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I took my three year old Mark II Octavia vRS in for its first M.O.T. yesterday. I've not had much time to keep an eye on my car in recent weeks but noticed that my front tyres were desperately worn out and that I'd need replacements - there was a cut revealing the cords on one of them!:thumbdwn: Given the limited amount of time I chased around for the current Michelin Pilot Sport 2 (225/40/R18) that I've been happy with but not many places seem to sell them any more. Apparently they are phasing out production of them soon and as such, prices are high. In order to pass the M.O.T. I got them replaced but the cost came to £160 +VAT for each tyre including fitting and balancing etc! This seems much more expensive than when I bought four new tyres last May at around £160 inc. VAT each. Have I been ripped off or have these tyres really gone up in price by £25 since last year?:confused: I think I'll have to go for the standard Continental Contact Sport 3's next time.

Thanks for your investigation Ali. It's been a while since I installed the unit but I'm sure I came across this the first time round and may have cut corners in order to get the power correct. From what I remember, I initially tried to get a switched power feed but couldn't have both a switched (ignition) and non-switched power feed. Since the non-switched feed was more important in order to preserve headunit settings I stuck with that, leaving me with a permanent live feed and hence draining battery. I haven't used VAGCOM to alter the CANBUS configuration. Is this something I can ask my local Skoda dealer to do or should I ask one of the nice guys on this forum to help? I'll take a look at the power feeds first and get them changed or re-wired before doing anything else.

I've had a non-standard car stereo headunit (Alpine iDA-X100) that I fitted to my mark II Octavia over two years ago. In order to keep the memory and settings intact it has a permanent power feed (though not switched on) when the car is not being used. Unfortunately, after a few low battery problems and not being able to start my car a couple of times these past few months I took the car in to my local dealer to check for any electrical problems. They told me that the battery was discharging 0.2W/h rather than the expected 0.02W/h because of the non-standard headunit. Apparently the standard Symphony headunit 'speaks' to the on-board computer to check everything is ok when the car is not being used and because my headunit is not communicating with it, the computer keeps polling back and forth to try to get a response. This is causing the excess battery discharge.:thumbdwn: Does anybody know if this can be stopped or prevented so that the battery isn't hammered so much?

Sorry I missed this guys, it sounded like a good evening. I'll try to come to the next one - I'm hoping it will be on Friday 3rd August.

Sorry for my absence on this thread guys. I have been aware of this meet but will probably not be able to join you as I'm away for the rest of the weekend and need tonight to prepare for some DJ gigs. I might be able to pop by for a drink or two. Chris... keep that engine revving!

I have the same Linksys router and have set it up to use WPA2 for my home network. I have no problems using my N95 with it so don't be that hesitant just because of one poor experience.

I had the Stream unit in my car up until a few weeks ago and have to agree that it does a pretty good job. The combination of head unit and standard speakers in the vRS go quite well but with my sensitive ears I noticed the treble was a little bright (or maybe too good) and needed to be turned down a notch or two on both FM and CD. Apart from that it's a good unit. The difference between the CD changer and the main unit could be due to the long wire separating the two - I doubt it's a high quality audio cable but most people don't notice.

This doesn't surprise me as I've seen similar things in India between animals but not a baby! You can see that he isn't really bothered by the snake until the end. They could have at least put a nappy on the baby.

I didn't use Event Tyres on this occassion but would be happy to in the future. There was a local dedicated tyre service that lots of people recommended to me so I visited them and they fit the new tyres for a reasonable price. I also had the tracking checked and adjusted. The following day I checked the tyre pressures and pumped them up to the recommended values (2.0bar = 29psi). They said that the tyres were up too high but when I compared their new settings they were around 26psi rather than 29/31 for front to back. Any way, I'm happy with them now and will give the car and wheels a wash next Monday.

I took the plunge and ended up getting two new Michelin Pilot Sport 2 tyres which have been put onto the front wheels. The good ContiSport 2's are on the rear but they will be changed for another pair of Michelin PS2's in the next month or two. All in all I'm happy with the selection and have already noticed some improvements in handling from the new tyres. Thank for all your help guys.

If you accepted the offer for some 'sauce' you would also be greeted with the response "you're very welcome" each and every time. It was a good venue and with plenty of car parking spaces it could be a regular meeting place. Thanks to all who did make the effort to travel even if it was a little far for you.

Thank you to all of you who made my first meet a pleasant and welcoming experience. I enjoyed meeting the real people behind some of the names on here and a big thank you must go to Chris for letting me experience some of the 'changes' made to his car. I'm very tempted to do something similar to mine and if Makefish has his way, it's already penciled in a few weeks from now. I'm sure I'll see some of you again soon.

I'm sure I'll find you all. I have to get a new tyre this afternoon to replace the puncture I had last week. I'll be interested to hear which tyres you guys have on your cars as I'll shortly need three new tyres and was thinking of changing from Sport Contact 2 to Toyo Proxies TR-1. Apparently they don't last very long but it would be good to hear your views. Oh and you're welcome to see my newly fit single DIN car stereo and resprayed fascia if that sort of thing interests you.:P

I've never been to one of these Briskoda meets so don't be too tough on me! Do you have a special handshake that you use to recognise one another?

I can't believe this thread is still going on with comments about irresponsible driving and the virtues of winding people up. Everybody just chill out...