealer price was a bit more than I can afford right now (and it's an expensive job) so I got my local mr clutch to do it. What a mistake! The car was running absolutely fine before I took it there, no probs whatsoever... Anyway, took the car in at 8.30am, it was done at about 5.30pm, and when I got in to drive it away from the garage, it wouldn't start! Well, sparky comes out from the garage and sprays some carb cleaner in the air intake and it splutters into life. Apparently "it's normal - we did the full service and so replaced the fuel filter - you get air in it at first and they don't start too well to begin with. It should be fine by the time you get home, you just need to let the air get out of the system." - OK, if you say so... Next morning, it won't start! Actually, that's not quite true, it does start but only after a good 45 seconds of turning over and generally spluttering, all the while kicking all kinds of crap out of the exhaust. Yuk. Phone the garage and they said "must be a fault with the fuel filter - bring it in" - good job I've got time to do that! Take it in, they replace the filter, fanny about checking the cables looking for air leaks (they can see a few bubbles in the clear pipe coming out of the filter) - none found. Engine starts with some prompting with carb cleaner... "it should be fine now mate". Go away for a week's holiday in my wife's car, leave the Octy at home. Got back Friday morning - what a surprise, takes ages to start. I've lived with it all weekend so far but it's clearly still not right. It starts fine once warmed up, but takes literally 45-60 seconds of cranking (and smoking) to fire if it's been left to stand for any more than 2 hours. Before I take it back to them tomorrow, anyone got any ideas? Are they right about the fuel filter and bubbles etc.? I've had my car (and previous ones) serviced by plenty of other people and never had problems with them starting after a service. And secondly, if it's not the fuel filter - what else could they have cocked up during the service that would stop it from firing properly when cold but would let it start fine when warmed up? Oh and once started it goes fine, no lack of power or flat spots or anything else. No noticeable mpg drop either. Any clues that might help me when I go back tomorrow would be most gratefully received! Cheers all - Jules

Cheers Lummox! Indeed it has - I was caught on the little road between Weston Underwood and Gayhurst. The road is now closed and as I struggled up the hill and onto the main road I came across a load of police cars who'd just closed it. Pity they'd only closed it on one side lol. Cheers for the rough figures. I was hoping it'd be a bit less (car has 118,500 miles so is due cambelt in a couple of weeks - ouch

Fanny. I just fried my clutch. It smelt very bad indeed. Got stranded in a flash flood about 5 miles from home (Newport Pagnell), didn't have much of a choice as the water was rising and I was stuck on a hump back bridge, so went for it and revved the nuts off the engine to try and keep it going (I've got no idea where the air intake is, and the water was coming up over the headlights!!!), and went through in first gear, praying to the tdi gods. Got through OK (top marks all terrain Octy!) but really the clutch didn't like being ridden at 4k rpm for all that time. Now I can't pull away from standstill without it juddering all over the place. It's ok once you're moving but obviously doesn't feel right. To be honest it's been on the way out for a little while following a nightmare "reversing uphill with a heavy trailer and having to bounce up a kerb" incident - don't ask - so it's not unexpected. Anyone got a clue how much roughly I'm going to be looking at to fix it? I know I could wait until the morning and phone a garage but I don't think I'll sleep that well tonight unless I know a rough ball park figure (panic panic). Any clues gratefully received! Cheers! Jules

Mine were a bitch too. I snapped one of the spindles too which prompted much swearing, I can tell you. I don't think there is an easy way of doing it!

Wow - in the cold light of day and after a short well earned sleep, went outside to have a look at the engine bay... turns out it *was* an inlet pipe come loose, drivers side right at the front of the engine bay. The pipe comes down from the engine, turns and goes into some kind of unit via a very short piece of rubber hosing. For some reason the rubber hosing had completely come loose of the pipe on one side. This obviously had two effects - bypassing the turbo hence no whistle (well, if it was there it was very quiet!), and pushing the pipe back against one of the belts at the front of the engine bay, which has worn a nice groove into the pipe (hence the screechy noise) although thankfully not worn through entirely. At least it's not a new turbo and at least it can be made driveable easily enough. Just struggled to reattach the pipe though, no joy (the clip is really tough!) so time for another RAC call. Bingo!

