My cars having an electronic nervous breakdown

[TheWanderer]

Today has been a dark day for my wagon and its becoming a liability and embarrassment.

 

Not only has the oil sensor failure made an appearance yet again at the last minute but...

 

The central door locking decided to play up and locked the driver side door temporarily despite unlocking the rest of the car, my mate had to open it from the inside, after locking and unlocking it a couple of times it cleared.

 

The infotainment system froze and neither radio or satellite navigation system would work, did a reset on it only for it to do it again and only for it to come back online when I shut the car down and restarted it.

 

The tourist lighting system caused an error when it was deactivated and it took two attempts to get rid of it by playing with the lighting control switch off-auto-off-auto.

 

The alarm sensor failure has also reared its head yet again...

 

Obdeleven has been utterly invaluable to me and has got the infotainment system working again, I managed to get it to reset the locking fault as well, but this is becoming a £32k joke.

 

If I could get rid of it and find a car that matches it specification wise, I would go for it.😭

[skippy41]

Looks like a new battery is required

 

[TheWanderer]

The car is only 9 months old and the start stop system which is voltage dependent is now working perfectly, after its hiccups.

 

I mean when and that's a big WHEN, it behaves itself, it's a great car to drive, but it's becoming increasingly unpredictable and I'm now becoming very concerned about the oil sensors being wrong and it could be hiding a serious problem that could cause an accident (engine seizure) or it could breakdown leaving me stranded on a motorway or stop me going to work. 

Edited 11 October, 2019 by TheWanderer

[alfalincs]

Well, it may or may not be battery related as we know how sensitive they can be to decent voltage, so why not give the battery a really good "deep soak" charge using a proper intelligent charger and see if that makes any difference. Batteries can fail early, though its rare.  I know its a long shot, but give it a go.  Also when you get a cornucopia of electrical faults then I'd suspect an earthing fault, or water in an ECU or a break somewhere in a wiring loom, or even a connector plug fault.  You have too many different faults cropping up for it to be anything else........all in my humble opinion of course.

 

A dying battery was the ONLY thing that ever troubled my Alfa 156 Sportwagon when it started throwing up odd codes, So I know it can do it.

[SashaGrace]

If the same problems continue to persist, talk to the dealer about rejection. They won’t like you but a quick solicitors letter will help. I recommend getting legal help with this ASAP as although there is a cost attached it saves so much time and shows the dealer/manufacturer you are serious.

[Gerrycan]

If you have made any changes with OBDeleven then you should probably reset back to factory spec before negotiations begin.

In case they use that as a reason for rejecting your rejection.

[TheWanderer]

12 minutes ago, Gerrycan said:

If you have made any changes with OBDeleven then you should probably reset back to factory spec before negotiations begin.

In case they use that as a reason for rejecting your rejection.

 

Good point. I can't do anything about these problems until November 5th and 6th when they have the car for two days  to work on it properly and from what I have been told they will disconnect the car and basically put it to sleep and then reset it and then see where the problems lay by reinstating the problem areas one by one and then sort those out.

 

I'm wondering if there are too many things (gadgets) on the car to make it work correctly.

[shyVRS245]

Perhaps you should ask Skoda if they built your car on Friday the 13th with so many problems it should be painted in Lemon Yellow. Mine's 26 months old, 26,700 miles and honestly not a single problem.

[TheWanderer]

19 hours ago, shyVRS245 said:

Perhaps you should ask Skoda if they built your car on Friday the 13th with so many problems it should be painted in Lemon Yellow. Mine's 26 months old, 26,700 miles and honestly not a single problem.

 

I just find it so damned odd that for the first 2500-3000 miles it has been absolutely faultless and all of a sudden it's like a evil sprite playing with me. As soon as I correct something it reappears or go to correct it, it disappears, it now won't allow me to change the summertime setting to automatic. 

 

Today so far it has been fine, not a thing has appeared! So WTH is going on? Getting really peed off with this, its like it knows it's going to be put down.

[shyVRS245]

Hope you've not upset Buddha in some way. Might need to make an offering of some sort.

[ExSEAT]

This is sad to read. Ive been in a similar position myself and its incredibly frustrating. Mine was my last Leon, it was just a car that didnt want to work correctly and I had to jump out after 18 months. At the time no-one wanted to know, the local dealer were garbage and the forums were far less friendly than here. 

 

Head unit issues seem common but I dont recall anyone having some of those sensor faults you are suffering with. I wonder if theres a common factir aggrevating everything else, like a bad ground or a loom wearing through. 

 

Hopefully the dealer will give it the time it (and you) deserve to either put it to bed or throw their hands up and support you in a rejection.

 

Dont let it get you too down, I certainly did when I had these problems and it doesnt do you any good.

 

Fingers crossed for a decent reolution bud 👍

[Alex-W]

I was going to say the same as above, it very much sounds like there's a single fault that's causing most, I'd not all the issues.

It's clearly suffering from far more issues than most, by a factor of 10 or more, which the engineer in me says cannot be a coincidence and has to be linked.

[gregoir]

Several threads reporting strange  electrical problems. After a  recent service I mentioned that my Stop/Start had problem only been resolved after a new battery was fitted. I was told that the garage was expecting a surge in electical and battery problems as winter draws on. Take that as you wish.

[TheWanderer]

I've been thinking about the minor changes that I have done to the car and no matter how much I look at them I can't see any connection between them and the faults that are occurring.

