Morning, all.

I hope to collect my new car in a couple of weeks time (Superb TSI DSG Twindoor Elegance). I will of course be needing to immediately play with all the toys when I get it home. Question is...while its on my drive and I'm playing, should I have the engine running to protect the battery from discharging, or should I just have the ignition on engine off to avoid the engine overheating? Or maybe a bit of both, IE 5 or so minutes with the engine on and 5 or so minutes with just the ignition on? What do you think? Many thanks.

You should be fine just leaving the ignition on to play with all the toys. Unless you´re playing for days, I don´t guess you will need to leave the engine running.

A lot of the "toys" centre around the Columbus. It will display a message regarding battery life ("Please start the engine to protect the battery"), so don't worry about it.

Ray

Yep I have had that message while the wife was shopping and I was watching the tv.

Morning, all.

I hope to collect my new car in a couple of weeks time (Superb TSI DSG Twindoor Elegance). I will of course be needing to immediately play with all the toys when I get it home. Question is...while its on my drive and I'm playing, should I have the engine running to protect the battery from discharging, or should I just have the ignition on engine off to avoid the engine overheating? Or maybe a bit of both, IE 5 or so minutes with the engine on and 5 or so minutes with just the ignition on? What do you think? Many thanks.

Make sure you read the manuals, as I have just started playing with Voice Control of the Columbus unit having read the manual properly and I am really quite surprised as to how effective it is.

On leaving work I now start the car, activate Voice Control and utter the immortal words Navigation->New Destination->Home and bingo I'm off and running. Keeps the Columbus display nice and clean too !

The only thing I would do is turn the DRL's off (in the maxidot) whilst you are playing, once finished turn them back on again. (oh and make sure if it is getting dust that the headlight switch is off and not in "AUTO" otherwise the headlights will come on automatically.

I also played with these toys until the Columbus gave me that battery warning message.After 2 months I had to replace the battery because it was dead and it's about 100 pounds,so it's better to turn on the engine,it won't overheat and it's like 0.2 gallons/hour.

I also played with these toys until the Columbus gave me that battery warning message.After 2 months I had to replace the battery because it was dead and it's about 100 pounds,so it's better to turn on the engine,it won't overheat and it's like 0.2 gallons/hour.

Surely a battery that is only 2 months old should fall under the warranty? Even buying a cheap one from Halfords will get you a 12 month warranty, more for something like a Bosch...

Maybe it would be a good idea to attach a decent charger to the battery whilst 'playing'.

Judging by the amount of time mine's been sitting around at Emden I think the battery may be in need of a charge by the time I get to play!

Jim

I also played with these toys until the Columbus gave me that battery warning message.After 2 months I had to replace the battery because it was dead and it's about 100 pounds,so it's better to turn on the engine,it won't overheat and it's like 0.2 gallons/hour.

Battery is covered for 3 years / 60,000 miles under the original warranty.Al.

It's just not credible that a battery died due to just playing with accessories. The Superb batteries are >80Ah and this sort of capacity, designed for supporting coming home lighting, etc. (together with the higher cranking rate required) will not be affected by a couple of hours' "playing" time. This seems to have become an "over the top-ic!"

Ray

I have played a lot with my Skodas, also using VCDS etc. with the lights on. I have never had any problems at all, so forget battery chargers, running engines, switching on DRL´s and so on. There is no reason to do so.