BigJakk

Nice to see someone else from Stockton on here! Yeah, that's what the issue will be - the washer fluid is coming out with a slight rust tinge to it. I've seen the same thing on Audi's in particular - its why so many of them drive around with the rear wiper pointing to twelve o'clock. It seems a bit of a naff design. I've still got approved used warranty cover on the car, so was just gonna leave it to that, but Derek Slack over at the 'Boro cant get it booked in until May to look at it! I was tossing up just getting a new one from TPS and just replacing it myself, but the one at Portrack doesn't serve non-trade anymore and by the looks of it the motor isn't that cheap of a part. I might look at refurbing it myself then, out of interest what did you use for re-greasing it and whereabouts? I'm guessing white grease or similar around the spindle and on the 'rotor'? Cheers

Hello Folks, Rear wiper on my VRS hatch is intermittently 'pausing' mid sweep for a second or two, before then completing the remainder of the sweep and returning to the parked position. I've only had the car three weeks and found the issue a few days after bringing it home - I've changed the wiper blade as the old one was a bit mangled and i thought it may be catching, but no. Doesn't do it on every time but say every third or fourth sweep of the wiper. I'm guessing this is the wiper motor starting to die off but just wanted to check before sourcing a replacement as they're not particularly cheap! Cheers

Mine started showing signs of water ingress again (damp drivers footwell carpet) and chased it back up to the headliner again. Interestingly the Mk3 VRS Buyers Guide on PistonHeads refers to the fact that not all panoramic roofs fitted to these cars turned out to actually be water proof -- they aren't wrong 😞 I'm afraid I don't have the energy to keep fighting with this issue every few years, so I resolved the issue permanently... by buying a different car with a tin top (the fairly lacklustre performance of the TDi VRS was also a contributing factor) I appreciate that probably isn't helpful to anyone suffering with this but hope the earlier comments in this thread and my other one have helped others. Sun roof - never again!

Yeah I've tried that with silicone grease previously but its didn't really seem to fix the issue, just make it occur a bit less frequently. Cutting the wings or lugs off the pinion/shaft has done the trick as a temporary fix - the flap can be opened whether the car is locked or unlocked and whether the solenoid has actuated or not, so at least I shouldn't end up in a position where im out of fuel and unable to get access to the filler, until I get around to replacing it with a new one. Cheers

Hello Folks, I know the fuel cap lock sticking is a fairly common problem and that the locking solution is hideously over engineered. Mine started playing up last year - fortunately a bit of pressure on the flap and some cycling of the lock/unlock button got me out of trouble on a few occasions at the pump. I had intended to replace the solenoid but forgot once the warmer months came around. Now its cold again its started playing up again last night and i had a bit of a battle with it. As a short term measure so i dont get stuck unable to open it and out of fuel over the next few days, I was considering either pulling the electrical connector to the solenoid (once its an unlocked state of course), however this looks like it might require the arch liner or boot trim removing, which is a bit of a faff. Alternatively, given the way the mechanism works, i wondered if anyone had simply snipped off the two plastic lugs/wings from the plastic pinion/shaft, as it looks like these form the locking element by rotating through 90 degrees into the plastic 'latch' molded inside of the flap door. Just wondered if anyone had any experience and whether the "pop out" function for then opening the flap will still work okay? I know i'll lose the locking functionality, but lets be right, non-return valves in the filler necks not withstanding, anyone determined to get fuel out of the car isn't going to be put off by a little flimsy plastic lock and causing a bit of damage to open the flap. Cheers

Just by way of an update; Dropped it back at the garage today, turns out when the battery replacement was done the ODBII tool they had on hand wouldn't let them update the ECU with the new battery info (interestingly, when looking at it over the weekend I had been able to check the battery registration with my OBD2 reader and had seen that it was still set to the old battery, however my tool also refused to update the battery info). They tried an alternative OBD2 tool today and that allowed them to delete the old battery info and write the new battery. Touch wood, fingers crossed etc. that seems to have fixed the issue. I picked it up this afternoon and upon returning home put the multi meter across the battery which was showing 12.6v at idle. With the engine started and some of the electrical systems turned on this jumped up to 14.5v, so the battery seems to be getting charge from the alternator (when testing it beforehand over the weekend all that was happening when a load was put on the battery was that the voltage was dropping, suggesting to me that the battery was doing it all on its own). I'll keep an eye on it over the next few days and report back if there are any more issues. Cheers

The plastic two way connector is definitely plugged in. Purely coincidental that I happened to take a screen grab just as his hand was on the threaded connector without realising the significance of what it was.... From the top of the engine bay i cant make out at all whether that is or isn't connected up - might have to get underneath it tomorrow and have a look. Cheers for the help Pete

Hello Pete, From what I can see online and elsewhere there looks to be only one connection to the alternator (the attached image isn't from mine, its from a youtube video) which is to the right side of the alternator as you look on the engine bay, within the plastic section (im guessing that's the voltage regulator). Fortunately I can confirm that's connected.