 

1. VC - Added the 10 mph increments to it, but kept the top speed as is, changed the font on it, but have changed it back to the normal RS font now.

 

2. Throttle response - Changed to Audi settings. But the oil sensor failure issue was occurring before I did this and it does it at random intervals and it comes up with high temperature when the car has only just been started, so that can't be the problem. 

 

3. TSR - Done by following the instructions to the letter and checked twice over before implementing any changes, they have been working perfectly and it doesn't affect the infotainment system.

 

4. Fan speed indicator on auto - Changed it back after I found it highly irritating. Air conditioning is working perfectly. 

 

These are the only changes that I have done and none can be linked to the door locking malfunction, the infotainment system freezing and going blank or the headlight tourist mode error as I haven't tried to alter anything to do with them.

 

It really is bizarre.

[Gmac983]

I would tend to agree with the above comments. 

Voltage issues (duff battery). 

Bad earth somewhere. 

Or water/moisture in the works. 

Due to your obvious and understandable dissatisfaction have you tried contacting skoda CEO directly (or their personal team anyway) just to see what spin they put on your situation. 

 

[TheWanderer]

6 minutes ago, Gmac983 said:

I would tend to agree with the above comments. 

Voltage issues (duff battery). 

Bad earth somewhere. 

Or water/moisture in the works. 

Due to your obvious and understandable dissatisfaction have you tried contacting skoda CEO directly (or their personal team anyway) just to see what spin they put on your situation. 

 

 

Not yet, but will try tomorrow and see what they say about it.

 

I mean I want to love the car and I do WHEN it behaves itself, but it misbehaves so frequently I have learned to hate it. 😔😭

[Gmac983]

37 minutes ago, TheWanderer said:

 

Not yet, but will try tomorrow and see what they say about it.

 

I mean I want to love the car and I do WHEN it behaves itself, but it misbehaves so frequently I have learned to hate it. 😔😭

 

I feel your pain... 😭

Had a similar experience with an Audi A3 2007>09, loved the car but o'boy was it a dog for reliability and the dealer just wasn't interested. 

In the end I had a couple of interested parties privately wanting to buy the Audi, couldnt in good conscience sell it to them as it would likely boomerang back at me (everyone knows everyone up my way). So I had to trade it in. 

[Rodge]

Could it be a CAN bus problem? I use CAN at work, but I'm not familiar with how it's used in cars. Unreliable data transmission might cause widespread problems. This could be caused by a dodgy connection or failing termination. Usually the cables should be terminated with a resistor at both ends and the screen grounded in one place, but I have no idea where these terminations might be. How does the car monitor and report such problems?

[TheWanderer]

It stores them in a type of protected memory (ROM), which the technicians will (can) access, but we can't.

 

They know that I have reconfigured the VC and added the TSR, no issues with that being done. I've done the throttle response and that hasn't added any issues to the ongoing problems and why would it affect the central door locking motor and stop it locking/unlocking albeit for just a minute?

 

But that means that I now wait and check the back door is locked (can't do front as they'll simply unlock as soon as I touch the handle) as I have KESSY.

 

 

[TheWanderer]

Spoken to Skoda CS today and they've logged all of the faults and issues with the car, at the moment they've said that they will have to wait for Garlands to carry out their diagnostics and repairs and I have to report back to them. 

 

So it will be November 6th at the earliest before I know what's going wrong with the car and what they intend to do with it or how they intend to resolve the issues that are occurring at random times. 

[Alex-W]

Assuming that's because you can't get booked into Garlands sooner, you could always take it to Winchester...  same group and I found them to have a shorter wait.

I got my car from Garlands Used Car place about a mile away from the dealer, same group obviously.  Took the car to Winchester for the headlight to be replaced though as I could get in about 2 weeks earlier (plus it's closer to me).  Made no difference to them as it's the same group.

[benterrier]

November 6th!  Well this gives you a chance to put it on the bonfire on the 5th.

No seriously hope it all goes well. Things going wrong like this really is crap.

[Gti Jazz Blue]

34 minutes ago, Alex-W said:

Assuming that's because you can't get booked into Garlands sooner, you could always take it to Winchester...  same group and I found them to have a shorter wait.

I got my car from Garlands Used Car place about a mile away from the dealer, same group obviously.  Took the car to Winchester for the headlight to be replaced though as I could get in about 2 weeks earlier (plus it's closer to me).  Made no difference to them as it's the same group.

Worth a call to see if they  can book it in earlier at Winchester. They look after my vRS which was a Garlands ex-demonstrator.

[TheWanderer]

Winchester Motor Company is 38 miles away and they would have to have the car for at least two days.

 

The reason for the wait is because I need an automatic car, I've tried to drive a manual (SWMBOs) and I now get so addled by the clutch and gears that I nearly crashed it! 😳

[BigEjit]

On 13/10/2019 at 12:41, Gmac983 said:

I would tend to agree with the above comments. 

Voltage issues (duff battery). 

Bad earth somewhere. 

Or water/moisture in the works. 

Due to your obvious and understandable dissatisfaction have you tried contacting skoda CEO directly (or their personal team anyway) just to see what spin they put on your situation. 

 

 

I'd go with a bad earth or a pin backed out of a connector. The earth studs are fitted to the body before they are painted. I have known electrical issues arise due to poorly protected studs prior to painting or poorly cleaned earth point studs prior to the fitting of the wiring harness.

 

If Stop Start is regularly operating, its unlikely to be a battery problem.