I joined the ranks of Skoda owners this week with the purchase of a 2012 Superb Combi Elegance CR170. Quite a step up from my old '99 Passat TDI

 

Generally loving it! Quiet, comfy, quick. The handling is precise and quite agile for a vehicle of its size. I love the adaptive headlights. Loads of space.

 

Some small niggles.

 

There's no rubber mat in the bottom of the door pockets so anything put in there slides around like crazy. I got some rubber grip mat in Halfords today which fixed it, but it's an annoying oversight in a vehicle that's otherwise well thought out.

 

The nav unit defaulted to most economical route which I copped after about 50 km on country roads from Chesterfield towards Manchester: I made it to Holyhead for the ferry with 5 minutes to spare after caning it from Manchester to Holyhead on the motorway/dual carriageway (incidentally the car was fantastic at this!).

There doesn't appear to be any option to tweak the audio output on the Columbus unit. The sound can be a little bassy for my liking and it'd be nice to be able to tweak it. Likewise, having fade and balance adjustment can be useful at times. I'll dig into the manual again, but if anyone's come across this and solved it I'm happy to hear how.

 

The supplying dealer didn't do a fantastic job on preparing the vehicle. I've found the remains of a bag of crisps in the boot. There's what appears to be Bovril or Marmite spilled in the bottom of the glovebox. They also used the horrible greasy plastic/vinyl cleaner on the interior plastics. I foresee Saturday being spent cleaning the interior with APC and a microfibre cloth. I think I might send them an email about this - it leaves a poor impression.

 

Annoyingly, the service book and manual were missing. Hopefully I can get the full service record from Skoda. I'd be more annoyed about this except that the vehicle history checks out well. I had already downloaded the manual prior to purchase

 

I'll be getting a towbar fitted sometime in the next few weeks. Almost certainly this will be a Skoda OE one, and definitely with the Skoda electrics.

I need to convert the speedometer to km/h. Having seen the price of a new cluster, I won't be going down that route. I came across this company while searching for options: http://www.lockwoodinternational.co.uk/dials/kmh/skoda/superb/superb-mph-to-kmh-conversion-dial-for-imported-exported-vehicle-part-no-c1106.html Has anyone here used them? Any opinions on quality/readability/etc? Also, I've heard it's hard to remove the needles from the dials: anyone got advice on doing this safely?

 

Finally, if anyone knows of interesting tweaks to do with VCDS, I'm all ears

For audio settings go to TONE on the front panel of Columbus; everything's in there.

 

I think it's easy to change to km/h, but I've never done it so can't help.  Someone will be along soon... 

For audio settings go to TONE on the front panel of Columbus; everything's in there.

 

You know, I think that's the one button I never pressed when trying to figure this out! D'oh! Something to play with tomorrow...

Congrats! I found the stereo too 'bassy' when we bought ours too. It seems to be particularly susceptable to the extra bass some radio stations add to their EQ (used to be BBE I think). Anyway, the easy fix is to adjust the bass down on the EQ... press the TONE button (bottom left?) then treble-mid-bass. 

 

http://ws.skoda-auto.com/ownersmanualservice/data/en/octavia_1z/11-2012/navigation/columbus/a5_octavia_columbus_navigationsystem.pdf

 

You can change the speedo in the central display (MFD, between analogue revs and speedo) to either mp/hr or km/hr. Just adjust that on the MFD (owners manual page 19 I think). This is much cheaper than going down the replacement dials route.

 

Lots of VCDS options. The ones I changed were..... changing the number of flashes a short flick on the indicators give, and remote closing of boot from cnetre consolue button and remote (if you have an electric one). There are LOTS of options and you'll find a list on the forum.

The elegance should come with small rubber insets in the bottom of the door buckets.... Well mine does.

 

The sat-nav can be set to give you the three options of fastest, shortest & most eco for you to pick which of the three you want. This is done through the nav settings on the Columbus.

 

Your speed in km/h should be displayed on the maxidot between the rev counter and speedo? The only time I think it can be disabled is when the car has had the large Australian speedo option enabled which means you can turn off the km/h display and instead have a large mph displayed instead.

 

Skoda UK may be able to assist you with the service history.... But only if it has been serviced at Skoda dealerships obviously.

The elegance should come with small rubber insets in the bottom of the door buckets.... Well mine does.

 

The sat-nav can be set to give you the three options of fastest, shortest & most eco for you to pick which of the three you want. This is done through the nav settings on the Columbus.

 

Your speed in km/h should be displayed on the maxidot between the rev counter and speedo? The only time I think it can be disabled is when the car has had the large Australian speedo option enabled which means you can turn off the km/h display and instead have a large mph displayed instead.

 

Skoda UK may be able to assist you with the service history.... But only if it has been serviced at Skoda dealerships obviously.

Looking on partsbase suggests you're right on the rubber inserts. Annoying.

 

Once I'd realised the satnav was perhaps not doing what I expected I went poking at the options and set it to fastest route. At that point I was pretty much stuck with the road I was on.

 

I've already set the readout on the screen to metric, but it's a poor substitute for having the clocks read properly. Takes too long to find it and read it when I just want a quick check on my speed.

 

I'll see what I can get through Skoda Ireland on the service history first - IIRC they can access the Skoda UK service database.

Congrats on the new. As you say a huge step up from the Passat. Did you buy from a main dealer? That was very sloppy on their part to say the least. Was it sold/advertised with a full service history?

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Once I'd realised the satnav was perhaps not doing what I expected I went poking at the options and set it to fastest route. At that point I was pretty much stuck with the road I was on.

What I meant is that you can set the Columbus to calculate all three options each time which it then shows you and then you pick which one you want. I prefer this as sometimes I may want shortest or quickest rather than my usually choice of most economical.

Edited 19 March, 201610 yr by WaveyDavey

What I meant is that you can set the Columbus to calculate all three options each time which it then shows you and then you pick which one you want. I prefer this as sometimes I may want shortest or quickest rather than my usually choice of most economical.

Ah, nifty! I'll try that next time.

Ive got the skoda oe towbar and electrics on mine and the pins to run the fridge in the caravan arn't even in the body of the socket (its a 13 pin one)I think one suggestion is to put a different 13 pin socket in there and run a cable direct from the battery with a voltage drop switch in line that way I wont have to mess with the internal electrics. Any comments?

Ive got the skoda oe towbar and electrics on mine and the pins to run the fridge in the caravan arn't even in the body of the socket (its a 13 pin one)I think one suggestion is to put a different 13 pin socket in there and run a cable direct from the battery with a voltage drop switch in line that way I wont have to mess with the internal electrics. Any comments?

 

Good idea, use a high amp voltage sensing split relay such as the Volton ZR1220. I use one of these to run a fridge in my boot when on a driving holiday 

Edited 20 March, 201610 yr by bigjohn