Hello,

Moved last summer from East London to East Kent, and have a 2 litre petrol Octavia Estate 2001 (reg 51), done about 70,000 miles.

Engine, clutch, etc, i.e. all the essentials, have been fine (though a bit heavy on oil use) but:

1) very damp carpets in front footwells. Has meant very bad condensation over the winter, and I

3) Yep that will be a 2.0 then, does it use oil?

yes. i'm just off to fill it up now, and i've started a record of how often it needs topping up, so i'll get back with the mileage in ten minutes.

If its using a fair bit of oil (more than 1 litre per 1000miles then id say that is probably the root of your issues. Poor piston rings means the inlet system starts taking in to much oil vapour and the emission system reads this and tried to alter the mixture to compensate. Once it goes beyond its limit then the light comes on.

Thanks, that makes a lot of sense. Any rough idea how much that costs to get sorted out at a garage? And how much trouble can it cause if not sorted?

There's also a milky whiteness inside filler cap. Could this tie in, do you think? First noticed it around a year ago, and thought it meant serious trouble, but looked at various discussion groups on the web saying it wasn't necessarily a big deal - and oil on the dipstick looks fine.

My main focus at the moment is getting the dampness sorted out, but maybe I should be worrying more about the piston rings?:confused:

Damp footwell = pollen filter 99% certain on that.

Central locking issue. Several of us have simialr issues on similarly aged cars. It seems to be becoming a known problem on 5yr old Octavias. Trouble is that no one has yet found a sollution. Someone bought a new door lock module and it diddnt solve it. Sometimes the car thinks the door is open, othertimes it thinks its closed.

CD player - I assume you have a CD changer? Dust and dirt causes this error. A careful clean with a vacuum cleaner (with the cartridge removed) should sort it out.

Excellent. Thanks.

What's the remedy for the pollen filter problem?