Just as an addendum, checked the battery registration with the OBD2 scanner as well and it looks like this hasn't been updated to the new battery, as its still showing a 68Ah where the new battery is 70Ah. Tried to amend it but the Foxwell couldnt make the adaptation for some reason. I cant see that being the issue though as there is no charging of the battery happening at all, wheras if the battery registration was the issue i would expect it to still be charging, but just under/over charging. Just for future reference for anyone wanting to know where the main fuse bar is, I've attached a couple of images. Its a combination of 10mm and 8mm sockets required to undo the captive nuts (one is a bolt) and its a good idea to note which cable leads to which terminal as though they are labelled, some of them are duplicated (there are two "K" cables, one red and one black). Cheers

Spent a few hours under the bonnet today, Battery was showing 11.5v and when started this dropped lower, suggesting that the battery is powering everything with no charge being passed through from the alternator. Hooked up a Foxwell OBDII scanner to the car and did some live data on the battery voltage which confirmed the above. Also logged some of the "Generator" (read Alternator) data. With the ignition turned on it initially read as zero for a few seconds before jumping up to 308,000+ Watts at 30% utilisation which clearly isn't right. Located the main busbar style fuse/relay that you referred to Pete. With the engine off this was also giving 11.5v as per the battery level. Ended up taking it out and checked it with the multi-meter, putting one lead on the main metal bar and then the other on each of the terminals of the fuse (125A/400A/B+/80A/80A/50A) and each one showed good continuity, so im afraid its not that (which is a shame as it looks a fairly straight forward and cheap thing to swap). The alternator is clearly brand spanking new and shiny and the belt is intact and seems to have decent tension on it. I couldn't really get to the alternator itself as its buried stupidly deep and out the way (the fact there are coolant lines running right over the top of it seems a bit of a silly design idea too!) to check connections. There is only one connection visible/accessible at the top right side of the alternator, which seems to be properly connected, however this looks to be of too thin a thin gauge to be one of the main electrical connections. The battery eventually died and is on a trickle charger now to try and get some life back into to it.

Hello Folks, Tearing my hair out with this one now with my Mk3 TDI VRS... On the motorway the other week, out of the blue dashboard warning popped up "12 Volt System Not Charging. Stop Driving Now" very rapidly thereafter lost power steering and as i got onto the hard shoulder pretty much everything on the dash lit up (lack of power to the systems I imagine) and then engine power went. Spent six hours on the shoulder waiting for recovery, hazards managed to keep going for about 5 hours which made me think its probably not a battery issue but more that the battery isn't charging. When recovery arrived we checked the Aux belt (which is less than 12 months old), which was still intact and was spinning. With a boost pack we were able to get enough power to drive the car onto the flatbed and then back off at the other end. RAC home start came out the following day, had a look over and suggested it was an alternator/charging issue. 45 minutes on charge from his van and the car made it under its own steam to my mates garage a few miles away. As everything seemed to point to a charging issue and therefore the alternator he changed that and also fitted a new battery as a "might as well do" as I've no idea of age of the existing battery and I've had the car for three years myself now. I've had the car back two days in which I've covered about 80 miles. Yesterday on the way home from work I noticed that the Stop/Start wasn't kicking in and the dashcam which is piggybacked to a switched live fuse behind the glovebox was randomly turning itself on and off. About a mile from home the same "12 Volt System Not Charging. Stop Driving Now" message pinged up. Fortunately there was enough life in it to make it home. Having checked the battery today with a multimeter its only putting out 11.98v with the ignition off. With the engine on this dropped to 11.58v, so the battery clearly isn't getting any charge to it. Just wondered if anyone might have any experience of this or any starters for ten as to where I start looking next. Cheers guys

Hello Folks, The locking solenoid on the fuel filler door is starting to play up, whereby it doesnt always unlock on the first press of the key fob. In the first instance I've lubricated the mechanism to see if that helps, however i know that on the Mk7 Golf Platform these things are notorious for failing so I'm looking at sourcing the replacement/updated part. The only thing is I've read differing reports on how easy it is to replace the part. Some seem suggest its just a case of removing a torx screw and everything thereafter can be done from outside of the vehicle in about 5 minutes. I've seen others saying that the boot carpet needs lifting to detach the wiring harness, while others have said that the rear offside wheel needs removing along with the wheel arch liner to gain access to it (in which case i might just let my mechanic sort it). I was just wondering if anyone had done it on a pre-FL (MY14) estate version of the Mk3 and could advise as to which of these three scenarios is involved. Cheers

