I have had a look and it seems I don't have the usual water ingress problem.

I do not currently have the car I have let my brother borrow it for a few weeks and he lives 300 miles away.

Better tell you what car I have first I suppose. It is an X reg Octavia 1.9 TDI SLX estate, which i bought last week with a few little problems.

3 problems (need to get it to lock):

1. Remote central locking doesn't work from the either of the 2 supplied key fob's

2. Drivers door barrel is just spinning around

3. Boot lock is solid.

Central locking all works as it should from the switch in the drivers door arm rest. Car starts and drives from both of the keys I got with it.

So far I have bought one of those door lock repair kits off Ebay which I will send to my brother to try and fix the lock. Hopefully this will sort out getting it locked/unlocked, however if the barrel itself is FUBAR can I just go into Skoda and get a new barrel which will work from my key?

Secondly, what do you think is wrong with the remote central locking?

last I'm not too worried about the boot lock for now if I can get the door to lock but is it just a matter of wd40 or is the lock shagged?

There is a procedure for re-syncing the keyfobs to the car if the car battery has been changed etc.

According to the handbook, you have to (Car needs to be locked to do this) press the unlock button on the keyfob and then unlock and open the drivers door with the key in the lock. Only probelm is your lock is broken lol. Maybe try it when you get the lock fixed.

If it doesn't work, you need someone with vag-com to re-code the keys to the car.

Thanks rk ill get my brother to give that a try once the locks sorted, hopefully that wont be much trouble.

Ok a quick update after the weekend and my brother having a go at fixing.

The 5 piece repair kit off Ebay works somewhat - fits in and locks/unlocks however the barrel itself is knackered as you can put a screw driver in the hole and turn the whole barrel. I think this is possibly due to buying the wrong part, as on ebay there looks to be a couple of different models.

Kinda solved the remote central locking, whilst the barrel to the drivers door was out my brother decided to use a screwdriver to lock/unlock the door. This worked for one of the remote keys but not the second, so +1 rk696.

So we had to solve the barrel problem, ah well sod it it locks take the repair off the back of the barrel

On the whole though I'm very happy atleast now its locking. Time to get a full replacement lock set me thinks cos the boot barrel is totally shot too, is it hard to replace the ignition barrel? while I'm in there I may as well add some cruise control for my 120 mile daily commute (atleast when I get the car back that is lol).