matthewA

Just got the renewal on mine, 2011 1.8TSI Hatch and it is £170. Might be later models are just that little bit more efficient to drop a band?

Ok, as it was raining nicely I've been out to the car and tested it. If I set front wipers to auto, and select reverse gear, no wipe of the rear screen even though fronts are wiping every couple of seconds. As soon as I switch fronts to the proper on positions (1 or 2) the rear wiper runs. I have maxidot but don't recall seeing the option in there, can you say where it is in the menu please? I don't think I mentioned it but this is a FL 2011 model. [iIRC on the Mondeo the rear wiper worked at the same rate as the front, whatever that was for the conditions, or it's intermittent speed, whichever was quicker. Mind you the fronts always did one pass whenever you switched the ignition on irrespective of rain - not so good]

I've found that in almost every car I've had after screen washing, there is always some excess pushed to the top of the screen which after the wipers stop starts to run down the screen again, so the extra wipe a little later takes care of this. I've not reallly found that the screen gets dirty *that* fast. At the moment I just end up doing it manually so I would find it useful, maybe. With regard to the rear wiper issue, I'm going to re recheck what happens with mine as it would appear it should work with the fronts in auto, maybe it has always been too long since it's last wipe so doesn't activate. Should be some nice rain tomorrow so I can test it

Ok, tried it, sure enough rear wiper comes on when in speed 1 or 2, just not in auto (intermittent position). I even found it referred to in the manual, missed when I looked last time, P62, no suggestion that that in auto mode it doesn't work, just says "if the front window wipers are on". I'll check with my mate as to whether his were in auto or not on his Ibiza.

Will do, just need to wait for some more rain... shouldn't be too long a wait looking at the weather forecast :-)

Can these be set by dealer, or does it need VCDS? I bought the car from dealer as pre-registered and the rear wiper has not worked when setting reverse gear with fronts on since I've had it.

I have my front ones set to the "auto" setting, do the wipers have to be in one of the proper "on" positions or should it still work in the "auto" setting?

My old Mondeo would put the rear wiper on when you selected reverse gear and the front wipers were on. My mate who has a Seat Ibiza also has the same. I found it quite a useful feature and wondered if anyone knows if the Octavia has this feature as mine doesn't do it at the moment. I can't see mention in the handbook, but i do see that it should be possible to set the front wipers to do a sweep 5 secs after the last wipe when screen washing, activation/deactivation by specialist garage, anyone got this done (Mondeo again had this feature)? Matt

Economy on my 2011 Elegance Hatch is about 38.5mpg at the moment - see http://www.fuelly.com/driver/matty678/octavia. It is 6 months old now and 6000 miles, it started at about 34.5mpg and has improved month by month so far. This is on a mix of dual carriageway, urban and rural roads. The maxidot reads a little optimist at 40.5mpg.

I'm not sure how relevant it is to you but later models have a lower VED band (Band G versus I) so I guess they improved the economy a bit on them.

I find I don't often get above 3k rpm as I go through the gears except maybe in 1st (and 3k is about 80mph in 6th gear I think from memory) and I can get along quite happily in 5th at about 30mph and 6th at 40mph. The revs at these speeds are around 1500rpm and the engine doesn't sound/feel laboured at all even on uphills (if you need to accelerate really quickly though, you can change down). The absolute torque is not as much as my old 2L mondeo but holds the torque to much higher revs than the diesel (the diesel was running out of puff above about 3500rpm) and acceleration to 60mph is 7.8s on the Octavia vs 9.6s mondeo. The engine is so much smoother and quieter though that I've sat at 60mph in 3rd for a distance before noticing. I'd say it's a pretty flexible engine and makes for relaxed driving, or some fun when the fancy takes you :-)

So far in 5000 miles I've topped up half a litre but maybe that's because it's new. No doubt I'll find out in another 5000 miles. My best Maxidot average over about 1200 miles is 40.5mpg but from using Fuelly I'd say it's optimistic by 2mpg so really it's more like 38.5mpg, so not massively different from yours.

My journey to work and back is about 25 miles each way and today I got indicated on maxidot 38mpg one way and 43mpg the other - I did see 50mpg at one point. I get around 4 to 5 mpg difference between the 2 journeys quite regularly. The average speed for the journey is normally somewhere between 30 and 35mph and is a mix of urban, rural and 70mph dual carriageway. I have been putting the details in fuelly.com and notice that the economy has been creeping up month by month, 1st month averaged 34.6mpg, last month 38.4mpg and the car has done about 5000 miles now, I wouldn't say I am driving it hard either. I wonder how many miles I need to do before economy settles down. How many miles have you others got on your cars?

My 11 plate Elegance also doesn't have it :(

Right oh, didn't know that, that explains why it's not an option on mine as I only have the standard lights.