skomaz

You are kidding aren't you...??? If you believe that you need certifying as slightly mad... Sure some will be much better than 'ebay specials' but there are many, many OE parts that are 'engineered' down to a price and nowhere near as good as aftermarket parts from other manufacturers. Skoda brake discs and pads come to mind as one immediately well known item... made of lower quality materials and poorly finished. Turbo hoses are another well known OE failure item where aftermarket items are far better. There will be many other examples too - not everything but enough to categorically disprove your comment.

Can I ask what the apparent obsession is with OE parts? The OE process is a balance of cost Vs performance and often the cost side wins meaning OE is not always the best and better non-OE parts are available that perform better, last longer etc. In addition certain OE parts for older cars are no longer available so there's no choice but to go aftermarket non OE.

Just get Bosch Aerotwins they work great and are far better than OE ones

I switched to osram night breaker +150 on our Kodiaq and they are an improvement but the biggest improvement was getting the lights aligned properly as they were set too low to start with. I guess the alternative might be Thier +200 bulb or even trying one of the better LED drop ins that can be used in Europe but unfortunately still aren't street legal here in the UK.

Blimey... 5 pages and this argument is still going on. At the end of the day it is one person's car and he has chosen to fit aftermarket parts from a quality supplier to improve the characteristics of his car. There may be geometry changes as a result but suspension is about far more than just geometry. The change is his choice and his choice ONLY to make... Some people want to keep their vehicles stock and OE and others don't. So why argue so vehemently?

I'd completely forgotten about that but now I've seen it's position on the full screen I recall it - you're spot on!

Daft question but does your car have a driver alertness system or area view system. Could it be associated with that? Ie an internal eye tracking camera failure?

It's the eye in the sky... I'm sure Alan Parsons wrote a song about it... 🤣

At a guess it might mean the camera is obstructed by frost?

I know what you mean I just wonder whether things are starting to get better as I've seen a few reviews now of the ewer compact H7 Led drop-ins that seem to suggest the beam pattern is very close to Halogens. There is also the Osram Nightbreaker LED that is street legal in most EU countries as a retrofit for a lot of vehicles.

As above I'm pretty certain the Kodiaq door is much longer and a different profile

Having looked at that alarm I have a few queries... The first is why? If you have an Octavia III then it will already have an immobiliser and may even have alarm depending on spec. I certainly haven't installed an aftermarket alarm system on a car since the mid 90s as the inbuilt ones tend to be decent and anything aftermarket tends to bugger the car up and cause faults. The second is to note that that particular kit seems to be for older cars which don't have a Canbus system. So it's unlikely to work without an additional interface between it and the car.

This is true but you need to be careful when checking that any lighting up of signs is direct lighting and not just the latest retro reflective sign faces doing Thier job as recent changes to specifications has increased the performance of the latter. I know my Kodiaq headlights are aligned as I've checked them, as has a garage but the new sign materials still reflect back very brightly

On the cyclist subject the ones that are an issue round here are the commuters in dayglo orange and reflectives that then gave an high lumen off road conical beam LED flashing light on thier bike pointed straight out horizontally instead of angled down. Get one of those coming at you or behind you with the light hitting your rear view and door mirrors and you know about it and have temporary blindness and colours in front of your eyes for a while after. Thats not good for the safety of anyone...

Saw a prat in an old A4 today with crappy bluish LED drop ins. Funny thing was he had one projector headlight that didn't glare but also wasn't putting much light on the road and one reflector which was horribly glary... Both on the same car.

Noticed this last night on the drive up to Lancaster... It mostly seemed to be high end cars with matrix lights that weren't spotting and adjusting for vehicles on the opposite carriageway

Here's a thought after all the discussion re tyres and rims and Carlston suggesting changing the lot for smaller ones... Why not just fit the same size tyres but of an all season type to the rims fitted to the car on delivery... That's what most normal people will do instead of faffing with new steel rims and different tyre sizes. And if the tyre size isn't available they might go 10mm wider or narrower to suit.

I think that would be my first starting point too given the experience of others... Maybe tr y a factory reset of it to start with, as well as checking everything else has been switched on and off Tvlesst once just in case something has got itself in an in-between state.

Likewise (well 39 years) and that includes driving a 32ft Winnebago but I can still see the benefits of having a camera...

Yeah... I've seen a few reviews of it and a 1.2 turbo hybrid manual 4x4 looks quite a tempting prospect

By all means use your mirrors but there will still be a massive blind spot directly behind you that you cannot see - due to the car's bodywork. You could look at this area before reversing but it could easily be filled by something without your knowledge as you reverse (small child, perhaps a cat or dog that you also wouldn't see in your door mirrors. A reversing camera overcomes this issue and allows you to see everything you can see in the mirrors PLUS that blind spot directly behind you from the bumper back. I don't have a camera on our Kodiaq and am very very careful but do on our Swift and there is no doubt about it the camera does help from a safety point of view (even when reversing such a small car).

If it's anything like the earlier Fabia's it'll be the inner door carrier seal that is leaking... rain and the like drains internally into the door between the outer bodywork and an inner door skin / carrier behind the door trim. The inner skin / carrier is normally sealed against the rest of the door by a foam sealing strip around the edge but this deteriorates and then causes water to run between the it and the door trim, down onto the top of the door seal and the into the footwell. The solution is to take the door trim off and re-seal the lower section of the inner door carrier / skin to the rest of the door using something like gutter sealant or plumbers gold.

Further information here

In my opinion just change the starter button. Or take it out strip it down and clean it. They are known to have issues that manifest themselves as you describe. The one on our Kodiaq was replaced at 3 years old just before we bought it.

You've had a day at Hardwick then? If you ever get the chance get up on the roof... The views are stunning.