Nothing major but a few things to report.
To begin with, I decided to get the
3M Anti-Rodent treatment done.
Went to 3M Car Care HSR Layout even though there is a 3M about 400 metres from my house. Why? Because even though I dont go there regularly now(since they stopped the full car wash), I have great memories from the team there.
They made me wait about 10 minutes while they finished up washing another car.
They soon parked my car in the bay, sprayed some water, used a lot of APC to clean the engine bay as best as they could. Finished off with compressed air being blown through a nozzle to dry the engine bay as much as possible.
The pic below shows how the engine bay looked before applying the spray. Quite clean and nice
Post the application of the spray, it looked even better. SHINY! Wonder how long it will remain like that!
3M says this spray will last 6 months. Some friends are sceptical. I havent had any major issues with rats on this car but prevention is better than cure.
This treatment costs Rs 1086/-
Next up: The immense
cargo carrying ability of this fast car. A couple of friends were travelling to Australia and me being a good friend offered to drive them to the airport (this has nothing to do with the fact that I havent been on a long drive in ages and was desperate for a drive
![Uncontrollable Laughter](https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/images/smilies/uncontrollable laughter.png)
)
3 Adults, 6 suitcases and a couple of smaller bags. Easy-peasy. There was still space left over for smaller stuff. I had to fold down the right side of the rear seat and one of my friends sat in the rear left seat.
Below pic was taken when I was transporting a bunch of Honda Civic car parts from a friend's house to the workshop.
Below shows a typical airport run!
Kerbing a wheel:
Completely my fault but I didnt have a choice. A hard lesson that the rear track width of the car is 10mm wider than the front. An idiot had parked his car on the road and I had to squeeze between that car and the kerb on my left. I was inching forward slowly and the front of my car made it through.
The rear left wheel caught the kerb and got scratched badly. I am terribly disappointed but I also know that it was just a matter of time.
A hard lesson in track width difference between the front and the rear.
Another interesting 'feature' I observed about the Octavia vRS is that the
AC doesnt shut off completely. I was driving on the highway the other day and it was quite cold. Even with the AC fan at the lowest setting, it was too cold for me. Decided to just shut it off for a few minutes. I hit the OFF Button. A few minutes later, it wasnt as stuffy as it should have been! I could also feel a light breeze inside the car. I put my hands near the AC vents and could definitely feel air coming from there.
The volume of air coming through the AC Vents increased as I sped up. My theory is that while the AC compressor and everything is switched off, there is a simple channel to funnel air from outside the car into the car's cabin through the vents. I doubt it's just air from the engine bay too as that air would be very hot. However the temperature of the air coming out of the vents was very close to the outside temperature.
I have never experienced this feature in my other car, the Civic. I wonder if all European cars have this? Can anyone check and confirm?
The oil temperature readout is extremely useful for me. On many of my early morning drives it is very easy to start revving and enjoying the car just a km or two after leaving home. However it is not recommended to push the engine until the engine oil has warmed up. At low temperature, it doesnt flow as well as it should and there is a miniscule chance of extra wear on the engine.
Given that I have been using the car heavily and plan to continue to do that, I want to ensure that I do my bit in taking good care of these small things so that I can have a longer life of the car.
Usually the engine oil takes a fairly long time to heat up. The coolant reaches the operating temp in just a minute or two of idling. The oil temperature though takes much longer. So, knowing the temp of the oil is very useful for me.
I wait till it hits a 100șC before beating on the car.
MY usage of the car has reduced a lot in the last couple of months. I have hardly found the time to drive thanks to work and family commitments keeping me busy. Whenever I do drive though, I enjoy the car thoroughly.
Skodatribe Contest:
After I was declared as the winner of the Instagram contest, I was asked to first DM the Skoda India account with my details. I did that but didnt receive any reply. Then a few days later, I was asked to email them with my details. Did that too but didnt get any reply.
Suddenly, a small package turns up at my office and it's a scale model of a Skoda Superb!
Well, obviously, this is going to be gifted to the talented Abu Abraham for clicking such a wonderful picture!
My car also had a chance to pose next to my all time favourite car, the Ferrari 458 Italia!
Puncture:
I also had the Tyre Pressure warning come on yesterday when I was on NICE Road. That was a bit unnerving as I was far from any tyre shop.
I got down, checked the tyre pressure of the left front and it was definitely lower than the front right. Front right was 32PSI and Front left was 26.
Now, I needed to know if the tyre was continuously losing air or if it was stable and safe for me to drive.
So, what I did was a bit of a calculated risk. I know that the TPMS system in our cars as with most modern VAGs and BMWs measure wheel speed through the ABS Sensor. If pressure drops in a particular tyre, the overall rolling circumference reduces and the wheel speed changes. This small change and the difference in wheel speed between the front left and the front right is measured by the system and it gives a warning.
This is why, for this system to work perfectly, we have to reset it every time we fill air in the tyres. So that it resets itself on your command. If you dont reset it, it will not work perfectly and fail when you need it the most.
Knowing this, what I thought was that even though there was a 6-PSI difference between the front tyres, if I reset it for now, the system will assume that the pressures are equal. So, if there was a further change in pressure, the wheel speed will change again and it will warn me again. That would be the time I bite the bullet and change over to the spare wheel so that I dont damage the tyre or the wheel.
I reset the system and continued to drive steadily towards one of my stores. I may have driven about 40 kms and there was absolutely no cause for alarm.
I reached the tyre store and checked the pressure and it was only down by another 2 PSI. This was not enough for the TPMS to give me a warning.
Anyway, now that I was safe, I got the tyre inspected thoroughly and realised that it was leaking from an earlier puncture patch. I remembered that a few months back I had a puncture caused by a big nail. At that time, I was short on time so even though I should have got a mushroom puncture repair done, I just got a regular stick puncture patch inserted and continued to drive.
Turns out the hole had widened slightly and the puncture patch wasnt able to seal it 100%.
Since I had time yesterday, I got the old patch removed and a new mushroom patch installed.
I hope it holds this time.
Coolant Level:
A few days back I opened the hood of the car and casually checked it. That's when I noticed the coolant level was at the minimum level.
I called up TAFE yesterday and asked them if I can drop by for a coolant top up. Once I reached TAFE, Mr Venkat, the service Coordinator came out with 900ml of coolant. However, we realised that the engine was really hot and if we opened up the coolant reservoir, the coolant would spurt out due to the high pressure it was under.
So, Mr Venkat gave me the coolant bottle and told me to top it up at home when the engine was cool.
This morning I checked the coolant level and it was marginally below the minimum mark.
Another picture of the shiny engine bay! Couldnt help myself!
I had about 900ml of the VW original coolant and used up almost 400ml to top up the coolant reservoir.
I've never had to bother with all this with my previous car, the Honda Civic. I guess this is what they mean when they say German cars are a bit difficult to maintain.
I also checked the engine oil level and it was perfect. But then it has been just 4000 kms since I changed my engine oil.
Once again, very prompt and quick service by my friends at TAFE. 26,000 kms and they havent given me a reason to complain. Not just that but they have gone above and beyond the call of duty and taken extremely good care of me and my vRS Friends.
I really hope this is the start of a major turnaround for TAFE and Skoda in Bangalore.
Apart from a few short drives, I havent had a chance to properly stretch the car's legs. On one occasion, it reported the below numbers.
Apart from that, the car continues to munch miles and is a nice comfortable daily driver. The audio system may not be anything fancy but it sounds nice enough and I enjoy my city commutes too.
I hope the next few months have a few drives lined up for me. I'm really itching to take the car out on a long drive!