Graham Butcher

Nope, dealers wanted far more than the write-off payment, it was a small garage in Newark on Trent, this was the car, and it looks beautiful in the photos. I'm so annoyed that through no fault of mine, I now have to end up downgrading to not only a lower spec, older car but one with considerably more miles on the clock and totally unknown history. It makes zero sense to me that the innocent party in these events are made to suffer, especially when the parts for a car are still freely available, the damage is cosmetic and it most be extremely greener and kinder to the planet to repair mine then scrap it?

Time is running out before I have hand hire car back.

Non-starter, dealer said a person saw it yesterday and might come today, I told him I was coming today from Essex, he said OK, he would keep the car until I had seen it, got a quarter of the way, he calls to say the other person wants it and he was leaning towards them as they were locals, so we had to turn around and return home.😒

I might be going to look at a new car tomorrow and I have done a car check and everything so far about the car checks out OK. I know the engine number that was fitted at the factory. I would like to check it to make sure that it has not an undisclosed engine swap, so where on the engine can I find the number?

Yeah, I was told today that 7 days after I accept the offer, the hire car has to be returned. I think the offer is pretty reasonable as it seems it is possible to replace the car with something almost identical if I want to travel to Nottingham I can get a black L&K, with black trim instead of plastic wood, standard sunroof instead of a defunct solar sunroof for around the same money as the settlement and the car appears to be in almost pristine condition and is the same year. Or there is the other option of 1.6l TDI green line, a year newer, but manual with lower specs but the same colour at the same price. I'll do a check on the L&K first to see if it has been stolen or involved in an accident etc and take it from there.

Bad news, following my shunt last week when someone decided to suddenly do a U turn right in front of me causing a 19mph impact, no airbags went off and zero injuries, the insurers repair agents have just phoned me to inform me that the insurance company deemed it a total loss last Thursday and the repairers wanted to know when I was going to collect my stuff from the car. The insurance company have yet to contact me about this, seeing as this is my first time in this position, is this normal behaviour, surely I would have expected the insurers to be informing me of this and telling how much they value the car at, how quick will I get the payment and what my options are etc. I really doubt that the car is that badly damaged, it all seems to be panel damage to me. Any thoughts or ideas?

Not if you weren't paying proper attention and was straying unintentionally into another lane and risking an accident. The assist in this case is going to be attempting to return you back into the lane that you're about to leave by accident.

In that case, it certainly seems to be better than that fitted in my hire car, I can't wait till I get my Superb back from the body shop.

Hmm, but that is not going to be much use unless you are actually looking at the dashboard at the time is it?

I doubt that the Passat b5.5 did that, I have had 3 Passats before switching over to the Superb and to the best of my knowledge the systems are identical.

OK, you've poked my curiosity now, if you have off steering wheel vibration off, how is the system alerting you that you're in danger of straying from your lane?

My current hire car has that lane assist, and I have to say that it is not very effective either, the vibration through the steering wheel has a similar feel to a road surface that is less than perfect but not a pothole and can so easily be ignored. I went out today to deliberately test it out and was not impressed. Similarly, the blind spot detection was also underwhelming, consisting of an orange LED in the door mirrors which is so easy to miss, especially when the sun shines on the mirrors, totally washes out any LED glow, it requires audio signals as well, preferable a different signal for each side. My hire car is a Nissan Qashqai, I don't know if the Skoda's with this technology are better?

@KenM I can tell you that the chestnuts mentioned in the video don't work, already tried in the house, and they still get in. However, I have ordered some spider killer from Amazon, how effective it is remains to be seen, supposed to be here by 9pm tomorrow.

Maybe a bit of an unusual question, but what is the best way of getting rid of spiders in the car? I was driving along today and I saw out the corner of my eye what I thought was movement on the dashboard, I glanced down and there was this large brown spider with large body and short legs making its way from the demister slots down to the middle air vents and promptly disappeared inside them and was not seen any more during the drive. I now want to get rid of it and any others in the car as they are in my opinion a liability in the car and are an accident just waiting to happen, especially when driving at night and something dangles in front of you or crawls over you, a major distraction for sure. So girls and guys, what is the most way effective way of getting rid of this/these bugs from the car? Edit, I just spotted this in my news channel, part of an article from "WalesOnLine" "Although spiders in the UK are rarely harmful, for those with a fear or strong dislike for the creatures, it can be stressful to know that there is one in immediate proximity. In the case of drivers, spiders can also suddenly appear mid-journey, causing a distraction to whoever is behind the wheel. In 2015, a woman in the UK caused a fatal crash as a result of a spider falling into her lap from the sun visor, highlighting how the consequences of having a spider in the car can be incredibly severe." Apparently, you can also be fined upto £2,500 as well.

