OCTAVIA III Owners discussion thread

[Lams]

Hi Spinifex, congrats on the new car.
I went up Nebo yesterday in an attempt to put the baby to sleep before visiting a mate out that way, going about 7/10 pace and it did just that (what more could you ask for!) It's a fantastic car. Way too many motorbikes / Sunday drivers / cyclists up there to go any quicker.
We got ours to haul all the stuff that come with a baby, loaded with a pram, dog, it performed brilliantly compared to other cars I've taken up there. I had been up twice earlier this year, once in my 180hp 33 seat coach (nearly as slow as the bicycles) and in our Abarth 500. You'd think the Abarth would leave everything behind but in actual fact, its short wheelbase, constant-on ESP, limited and overly-stiff suspension travel meant it was a very nervous car for anything that isn't glass-smooth. The Octy was not razor sharp like a WRX that we were chasing but with that much weight it handled the roads confidently and I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of traction I had up front even lugging a semi-loaded wagon. Maybe I wasn't driving hard enough, maybe it's the PZeros working their magic, but I certainly expected more wheelspin.

I would say too this has been one of the best cars I've owned, replacing the worst (the Abarth) - may see you up there!

[Jondalar]

Hi Spinifex,

You can either use Apple Carplay or Bluetooth but not both. I almost always use Carplay. If you have "hey siri" enabled on the phone it will work with Carplay. You can make calls through Carplay and when you receive a message Siri reads it out to you, beats just bluetooth in my opinion, also if you have Apple Music it works better through Carplay. The car also has voice control through the button on the steering wheel, but it's pretty limited.

I've got no complaints about the reversing camera, perhaps check that some protective film wasn't left over the lens.

I'm pretty sure the car doesn't actually have WiFi if you don't have the SmartGate module but I could well be wrong.

I agree they are a fantastic car, especially for the money and I've had some far pricier machinery.

Cheers,
Karl

[Spinifex]

Thanks Karl. I'll check out the film on the camera as suggested.

I did have a play around with the contrast and brightness settings, and that improved things a bit, but it's still a bit blurry/less resolution than the one on my old Mazda, which is the only one I have to compare with.

Does anyone know if there's any way (through VCDS or otherwise) to have BOTH mirrors dip on reverse?

I've got the settings sorted to get the passenger one dipping, but that's on the assumption that I'm only reversing into a carpark by turning left..... It'd be nice to have BOTH of them auto-dipping to my preset selection, when selecting reverse, which would accommodate some right-turn reverse manoeuvres.

Just a quirky thing though - it's a little odd that you have to set the mirror button to the Left (presumably to the right, for LHD models) to get it to dip - it would be nice if they just dipped automatically, as soon as reverse was selected.

And is there a VCDS hack that will allow viewing the rear camera, when NOT in reverse gear?
There's some occasions it'd be handy to be able to see the rear view, when moving forwards.

[flamey088]

Suspension-wise - I'm definitely impressed that it handled so well. It certainly wasn't an AWD Liberty by comparison, but that's to be expected. The suspension crashes a bit over the hard stuff and there's definitely a fair amount of road noise inside the cabin - being a wagon resonates that noise a little, but it's no noisier or harsher over bumps than the "old-man car" I traded in for the Octy (a diesel Mazda6 sedan) which suffered from horrendous road and wind noise, and was as harsh on the road as the Liberty with Bilsteins!

Brakes - very solid feel when cool but definitely had some fade after a few spirited downhill sections. With ACC on (on flat sections of highway, not the mountains!) it takes some getting used to with manual braking, as it's prefilled the pedal pressure, so when taking over the braking manually with what you consider to be normal pedal-pressure, you tend to headbutt the windscreen! But overall pretty good brakes. I'd never say any car doesn't need bigger or better brakes though.....

Tyres that came with the car are Potenza something's. I couldn't read them in my dark garage last night when I got home so I'll check that out later today. Very solid feel, no squirming or understeer/oversteer during some pretty spirited driving. Lost traction a few times in the front, but that's the torque beating the TCS through some corners.

A few concerns/questions: as mentioned in previous posts, annoyed that the "screen blank after 10secs" setting unticks itself every time the car starts. Either a bug or deliberate?
There's significant glare off the infotainment screen under certain sunlight conditions. Makes viewing the reverse camera screen or satnav almost impossible in some instances. Better anti-glare coating on the screen might help, or perhaps angling the screen slightly towards the driver?

Also can't work out the blend of connectivity in the car - bluetooth to my iPhone seems to be disconnected when I plug into cable to get CarPlay activated. So how does the phone connect to the car then? But there's so-few available apps in CarPlay that I don't think I'd ever use while driving, I don't think I'd bother with connecting it to the car. Except perhaps when I want to use the Apple Maps instead of inbuilt satnav, if updating maps is too expensive or difficult to achieve. Again this all comes down to reading the infotainment manual, which is my homework for today.

