Jules Tohpipi

Thanks very much for this. I will give it a try. Glad to hear you got sorted eventually. Yesterday I tried to connect with my wife's iPhone 6 which is on iOS 12 and that wouldn't connect either. But will give your technique a go.

Would be interested to hear how you get on. I'm in the same situation with my iPhone 6S. My Android phone connects fine to the car but the iPhone doesn't want to know anymore after working fine for years. The iPhone connects as usual to my home Bluetooth devices but not the car. Haven't done any iOS updates in the meanwhile, so it's all of a bit of a mystery??

My 12 plate opens fine normally but only goes up a bit in cold weather. I seem to recall reading this also in my user manual.

Out of curiosity, how many miles have those rear pads lasted? I have the same car and they seem to be lasting forever.

Super. Nice one Rusty. Posted it anyway just for the knowledge pool.

The issue sounds mostly similar to the fault I had, which happened to be identical to the fault described in the two threads below. In my case, after two years of having the fault, it miraculously cured itself one morning and has been working fine ever since. I didn't do a single thing to try and cure it. Instead, driving to work one morning, I heard what appeared to be a small piece of metal falling down behind the dash. I thought this strange and out of curiosity hit the 'Media' button on my Columbus and the whole unit was working like new again. All my old address data was back, all the music on my hard-drive was there again, and the sat-nav was working. NZVRS below had the exact same fault as me and a similarly miraculous complete recovery. In his case he had taken the unit apart and put it back together again. Suddenly started working fine again. Should your fault be the same, then maybe the above experiences can help rule out some of the fault modes.

Got mailshotted this week that it's 10% off cambelt, and cambelt & water pump, changes at main dealers at the moment. You need to book via the Skoda UK website and you get to choose your dealer. Offer ends 31 May 2018. http://www.skoda.co.uk/finance-and-offers/service-and-maintenance/online-service-booking Enter discount code: CAMBELT10 Terms and Conditions Terms and Conditions For ŠKODAs 3 years (from first MOT) up to 10 years old, excluding V6 models. Fixed pricing is available to customers at participating ŠKODA retailers only. All prices are (where applicable) inclusive of standard parts, labour, oil and VAT and come with a two-year parts and labour warranty. Offer ends 31 May 2018. Cannot be used in conjunction with any other offer and may be varied or withdrawn at any time. *Includes cambelt, tensioners and rollers as required. Excludes CITIGO.

Have you modded the car at all? Sometimes causes odd effects. Can remember once I had a racing snail, took of its shell to make it go faster, instead just made it more sluggish. Boom, boom!

I've also got a 2012 1.6 Greenline and mine has been exactly the same from new. The distances you are quoting tally with my experiences, too. I stick the heated seat on (which also takes a good while to warm up) and put the front windscreen heater/blower onto max. That helps a bit.

I took my Superb to the main dealer for an MOT. "We've looked at it sir and you need a new anti-roll bar" came the call. My dashcam revealed the car was driven out of the main dealer to the grottiest wooden-shed dive in town. This is where the MOT was performed in the recording. They'd farmed the job out to the cheapest joint in town and passed it off as their own work from beginning to end. I gave the shed a call incognito and they charge considerablely less for an MOT than the main dealer. Not that I would EVER dream of taking it there. Lesson learned for next time. Ask where the MOT will be performed.

I've had the Nextbase 402G which went faulty, and now the 312GW in my Superb. The 312GW is much more compact and when installed behind the mirror is invisible from the driver's seat and from outside (its black colour blends with and is smaller than the mirror). I put mine on the passenger side of the mirror and the installation is very discreet indeed. Image quality of both cameras is equally excellent (I'm fussy) both during the day and night - so there's nothing to separate them there. A big plus point of the 312GW over both the 402G & 512G is the powered magnetic mount. It makes removing the camera and putting it back much less fiddly if you're in a dodgy area or the like.

When you pull the lever inside the car does the bonnet pop up?

Thank you for the update. Sorry to hear about the radio gremlins. The FM traffic interruptions (TP) are very important to me for hands-free info on M1 and M25 during my long commute. So it's a downer to hear that. But hope it improves after some playing around.

I wouldn't recommend card gambling with that poorly developed sixth-sense of yours - you would go bankrupt very quickly.

Haha! They do seem to be going on forever. Can't work out if it's the tyres or the car that is making them last so long. Having done the same commute in previous cars and the rears wouldn't last much beyond 40k.

Looks good Chris, thanks for posting those photos. Were you able to install yours without removing the glove box to manage the cables easier? I'm slightly nervous about removing mine because I had the infamous rattle around that area from new which took three trips to the dealer to rectify. Don't want to undo any 'custom' repairs they might have performed to fix it... I take it your head unit all works fine and shows the parking sensors and everything?

When the time comes, I would be very interested to read your review on the Xtrons. My Columbus went faulty and only its basic functions work now, with no connectivity to external devices. Never really had any great love for it anyway and the dealer wants £2k+ for a new one. Was the head unit replacement mostly plug and play, or was there wire splicing and running new cables around the car required?

I'm on 132k from new. Still on original rear tyres, they will probably last to 150k. Would be on original discs and pads all round but rears corroded and had to be replaced. But still on original front pads and discs. IIRC, got 70k from the front tyres. But the fronts have suffered punctures since so difficult to track the miles. I have a 130 mile round trip to work every weekday on A and M roads.

