OCTAVIA III Owners discussion thread

[woofy]

What I mean is, from memory you have to leave the mirror knob set to the L mirror for the dipping to work. I've never had mirror dipping in my Mk2 or my Mk3 (don't have comfort pack). But that is my memory of what is need to have them dip.

I think Smartgate needs a module which isn't fitted in Australia at all. I asked about it in Aug last year when ordering, but it appears to be something we are unlikely to ever get. It could be do to with RF regulations and them not bothering to get it tested locally.

[Spinifex]

Ah ok, understood. Thanks mate.
Would help if i read the manual!

[Jondalar]

Hi Spinifex,

Smartgate isn't enabled here as has been said, however you can get the wifi module from eBay: Genuine Accessories Skoda Smartgate FOR Fabia III 6V0063218 Install KIT | eBay No idea how hard it is to install or whether it works here after that.

Re the mirrors, you have to have the comfort pack for this I think, I may be wrong. (you have to have electrically adjustable seat and memory) Anyway if it's possible then you put the car in reverse and adjust the passenger mirror how you would like it and then the car remembers this setting.

Quote from the PDF manual:Saving front passenger mirror settings for reversingThe function of lowering the passenger mirror surface when reversing must be
enabled in Infotainment » Operating instructions Infotainment, chapter CAR -
Vehicle Settings .
› Switch on the ignition.
› Press the required memory button B » Fig. 74.
› Turn the knob for the external mirror control to the position for the passenger
side mirror adjustment » page 79.
› Engage reverse gear.
› Adjust the front passenger's mirror to the desired position.
› Disengage reverse gear.

I hope this helps.

Cheers,
Karl

[Spinifex]

Hi Karl,

Thanks so much. I didn't realise it was a programmable thing to my own preference... I just assumed it would dip down by a factory-preset amount, so I'll give that a try later tonight.

My car has all options except the 19" black pack, so I have the memory seats, etc - and the setting is enabled in the infotainment - just couldn't work out why it didn't do anything!

Methinks I'm going to have to spend the weekend digesting the owners manual to find all the little tricks like this!


Anyone know why ticking my "screen-goes-blank-after-10seconds" setting only works once, then forgets the setting next time I start the car?

[Spinifex]

A bit of feedback for anyone interested: I picked up my new Octavia RS Wagon 162TSI last week, and yesterday, I gave the wagon a good run through some mountains (for the Brisbane locals here, Nebo, Glorious and through to Somerset, then back to Samford, and then city driving before home.)
The car performed flawlessly and brilliantly. A good spread of revs, gears and load points. From gentle cruising to giving it a bit of stick to load things up - perfect way to run a new engine in, as was suggested to me by my engine-builder in my previous STi Liberty.

I haven't looked at all the data yet, but I think I achieved an average of 7.9L/100 over 300km, which i think is pretty good considering the spread of revs and work it was doing. Will keep an eye on the consumption figures to see if things improve further with time. I notice on the fuel flap it only recommends 95RON minimum, which I suspect is all the dealership filled it with prior to delivery. I topped it up with 35L of 98 BP Ultimate before the run, and 98 is likely to be all I ever run in it, unless there's simply none available.

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!

The Mazda was so uncomfortable to drive with crappy seats with insufficient support for big people (I'm 6'6 and 115kg) I could only drive for about 30mins before aching and feeling like a cripple. After solid 2hour stints in the Octy, I just didn't want (or need) to get out to rest - only to pee! And I felt as refreshed and comfortable as when I started the drive. Adaptive dampers would make the full package in this car I'm sure..... pity I just missed out on that, according to the rumours I've read in here. (Wonder if you can retrofit that?)

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.

Electronics - everything in the cabin works well once you get used to the new control positions. I've only put the wipers on instead of blinkers once so far!
Didn't get much time to play around with controls myself while piloting, but my passenger was fiddling around with things as we went.
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?
The reverse camera is certainly lower quality than what the Mazda had. I've played with the contrast and brightness settings, but it's quite difficult to see clearly when reversing at night. Obviously the reverse lights aren't positioned very well for the camera to utilise, or the camera is just cheap? Definitely better resolution in the Mazda but it's a minor thing.
Voice recognition is as hopeless as any other car I've driven with it. I realise it must be a difficult thing to program but I don't have a weird accent, I speak like anyone else and they just can't understand what I say. Especially when giving an address to the satnav.

The satnav is very different to the TomTom in the Mazda and will take some practice and getting used to before I can judge it. I don't understand why they all seem to search alphabetically for the street name you say/input, throughout the whole country, rather than the closest one to your current location. If I search for smith street, it will bring up smith streets on the other side of the country as first preferences, rather than the one 5km away! But the TomTom was like that too.

One thing I love is the fact the satnav will not get "locked-out" from making manual inputs while moving. The TomTom would lock the screen from most inputs once you'd started moving (for safety, fair enough), but it meant that any passenger with you couldn't do the satnav programming on the move. At least in the Octy, my passenger did all the searching for addresses while I did the steering. I haven't tested the Octy if I'd be locked out WITHOUT a passenger, perhaps it's another of those simply clever things.

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?

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.

[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...