Good that you've got somewhere under cover to keep it - I didn't have that luxury when I was having all my fun and games and it made things a right chew on! I would be cautious about feeding anything down the drain pipes, as you'll have seen all the drain tubes are connected to a knuckle which is a friction fit onto the roof tray. I've seen a couple of horror stories where people have fed Bowden cables down and pulled the drain tube off the knuckle. Similarly using compressed air, read a guy who blew the tube off the knuckle and had to go to the faff of putting everything back together with sealant! I've used plastic hedge strimmer line, doubled up into a loop with decent effect. It's got enough strength to break up the gunk but it's malleable enough it will just stop if it hits the drainage tubing. I prefer not to put anything down the drainage tubes though, I now tend to just pour some warm water mixed with mild detergent down there every few months. it may be different in the superb, but on the Octavia the main thing is the rubber nipples on the bulkhead. They simply need squeezing and manipulating (ooo err) a few times and the crud that comes out of them is quite surprising. By the sounds of it, It may well be that the roof mechanism itself is gummed up on yours. When I first got mine it made quite a racket opening/closing the roof and it sounded like it was struggling - it simply hadn't been maintained at all and the car was about 6 years old when I bought it. I blew the the rails and mechanism out using compressed air, then clean them with a soft paint brush before running a shop vac around to try and pick up anything loose and a final wipe down with a microfibre cloth. I then give everything a coating of WD40 Specialist PTFE lubricant. After that the mechanism was running nice and smoothly and much quieter. I do all the above annually now and touch wood everything runs nice and smooth. I could probably get away with doing it every couple of years to be honest but for the sake of an hour or so's work, it's worthwhile. It may be worth you trying similar, see if yhr roof mechanism frees up at all with a bit of maintainace. There's another test you can do at home, even with the roof not closing properly which will help to see if there is an with the actual integrity of the roof itself. Simply pour some water into the plastic overflow tray which surrounds the roof. With your newly clear drainage tubes, this should drain away without issue. If however you get any water ingress Into the car then you might have a similar issue to me where the water is leaking from the plastic tray (in my case it was running across the roof liner and then down the outside of the drainage tubes). As much as they're a nice thing on a summers day, I would never have another car with a sunroof of any sort ever again, it just isn't worth the faff and potential bother and expense.

Hi Rob, In my case the leak was coming from the roof itself, rather than a maintainable issue like a blocked drain. I took mine to a local independent VW specialist up here in the north east who described that there was a leak where the metal frame of the roof met the plastic housing it sits in. They ended up removing the roof from the car, separating them and rebonded them all together using sealant. I was without the car for a couple of days and paid about £500 for it (this was about two and a half years ago) - nearly all of which was labour cost. Touch wood I've had no problem since although I service the roof every year now. I clear the nozzles at the front bulkhead, flush the drain tube with soapy warm water and then cleaning out the roof the rails/mechanism with compressed air and a soft brush before, lubricating them with WD40 PTFE lubricant. I then dress the rubber seals with gummipflege (also recommend this on the door seals as they will stick in the freezing cold otherwise). Hope you get sorted as it's a real faff of a thing to sort, especially this time of year. I went vacced about two litres of water out of the passenger footwell and was lucky that it was the height of summer so managed to get it aired out and dried fairly easily. This time of year I would suggest wet vac, then get it into a garage and run a dehumidifier inside the car. Best of luck.

Hi Rob, I'm a bit tied up at the moment, but will reply back in full later. For now, I would suggest having a look at my other thread here: My advice has changed re: lubrication of the mechanism. Don't need any fancy kryrox stuff, WD40 Specialist PTFE lubricant does the job at a fraction of the cost Hope that starts you off

Hi Noman, Not since getting them both replaced. I would say that particularly bassy music does still distort although I mostly listen to stuff over Bluetooth which may not be the best. In the settings there is an option for Bluetooth volume and I've found setting this to low does help with clarity a bit, but it's still not perfect. I bought the car second hand,so didn't spec the canton system, but in my personal opinion I don't think it's much to write home about above and beyond a normal car stereo system. Good luck, hope you get sorted

Ended up getting both speakers replaced as the passenger side one was totally dead, so thought I may as well do both -- it was only about 115 quid all in so not too hideous. I still noticed a bit of bass distortion immediately after the replacement, but it hasn't been noticeable the last few months...with that said, I've been listening to high quality audio (CD/320kbps MP3's) pretty much exclusively over this period. I'm not sure wether the system is just very sensitive to bog standard quality audio files or wether it's down to the new speakers.

It's not the bottle unfortunately I'm now fairly certain the passengers side one is kaput, its going in to the local independents for them to replace it next week. I'll ask them to have a look at the driver side one while they're on, I'm still not sure it's not just trim reverbing though. Sadly the MkIII seems to be quite poorly screwed together compare to my MkI and MkII, seem to be chasing rattles and creaks constantly!

