booke23

2006/98k miles here. They are still very bright compared to halogen, but I know the light output from HID bulbs does gradually fall as the years go by and I'm sure mine are no exception. They say a HID bulb will loose 70% of its lumen output after 10,000 hrs of use. I doubt if a car HID would ever get close to 10,000 hrs.....but it does illustrate the point.

I did my DSG flywheel earlier in the summer, and I would echo all that Phil has said. It is fairly straight forward. The only main issues I ran into that you might not get with the manual transmission, is that I had to remove part of the front subframe (remember to get tracking checked once its back together) to actually get the transmission out as it's a bit bigger than the manual. A transmission jack is a must, as it is very heavy. Remember to remove the starter motor before you start as there is a hidden mounting bolt in there which is easy to miss.

It's a M spline. Can't quite remember the size, either a M12 or M14.

Rent a carpet cleaner that can just suck the water out of the carpet. I had a leak in the rear of my Fabia last year and there was quite a lot of water in the rear foot wells. After I used a sponge to remove all the water I could, I used my Vax carpet cleaner and it sucked another litre of water from the carpet/insulation in each foot well. It worked great.

Guys, the OP had an aux belt failure that caused the cambelt to slip.....evidently damaging some valves. The original thread is here: http://www.briskoda.net/forums/topic/368029-alternator-belt-snapped/ Bad luck.....I was thinking you might have gotten away with just the timing being slightly out. I would say just replace the damaged valves and obviously get them to replace the cambelt using a proper kit with new tensioner, rollers and studs.

Just noticed your profile.....you have a 1.6TDI DSG. That means you have the 7 speed dry clutch version of the DSG. The fluid in the 7 speed dry clutch box is good for life and doesn't ever need changing.

Yes it can. You need a funnel and tubing of a suitable diameter to fit in the hole in the filter housing.

Unhelpful. The fuel filter housing on the Octavia can be tricky to work on. On more than one occasion I have heard of them leaking after 'professional' mechanics have put them back together. We live and learn. Personally I would put a new cam belt on it, time it up, turn it over with a spanner a few times and if it seems OK try starting it. I think talking about getting the head off/skimming it etc is premature.

Unfortunately while rare, it's not unheard-of for a failed auxiliary belt to cause the cam belt to slip. The fact the car lost power and wouldn't restart supports this, as normally a car will still run even with a broken auxiliary belt for as long as the battery lasts. You may have been lucky and just suffered a timing slip with no damage. But at the very least you're going to need the Campbelt replacing....the original that suffered slip absolutely can't be reused. Does the car have a full dealer service history? If so Skoda may contribute significantly to the repair costs.

The last time I bought a genuine VAG oil filter, it was simply a Mann filter in a VAG box. So presumably they are one of the oem suppliers.

Yes....if the car has factory Xenons. However there are a few Xenon retrofits around without washers. Of course it could be an error in the advert.....very common.

You don't need anything fancy. I run VCDS on a 6 year old Compaq running Windows Vista and it is more than up to the task. You could probably pick up something similar from e-bay for not much money.

I had a problem where the alarm would randomly activate on my Octavia.....usually at 2am. Not very often, maybe 4 or 5 times a year, but enough to be annoying. As mentioned you can see what caused the last 3 or 4 activations with VCDS........in my case they were all caused by the internal movement sensor. I reduced the sensitivity of the sensors to 50% about a year ago and I have not had a spurious alarm since. However there could be other causes. Failing Alarm siren battery could be to blame, or even your car battery could be to blame if it is old and not holding charge well. Either way a VCDS scan should reveal the cause.

If you only want to move the shaft a bit, you can just undo the splines at the gearbox end of the shaft and drop/raise it as necessary. You may need to shove the engine a bit to get it off, but IIRC there is only a small lip that seats the shaft on the gearbox. BTW you can probably only do this on the drivers side as the shaft is much longer than the passenger side shaft. I think it's a M14 spline, but I could be wrong.

Ditto with the Lidl bars - Menabo Brio 120cm model. Aluminium construction with a channel in the centre (covered with removable rubber strip) to accommodate Thule Rapid Fit bolts. TUV approved too. For the money they are great and ideal for occasional use. I think it's only worth forking out on profiled bars if they are going to be left on permanently.

Kamei Husky xxl with a pair of £26 Lidl roofbars. Have covered several thousand miles with no problems, and the husky xxl has huge capacity. http://www.roofbox.co.uk/scripts/rbvehsel4_tab.php/car-specific-accessories/kamei_husky_xxl_black_roof_box_left_side_opening_no_km339_0_81339_01_/Qx%40w%2C6M42VAwp3%40Rb%7B~cC4ure5JNf2

Yes. Standard on L&K's for quite a few years now (2007 I think).

