citori

Hello. I have a 2011 Octavia. I tried all sorts of HID kits in my car and got the usual problems of not working, or sometimes they would work for a couple of days and then turn off and show and error light on the dash. Eventually I bought a set of Canbus-pro ballasts from hids-driect on Ebay and they have worked faultlessly for 5 years from the word go. If you buy the ballasts seperately, ie, not in a kit, you can also specify bulbs with metal bases and also the correct (split) bulb retaining clips. all this makes them a doddle to fit and there is no need for re-coding the ECU on the car at all. literally plug and play. Once I had fitted a set to my car and ironed out the wrinkles I managed to fit a set to my friends Octavia during the lunch hour at work in the company car park with no problems.

I can understand why it is made to do this. It's no doubt all in an attempt to get maximum MPG and minimum emissions. Ie, get it into top as soon as possible and increase the MPG. But unfortunately it doesn't help the driving experience. I don't want to turn it in to a race car, just some kind of setting between normal drive and sport mode would be nice..

Hello everybody. I have a 2011 1.6 diesel Octavia and was considering a DSG re-map. Has anybody any experience of this? The main issue I have is that it tries to change up all the time, especially at lower speeds. I find that it tries to change up to top gear (7th) when only doing about 35-40mph and then it's often reluctant to change down again. This seems to make the engine labour and the car boom. O.K. you can move the lever over an knock it down a couple of gears but it's supposed to be an automatic! :-) The car is fine if you are pushing on a bit and on faster roads, it's just in relatively slow moving traffic this becomes annoying and TBH that's when the auto box should be at it's best. Thanks in advance. Edit: I should add that I have tried leaving it in sport mode, but i find although this resolves the problem, it's too agresive and holds on to the gears too long for normal town driving.

Hello everybody. I drive a 2011 Octavia and I went through a lot of pain trying to get after market HID's to work but I finally came upon the kits that have the canbus-pro ballasts. they have been in the car for 5 years now and work fine with no mods and no re-programming etc. You can get them on the Bay from a seller called hids-direct for around £60. No affiliation with the seller.. You have to get the canbus-pro ballasts. I found other ballasts with resistors etc did not work. If you can, try and buy the HID bulbs with the metal bases. I had to buy the bulbs and the ballasts seperately to do this, but it makes fitting easier. You can also get the modified bulb retaining clips on the Bay to fit the HID bulbs in the standard headlight fitting, or you can do like I did and dremel a slot in the existing ones. You need to do this because the HID bulbs come with the cables already attached and you can't get them through the existing clips. I went for 5000k temp as they give a white light with no blue, these or 4300K are good.

Hello everyone. I have a 2011 octavia estate, 1.6 diesel DSG. The ABS light came on a few days ago and now comes on every time the car goes over about 10mph or so. I took it to a German car specialist to look at it and the said it was the rear wheel ABS sensor. One was duly purchased and fitted but it hasn't fixed the problem. :no: They now tell me that the rear hub has to be replaced as it may be damaged. What? I didn't think the toothed part of the hub for the ABS could get "damaged". Dirty maybe, but not damaged. Anybody heard or experienced this before? I'm not totally hopeless when it comes to cars, is it something you can tackle yourself? the car has disks on the rear BTW. Thanks in advance.

When I ordered my Octavia the brochure said that xenon headlights were a FOC option. However I was then told they were not available. When I took delivery of the car the standard halogen lights were awful, so I fitted a set of aftermarket HID xenons..Wow what a difference. like night and day... excuse the pun. You have to make sure you buy the ones that have the canbus pro ballasts. Cheap kits off Ebay are useless and upset the canbus system. Mine cost about £70 and I fitted them in around an hour. The only small issue is you need to cut the headlamp clip so you can get it over the hid lead. I did mine with a dremel, no big deal. Got mine from HIDs-direct.

Thanks Guys, No arm rest. I have a centre console with a couple of cup holders and a 12v outlet, central locking switch etc. There is a company on Ebay called MT-audio that say they do a lead for the Bolero and the mod to switch on the input but they are in Hinkley which is a bit of a trek from here. I can get the lead, but then I need to get the radio to work.