Overall though - very VERY happy with my purchase! Best decision I've made in a long time and I'm sure I'll only get happier with the car as time goes on.

I have an evo 7 on coilovers, and obviously the Octy doesn't hold a candle to the evo in the handling department, but it is surprisingly really good. In comparison to the parents spec b liberty, the RS is much nicer, more composed and far better damping for a stock car.

I found that was the ACC as well. One of my good mates has an S3, and the brakes look almost identical on the front. I wouldn't be surprised if they run the same disc size, but a slightly different brake caliper set up. I found the brakes better than the brembo's on my evo, but thats 15 years worth of braking development for you

As for the tyres. I drove both the 18 and 19 inch wheel and tyre options and with the 19's (pirellis) I personally found them much quieter, and in fact handle better...which is surprising as they are 19's. So perhaps its just the tyre choice that makes them noisy, obviously compounded by the fact that it is a wagon...but I have the liftback and its just as open as the wagon, so I think it could be the tyres.

With the bluetooth/apple car play...that is correct, its one or the other unfortunately. If you have set the phone up for apple car play, every time you plug in it will go to the apple car play option, rather than staying as bluetooth. The wife kept hers as bluetooth as she just does phone calls and streams music through spotify, where as I use the android auto option. It is just a preference thing.

As for the dipping mirrors, I have heard you set them up when in reverse?!?!? Maybe check the Octavia discussion thread?

Also, enjoy the car! If you see a moon white metallic RS on 19's with the sunroof, be sure to give us a wave

[MJKooLio]

Sitting on the side of the road with an electrical issue. Seems all the dashboard lights are going bonkers, MDF screen sending warnings and they're alerts changing all the time. Waiting for Skoda Assist to get here. Hazard lights half ass working... could it be low battery? I had the engine switch off and I had to push the car out of intersection. Brake lights are flashing at the rear with front hazards weakly...

[MJKooLio]

https://vimeo.com/185597667

Keys not being detected is one alert that comes up. When the car initially stalled it said ACC not active, I had the car do that last week. Engine stalled but I was stationary at a round about but car started up fine....

[MJKooLio]

Doors keep locking and unlocking too

[MJKooLio]

Another quick vid https://vimeo.com/185597856

The whole thing happened at SLOW speed too...

Anyone else experienced this or know of what could be the cause?

[Jondalar]

Wow that's bad, hope you get it sorted fast.

[MJKooLio]

Skoda Road Side Assist came, checked battery and alternator. Working well, battery at 12V but after he checked and started the engine with his mobile battery, my battery went down to 6V or less and engine still won't start.

Seems to be an Electrical issue.

Waiting for Tow Truck to be taken to dealer.

[MJKooLio]

I'll find out tomorrow re the cause. Keep you posted.

[Jondalar]

I wonder if it is the battery. My wife's Golf 7 tdi went crazy when she tried to start it with a failed battery. Even windscreen wipers going nuts.

Cheers,
Karl


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[MJKooLio]

It was a dead battery in the end

[woofy]

I was about to say, you are describing what you see with a dead battery. Surprised it died so early on though. You have had weird things with your KESSY and a few car makers have now said you really want those keys well away from the car at home as it wakes that module up.

[woofy]

Can't work out how to get the voice control working with Siri, when my phone is connected through Apple CarPlay. Haven't fully read the infotainment book yet though, so hopefully it's in there somewhere. And confused why the car would allow wifi connections or to use as a hotspot, if the SmartGate function isn't active here in Australia. Can't work out what purpose there is for the car having wifi - which presumably uses data from your connected device (in my case, my iPhone). I would assume that if SmartGate isn't available here, they would also just remove the wifi hotspot from the available settings too? I don't understand why wifi would be an option in the car - why connect my iPhone to the car, to provide a wifi hotspot to the rest of the car (any anyone else driving around beside me - apparently it's easy to hack into) - when I could just hotspot my second device directly to my iPhone?

The wifi will let you download stuff from your home network, I've never tried it, but my car certainly sees our network in the garage. It also lets you share a phone connection, and also share a SIM, however we don't have the SIM slot in our Oz cars. Probably what is more useful but they don't seem to have used it like they do with the Superbs is use the wifi to stream to ipads in the back. Ie stuff from the headunit can be sent to ipads etc. Problem is that we don't have the headrest posts in the RS so probably why they didn't bother. I'm still trying to find a workaround for that. I have a slip over sock thing I'm yet to remember to test out.