MK3 Octavia - List of Defects, Faults and Issues

[Smart1]

The new Superb has the electric handbrake. Takes a bit of getting used to.

[woofy]

It's been in the Golfs for years, just a cost cutting measure to not put it in the Octavias, a lot of people whinged when they where rumoured to be putting it in, as some rally drivers want the manual handbrake, but in reality it could have been fitted and allowed more space there. The Mk2 handbrake gator was an annoying thing that got jammed up a lot.

[readerr0r]

Turning on the electric park brake while your friend is driving slowly through a car park is a fun prank everyone will love!


(Actually your friend will murder you)

[woofy]

My friend thought it was fun to turn the seat heater up to max in the middle of summer the first time I took him for a drive....

[k_rider]

I've wondered about the handbrake position as most of the other Skodas still have it close to the driver. I find I can't use the cupholders as I hit my arm on them changing gears. A DSG user probably wouldn't worry too much. I thought recently that the ADR required it to be on the drivers side so not sure how they got it through. I originally was glad they stuck with a real handbrake but in hindsight the electric one would have meant more room for other things there.

First car I saw with the handbrake on the LHS of the console was a Volvo, probably about 15 years ago. Interestingly, my son's recently purchased Mitsi Lancer has the handbrake on the LHS of the console as well. A bit odd, as they also drive on the left in Japan. Maybe they sell more cars into the left hand drive market than the right hand drive market?

For me, having the handbrake lever on the LHS is not as annoying as I thought it'd be. What is annoying though, is having the bonnet release on the passenger side and not being able to operate it without having the passenger door open!

Whilst on annoyances: the things I miss in moving from my MkII to the MkIII, are the covered cubby holes behind the rear wheel arches, the storage bin/s (I added an extra under the driver's seat) under the front seats and the full sized spare wheel. I'm also not sure about the steering feel, it seems way over assisted and the steering wheel seems to be larger in diameter and thinner than in the MkII. And the soundaktor... what were they thinking? The thing sounds like my brother's old Subaru Forester!

Apart from that, I'm loving my new toy!

[woofy]

Yeah a lot of "simply clever" stuff disappeared in the mk3. I sorely miss the extra storage nooks. The sub steals another as well. The wheel was always different though just not as thin.

[Jondalar]

So on Saturday night I was using the apple maps through Carplay when suddenly it decided to disconnect. My passenger pulled the plug from the phone and reinserted, the MIB2 showed "reading USB device" and nothing more happened. I've rebooted the phone (iPhone 6S plus with iOS 9.3.2) and it still won't do more than "reading USB device", I've tried 2 different cables, both of which used to work. I told the phone to forget the car, still gives the same message and doesn't connect.

Anyone else been through this and found a solution?

Cheers,
Karl

[woofy]

No but my bluetooth on exactly the same phone started not seeing the audio side and just the phone side last week. I'm wondering if something affected the phone but from memory there were not any updates to it. I have to turn off bluetooth on my phone and then back to get it to work. Never had a single issue before.

[Jondalar]

So I managed to fix it with a bit of googling. I did a hard reset on the phone, told it to forget the carplay connection. On the car went into Menu, Setup, Factory settings and reset SmartLink, then connected the unlocked phone and all went back to how it should be.

Cheers,
Karl

[woofy]

I've been hard resetting my phone all week and made both forget the connection so many times. Weird I've had no problem the past two months and suddenly BT audio just drops out now.