Skezza

You see them around, wouldn't say they're common but they do exist. No SDI's with AC. No (?) 1.0E with AC? 1.4's, TDi's and GTi's only I believe.

I'll remember that. Very useful

Equally, I watched a severely distracted mechanic pour a significant amount of coolant straight into an engine. I try in vain to shout round the door (was watching him through the glass) but it was too late and he then realised what an absolute balls up had occurred. Wonder how they sorted that mess out? It wasn't my car luckily. You'd think however, drain the coolant out the engine obviously, fill up with fresh oil, run at idle up to temperature, two or three revs to get the pressure up(?), drain again, then completely fresh oil? Would that actually be enough.... My concern would be that good old science never lies and a simple rule of physics is that oil and water do not mix, they separate.......... so how do you know for sure that adding fresh oil is even going to guarantee it extracts all the coolant left in the block? A sticky situation, undoubtedly. Glad I wasn't the young man who made that mistake. Does that actually work? I don't mind the idea of coolant flush but a dishwasher tablet surely has loads of detergent and stuff that won't play nicely?

You could wrap it..... now before anyone jumps at me regarding the airbag, yes you'd need to cut a door in the cloth to ensure the airbag deployed correctly. Seen it done. Seen the airbag deploy despite wrapped. Perfectly reasonable and safe way of doing it, if done right, entirely up to you though. Disclaimer: Your own risk, do it right, or don't do at all.

It does work, it's just a nasty way of fixing it. Do it properly though and it does work.

Not really. I wasn't trying to be a know-it-all, I just hate seeing people mugged off and despite the huge progress in the second hand car/repair garage world, we're still a long way off having widespread scrupulous garages. There are still too many dodgy characters in the car world and some sound advice from a decent mechanic would have put you at ease, rather than some absolute tool telling you that there was a potential of water ingress and then further mechanics telling you that you needed a new bloody ECU. That said, we were all fairly open with our predictions on this one, so it's a shame that you've spent as much money as you have finding out. Hope they bloody sealed it properly.... sorry, couldn't help it Still, it's a win to some degree, because if this issue appears on another Lupo, the owner will hopefully find this thread and be more at ease, so to some degree you've done others a potential favour At the end of the day, the money you paid is worth the peace of mind, for you personally, so I don't blame you for that. That's only real reason any of us get the cambelt changed at the interval right? I just tend to play fast and loose with this kind of stuff. I drove several miles a few months ago with coolant absolutely pouring out the turbo return on my A4. Race against the traffic lights.... How are you going about claiming against the person you purchased it from? Are you sure they were aware of it being an issue?

So has this work actually been completed now, or have you taken the advice of a mechanic to just drive and appreciate the car..... something we've been telling you to do for weeks? If the exterior pins were corroded on the ECU, then I fail to see how that's a surefire sign of water ingress. The exterior pins are exposed to the elements to some degree. I suspect most likely someone misfitted the scuttle panel or left it off for a period of time which allowed a bit of additional moisture to build up. Alternatively, it was a bit of bad luck and condensation played games. Even so...... what a bunch of buffoons some of these guys are: "I won't look at it because of potential water ingress" ? I swear the world is going absolutely bonkers.

Sadly, I noticed a few months back that Barry Boys has closed it's forum It's just an archive nowadays, albeit a magical one.... even a few **** Lupo's on there. Lupo was auto corrected to antiquated breadbin which did give me a giggle or two. Still, BB was one of the greatest car websites on the Internet in my opinion. Documenting utterly terrible cars for about 15+ years and nowhere has a database as complete as theirs. Ultimately, the reason they closed the site was for a valid reason.... and they have a valid point... Barry culture has basically died and been replaced by cheap cars on finance. An 18 year old with a minimum wage job, living at home with his parents can probably afford something like a Seat Ibiza. Really, Barry Boy culture came from the massive insurance hikes in the 90's.... it was pretty difficult for a young (and even some older) drivers to find affordable insurance on hot hatchbacks and faster cars.... so the obvious solution was to modify the crap out of cheap shitty slow cars. Even slow cars aren't that slow these days and it's easy to get insured on nippy cars as well. I think the demise of magazines like Max Power, Nuts, lads mags etc, and also the change in focus of Fast Car which now exclusively covers high performance factory cars rather than Barry'd nonsense also contributed to this shift in trend. I'll always remember the good old days though...... dreadfully modified Nova's with a SNES in the glovebox, fur roof lining and the handling characteristics of bambi on ice.

Back pressure.

I remember Fox racing wheels from the good old days of twin subs in the boot and Children by Robert Miles blaring at 140 decibels. Very 2002 Barry boy.

If you're not busy this week, I'm keen to come have a look.

Like most fault codes, always suggest clearing them first, see what returns. Your airbag fault for example is basically a false positive.

Correct and the students are probably the biggest problem.

Lovely motor that is.

It's just a bit hand scratchy scratchy if i remember. Took me about half an hour.

Thump the relay box on my SDI

I'm amazed anyone even wants the back axle off that thing. It looks like it has been utterly abused.

Calculate over 3 full tanks.

Where in Stoke are you mate?

Hmmm..... it could be a lot of car for the money, but I'm really not sure. It could be absolutely lethal.

Lived in Durham (town) for 3 years. It's a very nice little town. Tbh, it's so nice that some residents are far too much up their own arse for their own good really.

How are you calculating your MPG? If you actually want to do it properly, there's a certain technique. None of this "oh my tank went down way quicker than i expected" lark. You need to essentially use two to three fill-ups and work with the numbers only. The 1.0 aren't particularly efficient in my experience. Nor are the 1.4's really. The SDI's and TDI's are different gravy but they're dirty, so that explains that. As for your cheapo ELM327.... it must be a really terrible one because I've never had one that wouldn't connect with a Lupo.

Sounds like a relay issue, but i'd get it scanned first.

Those wheels make me happy. Even if they are multifits. They're actually not bad looking

@mk2 - Great explanation, but the real design flaw in the Lupo one is that the length of the ribbon is so limited. You have at most a quarter of turn excess before you are straining those very fragile contacts, whereas other vehicles (including other VAG cars) have a significant amount of excess. Even the Audi ones have multiple turns extra which can really allow for some monumental screw ups..... not that I'm recommending it. If the clock spring is centralised by the factory, then simply, the only time is 'de-centralised' is when it's off the car and the chances of it failing mostly come down to the length and odds are a Lupo one will fail unless very close to the centre. Ultimately, no human can guarantee that a coiled ribbon cable is totally centralised. Here's a great video on YouTube that shows how a machine does it. At best, you can roughly follow that process..... spin all the way till you feel resistance, spin all the way to the other end till you feel resistance, then essentially halve that number and add the number of spins back in. That would work very well so long as the ribbon cable inside is nice and long and has enough free cable to survive an offset of a few degrees. Going back to the problem, the Lupo's doesn't, so you have to be absolutely triple sure that you're almost perfectly centre. There is actually a marking on the column itself to help you align your clock spring, but this is again assuming you already know your spring is centralised to begin with. Good thing a Lupo clock spring is only about £15 these days. The Audi ones are a lot more expensive.