I managed to make a video if the issue today, its best played on a computer speaker to her it clearly - but you can make out the rattle/distortion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MwYTbsyKQA While its a bass heavy track (THX Woofer Cooker) the volume isn't up especially high - I know I've got stuff in the door bins but taking them out doesn't make a difference. Leaning on bits of the door card trim doesn't seem to help the issue either. Just wondered if anyone has experienced similar and weather the speaker needs replacing or its more of an issue with the trim/fitting? Cheers

Ive had it about 8 months now, noticed the distortion not long after buying the car but only recently had a good look into it. Running a flat equaliser and reducing the volume of the auxillary inputs to medium has improved it but you can still hear it -- it's not excessively distorted, more what I would expect at high volume on a bassy track -- however it's coming in at quite low volumes (tried recording it but it doesn't really get picked up by my phone) Fortunately the previous owner is a good friend. He tells me that he had the front driver's door speaker replaced after it started to give a fuzzy output. It was done by a local auto electric place that have got a good reputation and was a like for like canton replacement. I'm wondering if they're issue prone? I'm no audiophile but wonder if it's worth having them both upgraded to something else?

Hello folks, I've got the canton system on my Mk.III and have noticed that the lower drivers door speaker seems to cause vibration/distortion whenever playing anything with any sort of bass - even at fairly low volume. I set about investigating yesterday, it doesn't seem to be vibration through the door card (which seem to be a poor design btw, there are massive gaps on both doors between the card and the actual door when you look closely), nor is it the window control trim which ive seen as a common cause of rattles and noises. Whilst checking it I went to check the passengers side speaker for comparison and was surprised to find that its not outputting anything at all - the tweeter further up the door is, but the lower speaker is silent. I've tried shifting the sound focus all the way across to the front passenger side in the infotainment options but nothing. I've tried resetting the head unit, however this hasn't fixed anything - I was wondering if anyone had experienced anything similar or had any suggestions for possible faults? I know on my old Mk I you could actually disconnect speakers (i disconnected the rear tweeters on mine) however im guessing this isn't the case anymore. Also, has anyone experienced the distortion like im getting on the working speaker - is this normal or would I be better looking at getting both replaced. Thanks guys

I've used gummipflege on all the seals since my issue with the leaky panoramic roof (although to be fair that turned out to be the roof not being bonded to the frame properly). I work in crash investigation so tend to be a quite fastidious about keeping the car right all year around. To be fair, I've only noticed it the last couple of days when it's been really cold. I did notice last night when compressing the seals by hand, that whilst the outside if the seals was fine, they felt quite rigid as if frosted up on the inside. It's a 2014 car so relatively early production. I've been and had a look at the seals on the driver's door today and there is only one hole at the bottom of the seal towards the front of the door (parallel to the speaker grille). Just wondering ndering if some modifications to the seal - i.e. more holes might help? there is obviously water trapping there as there was a thin sheet of ice around the sill last night at the area pictured (excuse photo editing on phone) Cheers

Came out of work last night at midnight, the car park is open to the elements and it was about -2c out. Tried to get in the driver door and it was frozen tight - fortunately the passengers side opened okay so I pushed it open from the inside. I regularly gumipflege the door seals anyway, but applied another coat before coming to work this afternoon. Not long been out to the car and although not as bad as last night it was still stiff opening the driver's door as there seems to be a thin layer of ice forming between the bottom of the door and the sill. Just wondering if anyone had any experience with this and can suggest a fix? I have noticed that the doors seem to 'spit' water out when you open them after a wash or heavy rain. What with my leaky panoramic roof earlier in the year im thinking newer Skodas may have an issue with water retention! (Tbf my MKI VRS used to mist up badly due to compost behind the wheel arch liners too)

Hello Blaikie, That looks very much the same as the eventual fix that was applied to mine. I've gone into my experience and findings regarding the panoramic roof in some depth here. In a nutshell the roof was removed for a possible TPI for a failed seal and at the same time my mechanic water tested it and found a leak between the roof frame and housing, which was Rebonded. Funnily enough I now have a healthy smear of black sealant in the same location. So there is obviously a common issue! Touch wood since then Iv'e been leak free since, but I'm watching it like a hawk. Having only just bought the car I cant get rid and other than this (and the diesel engine under the bonnet) it really is a great car, I wont ever touch anything with a sunroof ever again though!! Thanks again 👍

So after a few days and having re-synced my contacts several times both between Google and WhatsApp as well as between the phone and the car, bizarrely enough this seems to have fixed the problem. (There is still one contact showing as having two duplicate numbers -- can't figure out why, but the rest are all fixed). Just thought I would report back for anyone else who may be having the same issue.