What a night - left nottingham at 1.30 this morning after a gig with my band, towing the trailer home, cruise control at 55mph, and at 4am suddenly it makes a wooshy noise as if I'd just driven over a large sheet of paper, and then no boost! No turbo whistle at all from the engine, god awful screeching noise as I get over 2000rpm, oodles and oodles of horrible black smoke out of the back. Damn! Looks like I've just popped my turbo-breakage cherry! One RAC call later, it's ten to ten and I've just got home to London... what a night... I can sense it's going to be horribly horribly expensive to fix too. Double damn.

Well, I ordered a new linkage from Butts which arrived yesterday, so I spent all day in the sun with the car in pieces. Some points: 1) what a nightmare it is getting the wiper arms off the spindles when they are all corroded on! 2) what a nightmare it is getting the plastic covering at the bottom of the windscreen off - what haynes doesn't show you is that it lifts away perpendicular to the windscreen, every other car I've had has lifted away parallel to it, and *then* up and away. 3) what a nightmare it is getting the assembly itself out of it's space. I have rechristened myself butterfingers, with the wiring that's in there already there's really not much room to manoeuvre in there... 4) yes it had siezed, utterly corroded - it was in a terrible state in there! No surprise it had stopped working really. 5) sorry about the last 3 - this is the interesting one. ever since I bought the car the wipers had been making a strange clonking noise at the top of their travel, I finally found out what it is and where it's coming from! right above the motor, and encroaching on the space that the two arms revolve in, is a nut or bolt of some kind - you can't actually see it but can feel it with your fingers. It seems to be going through the bulkead and up into the dash. Anyway, the arms that move on the assembly, as they go through the circular motion by the motor, bash into that nut! Not very hard, but enough to make an audible clonking noise. It must be a design fault as try as I might, I couldn't figure out any way of moving the assembly at all - once it's all bolted in, that's pretty much it in terms of location. Does anyone else's car do the same thing?!? 6) last thing - having reassembled it all, is it me or is there quite a big gap around the spindle at the base of the windscreen? It's no surprise the linkages corrode quickly really, anything can just leak into and around them. There are those little rubber surrounds but they don't really work terribly well do they? So there you go. Chuffed with myself for taking some baby steps into DIY fixing, but surprised by what to me doesn't look like an especially good design... Seeya! Jules

I could cry. Mine have seized and, due to lack of funds at the moment, I thought I'd have a bash at getting the wipers off and cleaning out the linkage myself. Just popped the tops of the wipers, and while undoing one of the 13mm nuts, the whole thing sheared off. Aaaaaargh! One expensive trip to the dealer coming up :-(

Hello all - my Octy's developed a weird fault over the last week or so. Every so often the temp needle will drop from the halfway mark gradually down to about the 1/4 mark. It never rises back up again. If you turn the engine off and back on again, the temp needle sometimes shows back to the halfway mark, sometimes goes back to the 1/4 mark. I've checked the fluid levels, they all seem OK, the car's still driving fine so I don't think it's anything to really worry about that much. So, prob a new temp sensor is in order. I've changed one of these before on my old saab but never on the Skoda. I had a look on Butts and the only thing that looked like it might be right is this: 059919501A - Temperature Transmitter Switch for Octavia/Superb. Is that the right thing?!? This is for a 2000 year Octavia TDI 110. Any clues gratefully received! Cheers - Jules

Over the 13000 miles I've done in mine so far, it's averaged 53.5 according to the spreadsheet I keep (sorry, rather anal I know). The computer tends to overestimate each tank by about 4-5mpg, although it depends how many trips I've done on that particular tank. When I've done longer trips (ie London to Scotland and bank - 2 trips) I find it's much more accurate. My all time record from mine (2000, W slx tdi 110 estate by the way) is an indicated 85.7 average on a journey from twickenham to gatwick airport last month. I was in luck getting on to the A316 from my house, no red lights on the way, sat at 50mph all the way through rush hour down the M3 onto the M25 and then down the M23. Just lucked out that 50mph was pretty much the constant flow of the traffic that morning. Nearly 86 mpg indicated! Crazy!

while I think of it, the other thing I need to bear in mind is that assuming we load the trailer pretty evenly, it's going to ride even lower when it's got 400kg or so of gear in it...