Sounds like a fault but one check is that the Park Assist function is automatically deactivated if traction control is 'off'. BTW, it's not necessary to press the Park Assist button before reaching the space. You can press it after passing the space because the vehicle is continuously monitoring both sides whenever you are driving - so you don't have to anticipate the space. This lookout system operates whenever your speed is less than 30km/h. If it finds a suitable space it will be stored in memory until either, another space if found, or you are ten metres past the original space. In my experience the Park Assist feature works very well, and is faster than any human I've ever witnessed at putting a large car into a very tight space. However, it doesn't work so accurately if: the space is very large (a couple of car lengths); there's only one car to reference off; or the other cars are badly parked. At the other extreme, if the space is tiny then it really works a treat.

My second car of the last 13 years is a Porsche 944 Turbo. Had my 1.6 Greenline for 4 years and love it. Plenty of low down torque to get out of junctions quickly and to join motorways at speed. If I'm happy then I'm sure a taxi driver will be happy. Gets the family fully loaded to the airport no problem and the fuel economy, space and comfort is spectacular. Don't knock it until you have tried it.

Just to double-check, when did you buy the car (month and year) and was it from a main dealer? I'm far from being an expert on this, and will tread carefully, but it might be worth you discussing this with your local Citizen Advice Bureau. The Sales of Goods Act, and the Consumer Rights Act that replaced it in October, set out that - that generally speaking - all goods sold must be of satisfactory quality and durability. In this, you are granted some statutory rights as a consumer when you bought your car (be that a new car or a used car). Have a read of this, as one example of a plain English description: http://www.which.co.uk/consumer-rights/problem/the-second-hand--car-i-bought-has-a-problem-what-are-my-rights Your statutory rights are a completely separate entity to any warranty the dealer gave you when purchasing the car. Should it be the case that your faulty Columbus falls under a statutory rights claim (I don't know so speak to the CAB), then it doesn't matter that the dealer warranty excludes the sat nav - because you would be covered by your statutory rights. The only way a dealer can waive a statutory right is if they had told you the sat nav was faulty prior to you buying the car. I think it's worth investigating this further by asking the CAB for its opinion.

I'm glad to hear the dealer did the right thing and you didn't have to pay a penny. Also, thank you for posting the details about it i.e. the technical bulletin and the 90% goodwill gesture. I telephoned Skoda UK this morning and raised a ticket about my situation. It is automatically being escalated for a decision regarding goodwill and I will be informed of the decision early next week. I got the impression the chap had heard this fault before. But anyway I'll keep my fingers crossed. Thanks again tecton for your posting about all this. I'm sure it will help myself and others in the future.

I'll be following this thread with interest as my Columbus has exactly the same issue as tecton's. It started about two months ago but I've recently been very short of time to start researching it to death and playing around. It has, however, been to a main dealer for diagnosis during a routine service. I paid £70 for the privilege of specifically investigating the Columbus fault and the report was next to useless. Some vague, back-covering, statement saying that the cause couldn't be found and they gave me the phone number of a local independent who could do a deeper analysis and at a cheaper price than them. Of course, the unit was around six months out of its three-year warranty. No wonder the dealer was polite and careful when speaking to me given the cost of these things. The impression I came away with is that the dealers are not interested in wasting time troubleshooting these expensive IT devices, so leaving loyal customers who had the car from new stranded with a hefty bill i.e. a new unit. Anyhow, I took delivery of my car May 2012, and to the best of my knowledge the dealer has never upgraded the firmware of maps. Nor have I ever played with such things. Just like tecton, one day my Columbus started displaying the "CD / DVD error check CD" message and "Please insert navigation disc." It does this at start-up. In fact, I can hear the DVD drive trying to spin immediately upon entering the car and before the key is inserted into the ignition. Similarly, pressing the Media button results in a never-ending display of "System Starting" meaning no listening to music via SD card, hard drive, Bluetooth or Aux. As per the OP, the radio and phone calls over Bluetooth works. I read in another thread, where a guy had the similar issue, that inserting a disc resulted in it getting stuck inside the player. Whereas tecton is saying it won't accept a disc, so I'm not sure if any firmware update will be possible. At least tecton is still within warranty - so I hope the dealer does the right thing for him and replaces the Columbus.

If your journey is a long steady one, such as the OP's, then one of the secrets is to try and maintain a steady speed as much as possible. Another way of putting this is you should try to avoiding accelerating the car (adding speed) as this uses much more fuel than maintaining a speed. Of course, it will be necessary to slow down at times, but trying to anticipate the traffic flow to minimise the amount of regaining of speed is very important. So long as it doesn't inconvenience other road users, coming off the throttle very early for roundabouts, or junctions, saves lots of fuel also. Why? Because the car uses zero fuel if you are off the throttle, in gear, and the revs are sufficiently above stall e.g 1500 rpm or more. For example, there's a roundabout at the end of a dual-carriageway, about 50 miles into my journey home. When conditions allow, I can come off the throttle completely half a mile or more before the roundabout, keep it in gear, changing down as I approach, and by the time I reach the roundabout the maxidot is showing a 2 mpg improvemt for the entire 50 mile journey. Contrast that with staying on the throttle all the way to the 200 yard marker and then braking heavily. Incidentally, I also find that going north up the M1, on the M25 to MK stretch, uses less fuel than when coming south in the mornings.

Mine are 91H