Hello everyone. 
I recently bought a 2020 Octavia Estate, with the 1.5 petrol engine. I got (what I thought to be) a bargain, as the car was a Cat N write off (cosmetic damage only) which had been repaired and put back on the road. During the repairs, the previous owner also fitted stiffer, lower suspension and 19” wheels.

The car behaved impeccably for a few weeks, but since, has begun to throw out a dazzling variety of faults. Most journeys, in no particular order, I’ll get errors with Front Assist, Auto Stop/Start, hill hold control, manouevre braking, electronic parking brake… I think that’s it. Sometimes, the above errors also seem take down cruise control, but not every time. Oh yeah, the automatic headlights haven’t worked automatically since getting all these issues.

I took the car to a Skoda dealer (Turners of Erlestoke in Wiltshire), who said that the issues were down to the ride height of the car being different from standard, plus a crash sensor not having been reset. They re-calibrated the car and reset set the sensor, relieved me of £300 and said all was well.

As you have probably guessed, next journey, nothing had changed. 

Does any of the above ring any bells for anyone? Any advice of where to turn? When I called the dealer back, their reaction was “Yeah, not surprising really, given the modifications.” Well, maybe, but you didn’t tell me that when you took my £300 and said all was well!

Any insight or advice much appreciated!

You might need the front camera recalibrating for front assist, but I had a whole list of stuff go haywire when the dealer replaced a module, I think you might need a new F533 module which seems to be one of the culprits.

 

I would take it to an independent and get them to run a diagnostic cycle, they're often cheaper than a main dealer. However I believe a new F533 module is somewhere in the region of £600 to replace & program, the modifications my not help the matter either because I believe that the module is put on a computer and programmed by the Skoda servers to what the cars original specifications were.

 

TBQH you could be throwing your money away and I don't know what you paid for it, but in the short term you could pay not far off of what you paid for it, by the time you have all of the parts, labour, VAT added to the overall cost.

 

You may want to investigate what your legal rights are as a buyer, but it being an insurance write off you may find that "Caveat Emptor" applies.

Possible it's a faulty 12v battery causing the errors?

5 minutes ago, Novascape said:

Possible it's a faulty 12v battery causing the errors?

 

I wouldn't have thought so because I had low battery when my steering wheel (stoplock) knocked the parking lights on overnight & whilst I got battery level low + another warning it wasn't any of the aforementioned ones.

Edited 7 February, 20251 yr by TheWanderer

The early (2020 especially) Mk4s had numerous flaws (including mine which spent 5 months at the dealers for diagnosis whilst a fix was developed) but not any of the issues you mention. I reckon a combination of the repairs and modifications have contributed; the advice from @TheWanderer to check your buyer legal rights and to potentially reject the car is a good call.

My advice extends to whenever you're buying a secondhand car & in particular an "insurance write off" to get it professionally examined by an engineer from the AA or RAC and get a full written report from them before you even consider the vehicle.

 

I hope you can get this resolved & hope you can  get all of the problems resolved to your satisfaction, but you may well have got your fingers burnt.

Thanks for all your replies so far. Unfortunately it was a private sale so caveat emptor applies.

 

I’m not 100% convinced the mods and repairs are definitely the source of the issues. The car behaved absolutely fine for the first month or so in my ownership.

 

Dealer has agreed to take another look on Tuesday next week so I shall update the post then. Should that fail, I’ll look for a good independent for a second opinion.

 

If it turns out I’ve been stung, I’ll try to be philosophical about it. In nearly 30 years of motoring I’ve not yet been sold a lemon. First time for everything I guess.

I'd be looking at the ECU, Infotainment system firmware, F533 & wiring harnesses, plus having the windscreen camera alignment checked as well, then any suspension/levelling sensors

Yup, had most of those problems in the early days, thankfully not anymore. It took numerous visits (around 4, possibly 5) of overnight sleepovers for my car in the dealers garage. It was all down to software / firmware updates for me, though who knows how that translates to your own specific situation. Typically the Skoda dealer never admitted that there's plenty of software issues with my car, rather waiting for me to tell of them of the issues when they were present. Luckily, mines on a lease and ending in June and such a shame I'll be jumping off the Skoda ownership wagon, my 2015 Octavia L&K was amazing. 

Although it would be a long journey for you, perhaps have a chat with Kieran at https://eastyorkshireretrofits.co.uk. Kieran has a lot of experience with these types of issues, I've seen on his FB page a lot of complex issues he's resolved - he's done some work for me and it was worth the trip from Oxford. Alternatively, a little closer is VW retrofit in Redditch. 

Wasn't the intermittent front assist alarms/warnings more to do with cold mornings and condensation/frost on the front of the car? Or am I thinking of something else?

It might be as simple as a failing ABS sensor. Such a failure will give you an alarming multitude of faults - which are all related to the control systems not having the right wheel info from the sensor. A scan will quickly identify if you are lucky to have this (easily sorted) fault. But if it's already been to the dealer he should have spotted this.

 

Battery health is worth checking yourself - it may well start but a dying battery gives all sorts of strangeness to modern cars. Sitting around waiting for repairs may have done it no good.  Knowing what the Cat N damage was might point you to areas of concern - front or back shunt, say? Good luck. Your dealer doesn't sound that helpful.

So grateful to everyone for the advice. I have had the car tell me that ‘electricity consumption is too high’ on occasion too. Perhaps the battery is worth a look.

I mentioned 12v battery as I had mine replaced.

 

Car would keep on throwing up error messages about the below on first starting most days. But not while I was driving

 

Front assist

Parking assist

Cruise control

 

Car would disable a lot of stuff due to low voltage 

 

This era of Octavias was a tech disaster area as a result of covid chip shortages I believe.  Some could be fixed, eventually, by software patches. Mine was a hardware issue which Skoda claimed could not be fixed. Got my money back from dealer as its inability to change mph to kph rendered it illegal.