Well, been smooth sailing for the couple of past months.. no toubles what-so-ever. However now that the winter has really kicked in, there seems to be trouble in the horizon.

1) the diesel engine runs really cold, as expected. We're seeing currently -23C in here and half meter of snow. The engine was strugling to reach 1/4 of it's normal running temp. So I covered all of the radiator with a piece of plywood. Now the engine is running at normal temp! Sweet.. finally warm inside as well, without running the heater @max.

2) my brakes don't work during mornings!! For some reason when the car has been sitting overnight in the freezing temp, brake power assist doesn't work. For the couple of first brakings & roughly 5 minutes after start the brakes start to work as usual. When I start up the brake pedal is rock hard! I was backing out of my yard @idle and had real troubles stopping the car! I had to jump on the pedal with both of my feet to stop it!!

Spoke to my mechanic about it and they're checking out some pipe leading to power assist pump (or what ever it's called) thinking it could be the culprit. They're checking it for crackings and warming & drying it with compressed air (if it's not broken). Have to see if it helps. They figured there could be some moist in it which freezes.. so problem goes away when the car is warm.

3) Yesterday after 2 hours of driving in the freezing temps suddenly the "glow light" (the spiral) came on in the dash and maxi-dot said:" Engine failure. Go to Service!" then went into limp mode as if there was no Turbo boost at all. And yes, it even had the exlamation mark on it.. Blaming the cold I stopped at the next bus stop and shutdown the car. Then restarted and the problem was gone.. turbo and all working as normal. My mechanic will check the fault memory tomorrow. Hopefully there's some indication as to what happened.

4) Parking sensors are going absolutely nuts! They're totally useless during winter as they seem to have a mind of their own during freezing cold. There could be 10 meters of empty space behind me and the sensors were screaming. I tried to clean them up with a rag & finger - no help!

I'm somewhat suprised by all these problems with the car. Last winter I didn't see any of these probs, but then again it wasn't this cold either. I guess extreme cold & cars don't mix all that good. I'll report of the mechanic s findings after tomorrow.

//Juha

You could try changing the brake fluid as it absorbs water over time. Skoda advise changing it every two years. Isnt too expensive to do.

Edited 6 January, 201016 yr by stacon

You could try changing the brake fluid as it absorbs water over time. Skoda advise changing it every two years. Isnt too expensive to do.

Well, my trusty mechanic checked out the car. They replaced some tube with a valve from the break power assist system. Skoda Finland had suggested changing it as there has been other cases where it's been ruined by combination of some kind of condensation or similar with icy temps -> leads to freezing. After this no more problems with breaks!

Also the engine fault thingy has been solved. Skoda has issued a software update that fixes this. In extreme cold conditions EGR can freeze. This causes the emissions systems go tits up which lights up the warnings. The software update makes sure the EGR valve is kept slightly more open which in turn prevents it from freezing as there's more heat coming through. Also turns out the same problem is through whole VAG group... and Audi has fixed this a year back followed by VW. Don't know about Seats stance, but Skoda's software came out just couple of weeks ago. Unfortunately the software wasn't out yet when they fixed the breaks problem so mine hasn't been updated yet. But it will deffo get the code during next maintenance which is due in couple of months... Not going to bother with it before as I'm quite sure I won't run into this issue in the mean time. It was extreme conditions back then...

//Juha