I have the Octavia SE. I don't think it has the maxidot. I have a couple of switches on the wiper and they control the on board compter for instant and average mileage, speed etc. If there is an input socket it's well hidden. I have searched all around the centre console and the glovebox in the hope of finding one but no such luck.

OK Thanks. What is maxidot? It would be great to get this done. I had it on my previous car and I really miss it.

Hello. Can anybody help me with this? I posted in the ICE section but had no replies, so I'm trying here. I have searched the forums and found some interesting information such as how to remove the radio etc. But because the threads are a bit old the links to the relevant leads (usually on Ebay) are no longer valid. I have a 2011 Skoda octavia with a Bolero 6 cd radio and want to add an 3.5mm aux cable so I can connect my sat nav - phone - MP3 player etc. What lead do I need? there seems to be more than one type for sale on fleabay for the bolero. If anybody can point me in the right direction.. I also understand I will also need to get something changed/enabled in the radio software as at the moment the 'aux' is greyed out from the menu on the radio. Any ideas how I would go about getting this done? Any advice gratefully received. ATB Steve.

OK, good luck with this. Hidden aerials are always a compromise. You can buy some sticky back copper tape on ebay. People use it for making up model car race tracks and other such things. However it's generally only available in 1/4" width min. You could try cutting it down (careful with that stanley knife!) but it would still be thicker than the heating elements. Might be good to experiment with though, and you can just peel it off again if you didn't like it. A bit less permanant than paint. Good luck Steve.

First of all the easy question! generally the best wire to use for an aerial would be a solid conductor, although for reception it's not so important. As for aerial length, that’s a little more complicated. As a rule of thumb the aerial size or length should be as close as possible to the wave length of the signal being received. There are lots of tables on the net but if you pick a frequency mid of the FM band say 97Mhz that would give you a wave length of approx. 3 metres. Therefore a half wave dipole would have a total length of approx. 1.5 metres. A dipole is centre fed so each half of the dipole would be 0.75m or 29.5 ins. (59ins overall.) Most aerials that you see on older cars, such as the typical telescopic type, are half of a dipole (ish) with the cars body acting as the other half, or ground plane, which is why it's pretty important to have a good earth at the aerial base. Cars that have a small aerial such as most modern cars, are very inefficient and that’s why they will usually have an amplifier to try and compensate for the poopy signal. If you fabricate a dipole you also need to take in to account polarisation. Most car aerials are vertical as this presents itself to the signal no matter which way the car is pointing. If you have a dipole stretched horizontally across the back windscreen at some point it's gona be end on to the aerial and give you a poor signal or fading. You might be better off shaping it as an inverted V or W hopefully, this will make it a bit better.. and smaller. At the end of the day the best aerial you can get is a plain old vertical bit of stainless fixed to the bodywork with a good earth at the base mount, but unfortunately it's the least aesthetic and nobody wants to drill their car. Hope this helps you out a bit.

Ok, firstly let me apologise for being a newbie and bringing up this subject once again. I have searched the forums and found some interesting information such as how to remove the radio etc. But because the threads are a bit old the links to the relevant leads (usually on Ebay) are no longer valid. I have a 2011 Skoda octavia with a Bolero 6 cd radio and want to add an 3.5mm aux cable so I can connect my sat nav - phone - MP3 player etc. What lead do I need? there seems to be more than one type for sale on fleabay for the bolero. I also understand I will also need to get something changed/enabled in the radio software as at the moment the 'aux' is greyed out from the menu on the radio. Any advice gratefully received. ATB Steve.

Hello, just a note to introduce myself. I'm from the Brent wood area of Essex. (please don't mention TOWIE unless you really want to be insulted!) I've currently have an Octavia SE estate diesel DSG for around a year now which I am very happy with. Quiet, comfortable, seems well made and yesterday averaged 57 to the gallon on a high speed run to Northampton and back! I chose my Skoda in preference to many other cars in the VAG list and I'm pleased I did. It's used as a company car so the the low Co2 and running costs are welcomed. As soon as I got the car the first thing I did was fit HID headlamps as I have these on my other cars. What a difference! A really easy job, the only special tool needed was a dremel type thing to adapt the bulb retaining clip. They work really well with projector lenses. OH yeah, don't bother trying to do this unless you use the canbus pro ballasts, nothing else works, trust me. ATB