Of course. I forgot about that. Presumably it's fully transferable if the car changes hands privately?

I have taken out a few of these used car warranty's that you can buy, and most won't allow a claim in the first 21 days (or similar) of the warranty. There are also other small print terms that can mean no payout, whereas a dealer warranty is water tight. If you buy privately and the engine blows up on the drive home (before you manage to arrange a warranty) you have no recourse whatsoever from the seller. I think this scares people....to the point where they want to be saving a bit more than £1000 on a £14.5k car. I notice someone privately selling a 62 plate vRS with 18400 miles for £12660. I think this is closer to the mark, but even then he will probably be lucky to get £12000 for it after the bartering is done......this may sound harsh, but what would a dealer offer for trade in?......much less no doubt.

I have sold a lot of cars privately, but never one as new as yours. There is no reason why you couldn't clear the finance while sitting down with the buyer. But personally I would clear the finance using a credit card before putting it up for sale......otherwise the finance will show up on an HPI check and could potentially put buyers off. As for the price, look at cars local to you on autotrader and price accordingly. If dealers are selling similar examples to yours for £14500 - £15000 then £13990 for a private sale seems very optimistic to me.

I got my parts from Euro car parts......you get the same part no matter where you buy it as LUK are the only company that make DSG flywheels. Did you tell them you have a DSG? It sounds like they have given you a flywheel and clutch for a manual gearbox......which will not fit a DSG.

The flywheel is around £300 and new bolts around £10. Labour rates vary quite a lot but in my case cost £270.....so in total it cost me £580.

Flywheel only.....and 6 new flywheel bolts to be on the safe side. There is no clutch plate on the flywheel in a DSG.....it has wet clutches that are all inside the gearbox and rarely give trouble on the 6 speed DSG.....even at high mileage.

Unlike the manual transmission, on the DSG the clutches are inside the gearbox and do not interface with the flywheel at all. There is just a splined shaft coming out of the gearbox that connects with splined hole at the centre of the flywheel. Your flywheel sounds like it is pretty well worn. When you say vibration on cold start, does it do this just when it starts up or does it continue when the engine is idling?.....if so I'd get that flywheel replaced.

I have been contributing to DSG flywheel discussions for the last few years, with my tale of rattling flywheel with no symptoms causing no problems. Well after nearly 3 years of flywheel rattling on my 2.0 PD DSG, it finally failed last week. I expected this to happen at some point, but what surprised me is the speed at which it got worse and the damage it did. To recap, my flywheel started making a rattling noise when in P or N at around 60,000 miles. At first it only did this when the engine was cold, but then at some point (probably about 10,000 miles later) it would rattle all the time (still only in N or P....it stopped when in D or R). There were no other symptoms at all......until maybe 2 months ago (90,000 miles). I noticed that when idling there was a noticeable but very gentle shake that could be felt through the car when stopped.....in the back of my head I thought this could be the start of an engine mount failing, or maybe flywheel, but it wasn't my first thought and I wasn't overly concerned by it. Then last week when my wife was driving it, she phoned me to say the car was vibrating badly and making quite bad noises (92,000 miles). I told her to drive it back gently and I would have a look when she got home. I knew at this point that the flywheel was probably the culprit. She got home and I heard it from inside the house.....it sounded awful. I went out later and attempted to start it where upon it make a loud metallic clang and started normally and was not making any bad noises any more. I knew at this point that the flywheel must have somehow got stuck off centre but reset when I restarted the engine (hence the clang noise!). I had the flywheel replaced and here is the old flywheel:- As you can see the end of one of the springs broke....probably at around 90,000 miles. The new free play in the spring allowed it to contact the casing every time it was compressed. Eventually this caused the casing to get holed (2000 miles later) allowing the greese and bits of spring from the inside out into the bell housing. The bits of spring got momentarily stuck in the starter ring gear and put a few nice gouges in the bell housing. Luckily the escaped greese trapped the bits of spring in a little pocket of space near the starter motor. I was lucky.....a new flywheel and a bit of cleaning of the bell housing was all that was required. However if the flywheel had broken up any more it could have easily written off the transmission. So if you have a DSG with a rattling flywheel and decide you really want to try to get maximum life out of the flywheel, be very aware of any changes....ie worsening of the rattle or any slight increase in vibration.....the flywheel is very near the end at this point. At no point did I get the classic vibration/judder at low RPM when accelerating.......the normal marker in a manual transmission with a worn flywheel.