Electric tailgate problem

[Sheriff]

Afternoon all, opened my tailgate last night and it raised fine as usual. However when it reached full height, it beeped and then when I pressed the button it continued to beep and wouldn't close. Ended up having to manually force it closed. The beep sounded like it was coming from the boot lock area. I searched on the Octy 3 forum as they have had these a bit longer and found that some folk have micro switch issues with the boot lock.

 

Anyone else shed any light on this? Cheers  

[UndertheRadar]

Any chance it’s cold where you are the latch was frozen confusing the system to thinking it was already closed when it was actually open?

[Sheriff]

Cheers for that and it has crossed my mind. At the time it was parked in a massive exposed work car park, it wasn't that it was that cold temperature wise, but the wind chill was bitter. I'll wait over the weekend and see on Monday when it's thawed to see if it's the same. It might do the trick, otherwise I'll book it in with the garage and see what they can find.

Edited 13 February, 2021 by Sheriff
spelling :)

[Hozz]

I have had exactly the same problem on mine except that it always happens in really hot weather.

You can alter how far the tailgate goes up (see handbook) so I set mine to stop about an inch lower than the maximum.

That solved the problem.

[Sheriff]

Thanks for your reply.

 

As a bit of an update, I waited until Monday when everything had thawed out and tried it again. The boot opened and closed ok but still beeped at the top, but at least it closed straight away and automatically so I thought it may be ok. Unfortunately on Thursday night whilst out shopping I forgot and opened it accidentally. This time it opened half way and stopped and beeped and wouldn't close, so I had to do the manual close again.

 

Car is due a service in 20 days so I'll get the garage to have a look, but I'm worried that the electric struts are knackered and I've seen on another thread that they are £700 a pair plus fitting and VAT from Skoda!!   

[Sheriff]

As an update from this, car went in for service last week and as expected the gas struts are knackered as the sensors can't tell what position the tailgate is in. Having looked online, replacement struts are £700 - £750 a pair plus fitting etc which I really can't justify!! I'm sure I've seen somewhere that you can covert to manual boot struts. Does anyone have details on which ones I can use as all Superb 3 appear to be electric. Can I use Octy 3 manual boot struts and is there anything else that would need to be changed? Thanks in advance  

[SashaGrace]

They are plentiful on eBay for under £200 per strut. It’s far nicer to have the power tailgate IMO, would cost you over £200 to swap back to manual struts if you had to buy struts, ball joints, a boot lock and a coding tool just for this job. I had one go on my Octy and it was a faulty hall sensor so I took the signal from the good hall sensor on the other side and repinned the connection. Free fix

[Sheriff]

Thanks Sasha, looking on ebay there are replacements for around £250 a pair with a 2 year warranty which is a bit more palatable

[SashaGrace]

Superb ones are much more common than the Octy ones and it’s such a handy feature IMO. Hope they work for you

[Patrician]

On 21/03/2021 at 11:54, SashaGrace said:

They are plentiful on eBay for under £200 per strut. It’s far nicer to have the power tailgate IMO, would cost you over £200 to swap back to manual struts if you had to buy struts, ball joints, a boot lock and a coding tool just for this job. I had one go on my Octy and it was a faulty hall sensor so I took the signal from the good hall sensor on the other side and repinned the connection. Free fix

Hi What do you mean by repinned the sensor? 

Thanks

[SashaGrace]

Spliced into the good side, ran wiring to the other side and used new pins to plug into the wiring on that side so the signal was mirrored on each side of the car.

[Gleisner95]

On 17/04/2021 at 18:19, SashaGrace said:

Spliced into the good side, ran wiring to the other side and used new pins to plug into the wiring on that side so the signal was mirrored on each side of the car.

Hi! Do you have any photos of how you this? I was thinking of opening up the plastic to get to the controller and linking them together there in order not to need to pull a couple of wires from one strut to the other, but I would like to see how your solution looks before I start digging into it and getting in over my head. 

[Welshbloke]

HI Gleisner95

Did you get anywhere with your hatch opening issue?

I have a as similar problem on My superb

 

[Gleisner95]

On 10/05/2022 at 19:30, Welshbloke said:

HI Gleisner95

Did you get anywhere with your hatch opening issue?

