Kev’s Scirocco Blog

After realising several months ago my offside front fog light was broken and ordering a lap in March, I finally got round to replacing it today. Bit of a job to get the plastic surround off but finally managed it. Replacing the unit itself was a 5 minute job.

They took the seat out, checked all the connectors and refitted it and cleared the fault.

They said if it goes wrong again it might be in impedance issue on the airbag itself and they’ll replace that if needs be.

One concern was that the March service appears to have been entered on the computer system as a repair so they were questioning whether it was a new airbag already but I didn’t have a repair so that was fine.

My airbag light is back on again. grrr

Taken it back to Wrexham VW today for them to have another look. I was going to wait while it was done but the guy said I’d be waiting a long time as they need to have a better look if it’s the same fault.

Well this afternoon I hit 20,000 miles.

Faults so far? – One. Just the airbag cable coming undone, fixed for free.

Breakages so far? – Two. Left and right front fog lights both took stones at some point. Replaced myself.

Points so far? – Ten out of Ten. I still think it’s pretty much all the car I need right now. Pacey, spacey, comfortable. Can’t fault it.

Up this year for the first time in a while.

No incidents or accidents, just people not getting any insurance at all costing the rest of us money!

Admiral failed to send me a renewal notice so I hadn’t really realised it was up for renewal until I noticed £481 missing from my account. A quick phone call to them and they said oh we couldn’t possibly go lower than £451. I think you can, I said. A minute on hold and it’s £425. Mmmm… I think you can do better than that. Another minute on hold and it’s down to £407

Not bad in the current climate. Nearly £50 up on last year but I’ll take that. I can’t be bothered to move companies

This was done promptly today at Wrexham VW, free of charge.

They said it was a loose airbag connection under the near side front seat.

Cleaned the car for me too

Car is booked in to VW Wrexham for tuesday to get it looked at.

For the second time running the online VW booking system failed to work. After 3 days without a confirmation I phoned them up to check it was booked in and they had no record of it. They also took my email address and said they’ll mail me to confirm it’s now booked in but didn’t do that either so I’ll be arriving tuesday with the hope that they know I’m coming.

It’ll be nice to get rid of the startup PING!

I had a look under the seats tonight.

There’s a whole mass of cabling down there for the heated seats and passenger detectors etc but nothing that looks loose or isn’t connected.

So I’ll have to sort out a trip to a dealer.

Yes after nearly two and a half years and 18,000 miles of ownership I’ve finally had a fault.

The airbag warning light has come on. I was going over a series of speedbumps and googling around suggests it might just be a connector under the passenger seat that’s come off so when i get a chance I’ll have a rootle and see what I can find.

Back from the service.

Just over 16,000 miles on the clock now which is a nice average.

Dane Motors of Chester were very slick. They sent me a text the day before to remind me it was due in and phoned to check too and in doing so said that an aircon recharge/checkup was due on the second service at a slightly steep £78. I might as well get it done though. I took it in at 9am and was done with booking it in and out the door in under 5 minutes.

They called back at 3pm to say it was all done.

Service (170) + new wipers + aircon service (80) + the fog lamp replacement I needed (50) = £298

When I booked it in I saw one nice girl and when I collected it I was seen by a different one. That meant the special note the first one had made to get the fog light seemed to have been missed. When I picked it up I mentioned it and she said it was all sorted and I assumed the fog light was in the boot but forgot to check when I drove off, but when I got home and had a look it wasn’t there. Grrr

A quick call and they realised they’d left it behind so I’ll go and pick it up saturday morning instead.

Decent, quick, friendly service apart from that.