I have a 59 plate Octavia 1.4TSI estate that I have owned for 11 months now and have been very pleased with it. So far it has covered 79000 miles (72000 by the previous owner) and is on the variable/20000miles service schedule. I have a few queries that have recently come to light.

1. The service reminder now comes on telling me a service is due in 600 miles which i expected however; I also have 183 with a little circle icon displayed in the centre of the compuer display. What does this 183 indicate. It goes off once the servicing reminder reverts to trip readout.

2. A 20000mile Skoda service is £249. Would you reccomend sticking with a main dealer or having it serviced annually by an independant garage. (I do about 6-8000 miles a year and plan on keeping the car for another 4 or 5 years)

3. It takes 3.5 - 4 miles for the engine to reach normal operating temperature. Is this normal during winter months or does it indicate a sticking thermostat.

4. In this cold weather, I have noticed that the exhaust seems quite smokey although nothing was detected during the emissions test on it's first MoT a few months ago.

Many thanks for anyone that can help.

On the warming up question, yes mine takes ages for the thermostat to reach normal temperature. I see a lot of what I would call water vapour from the exhaust when I put my foot down, no nasty smoke.

Less than 10000 pa? You should consider Volkswagen's advice and revert to fixed yearly services.

http://www.volkswagen.co.uk/owners/servicing/regimes

By all means stick with a dealer for this service but the next one after is just an oil change in a year's time. You could do that yourself or an independent would do it for bobbins.

HTH

As for the thermostat, it would leave a fault code that a dealer court read if you mention it. Otherwise, it's just cause you are doing short trips in winter?

Thanks for the replies, you've both put my mind at rest that everything seems normal

Small - I would concur with your descition about water vapour coming out from the exhasut pipe under acceleration as opposed to a smokey exhaust.

To confuse me even more, the 183 now says 182 but the icon next to it could I suppose be a clock and so maybe it's some form a timer till the service is due?????

yes, it's a "days" countdown

My 1.4Tsi Mk5 Golf did the water vapour trail as well, so seems common across the VAG group. Realy worries cars behind, some back off thinking my car is about to blow up lol.