I have a as similar problem on My superb

 

Not yet really, this weekend I'm planning on switching to summer tyres and if nothing else comes up I'll open the plastic in the roof and see if I can find the plugs and try to find differences between the struts using a multimeter, as well as if the fault-code moves to the other side if I swap the contacts around. But that's only my plans, if they get me anywhere is another question.

[Kevinmaj]

Many thanks to 

On 21/03/2021 at 11:54, SashaGrace said:

They are plentiful on eBay for under £200 per strut. It’s far nicer to have the power tailgate IMO, would cost you over £200 to swap back to manual struts if you had to buy struts, ball joints, a boot lock and a coding tool just for this job. I had one go on my Octy and it was a faulty hall sensor so I took the signal from the good hall sensor on the other side and repinned the connection. Free fix

Many thanks SashaGrace and the thread/community.  I just had the same issue on my 2016 Diesel L&K and helped me fix the problem from the dreaded beeps happening one day.  Bought some new struts off ebay for around £250 and just fitted and got the electric tailgate back thankfully.  By far one of the most useful features on the car.

[Welshbloke]

HI Kevinmaj.....interesting post...I have the same issue with my 2019 Superb Est III. 

 

So if I understand your post correctly, you just "swapped out" both your "motorised" struts. Any chance you could share a link to the ebay items. Many thanks.

 

Thanks again.

[Kevinmaj]

Hi there Welshbloke,

 

Sorry to hear you have a similar issue on your car and it's only a few years old.  I certainly would not be happy, I wasn't with my car and that's a 2016 model.

 

Anyway, yes you are right.  They are a straight swap out (however the motorised struts are left and right specific) and the wiring plugs are in the inside pillars but not too hard to get to once trim is off.  Here's the one I used because they had a two year warranty and can confirm they work perfectly.  The foot paddle release seems to have gone but i can live with that, will look into further when i have some time.

 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/174916671926?hash=item28b9d899b6:g:nZkAAOSwYHNhyrls

 

Hope that helps.

 

Cheers,

Kev

[Kevinmaj]

Just now, Kevinmaj said:

Hi there Welshbloke,

 

Sorry to hear you have a similar issue on your car and it's only a few years old.  I certainly would not be happy, I wasn't with my car and that's a 2016 model.

 

Anyway, yes you are right.  They are a straight swap out (however the motorised struts are left and right specific) and the wiring plugs are in the inside pillars but not too hard to get to once trim is off.  Here's the one I used because they had a two year warranty and can confirm they work perfectly.  The foot paddle release seems to have gone but i can live with that, will look into further when i have some time.

 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/174916671926?hash=item28b9d899b6:g:nZkAAOSwYHNhyrls

 

Hope that helps.

 

Cheers,

Kev

I would say to double check your OE codes with the ebay listing, they are written on your struts 

[Welshbloke]

HI Kev

Many thanks for the reply, very much appreciated. I will have a go at changing these. (Of note though I don't have the foot operated option on my Superb.) 

It is very frustrating that it has failed as its a 2019. I live in France (its a UK car) and getting a French SKODA dealer to look at it would be a challenge and expensive.

 

I'll do it myself.

 

Once again thanks to you Kev and also to the Community here on BRISKODA 

 

Regards

 

Steve

[numskull]

@ Welshbloke, is this not a warranty issue, as it’s only three years old? Perhaps you’d get goodwill on the parts? 

[Nick_H]

Maybe of use to someone but I've had both my struts replaced using my extended warranty in year 6. Would have cost over a grand apparently.

[Kevinmaj]

No problem Steve.  Let us know how you get on.

[Kevinmaj]

I would hope so too.  Three years is far too soon, even 6 in my case takes the biscuit.

[Nick_H]

21 hours ago, Kevinmaj said:

I would hope so too.  Three years is far too soon, even 6 in my case takes the biscuit.

 

I've certainly changed my habits as regards to the tailgate. I would open and close it at the beginning and end of every single journey to plug the rear dash cam into the 12v socket. I only plug the cam in now if I'm going to open the tailgate for something which is not that often ...

[Welshbloke]

On 16/05/2022 at 12:55, Kevinmaj said:

I would say to double check your OE codes with the ebay listing, they are written on your struts 

HI Kev

 

One more question if I may. Where on the strut is the OE code. Is it visible while still fitted? Or, do I need to remove the strut to get the OE codes. All I can see on my struts is "PA6-GF30" thanks in advance (again)  Regards Steve