Many thanks for the clarification, I just had another look in the drivers manual, and for the first time I have seen it mentioned in the section about the air con and heating, WTF, no mention of sunroof at all in the index, how odd.

I did indeed raise the question about the solar sunroof here a couple of years ago and never got a satisfactory answer, it is that rare, and I have never seen it offered on any other car apart the L&K Superb in 2013, out of 301 sold, only 272 are still on the road, so the question is how many of them were optioned with the solar sunroof? The owner's manual nor the workshop manual mentions the option, and so I can only surmise that it was offered once only on selected L&K models in 2013 as a possible test bed before including it on the Bentley Continental, I may be wrong on that, however. I know that the Superb has a umbrella in its door as a standard fitment, just as a Rolls-Royce does, and I don't think it is available on any other cars. Ross-Tech have confirmed tonight that after checking my VIN number, their VCDS will talk to the Solar Sunroof, so now I need to locate a VCDS for sale, without costing an arm and a leg.

Thanks for your replies, I expected that it was 1 VIN per car, so the 3 option is fine for me, I'm the only person in the family with VAG product. I already have a Carista OBDII BT device with an annual subscription but it is a 1 click job and there is no way of drilling down deeper into the data etc, for instance coding the battery change does seem to work very well unless you have one of the batteries for which they have the data preprogrammed in for. I suspect it is overcharging my new battery as a result. The Carista measure battery voltage as being 14.8V, which is what I would expect the alternator to kick out to the battery when its nearing the end of its life, but this battery is about 4 months old, so I would like to resolve that issue properly. Also 3 years ago when the alternator belt shredded itself and the battery depleted itself, RAC fitted a temporary battery without any coding and since that day, the solar panel in the sunroof has not been driving the cooling fan to the interior cool whilst the car is parked in the sun. So I'm asking Ross Tech if their system will talk to the solar sunroof or not as my local dealer has not been able to get the fan working via the panel despite me changing the air fan motor which had seized up a year later.

Ok, thanks for the replies, can someone please clear up a question I have about the VINS, there are 3 options, 3, 10 or unlimited VINS. I understand that certain functions use up a VIN so how does this work in practise, I only have the 1 car to use it on, so I was thinking that the best one for me is the one that has 3 VINS. So if I use it as a code reader on the basic error messages, I don't use a VIN for those, I get that, but if I was to try and modify or use one of the various test functions that I would use a VIN for that. Am I correct in saying that I have to enter the car's VIN number to unlock that function? Once I have done that, and I want to do some other tweaking or forcing something into a test mode etc on the same car, do I use another of the VINS or is it that once I have registered the car to the VCDS, I can then use it freely for anything on my car and I only use up another of my 3 VINS if wish to use it in another VAG car for something other than basic code reading and resetting?

I notice that the one I posted earlier, along with many of the others, all had the identical serial number H10-000000, it seems I have found another load, this time with H11-025771, I'm not sure about the H11-002336 Are they even upto H11 numbers yet?

That is my conclusion as well, and for the record, the last one I downloaded directly from Ross Tech and closer inspection, they have blurred out the serial number, the 2nd one I have seen the same photo being used by loads of sellers, so I came to the same conclusion, fake and the first one, is a fake.

I'm seriously considering the purchase of a VCDs lead, but it would have to be a second hand one because of cost. I have been looking at some on-line I can spot some that could be possibly be fakes and as Ross Tech provide the software for free as a download, I assume that those advertised with a CD containing software may be considered as possible fakes. I assume that the leads labelled as HEX-V2 with the ROSS TECH logo moulded into the body to be genuine and those that don't have the logo, but stickers instead are fakes, would that be correct or am I missing something here? I attach a couple of photos I have downloaded from some adverts I have found on the internet, showing the features I describe, I would appreciate your comments / suggestions.

Are that makes sense and explains why some adverts say 3 VINs used, or unlimited VINs, thank you.

I don't think that VIN's refers to the car VIN number because many of these on offer in the 2nd hand market say that they either come with so may VIN's left or they come with unlimited VIN's etc. I think it must be something to do with the ability to input parameters into the ECU's or support requests etc.

I'm thinking about buying myself a 2nd hand VCDs HEX-V2, I really cannot afford to purchase a new one, being retired now, and the current economic climate has considerably devalued my private pension plan. I can understand the reasons about buying genuine lead/interfaces, so with that in mind, how can I detect a clone from a genuine one? Also I keep seeing references being made to VIN's and also DTCs but reading the downloaded manual from Ross Tech I can find nothing that provides any further information on these terms, can anyone throw any light on these for me?

I'm thinking of upgrading my Carista scan tool for a LAUNCH CRP909E Elite tool and I'm wondering if anyone has any experience of this at all and what you think of it?