Hi Guys,

Before i start, the reason I am posting here and not taking the car immediately back to the dealer is that we live 1400km from the dealer.

Long story short, bought a new skoda superb outdoor with the 125tdi engine. On the 1400 km drive home i made sure to vary road and engine speed/gears and not sit on constant rpms. mfd indicated average of around 8L/100km which i wasn't too distressed about given how i was driving it.

Since being home I've been shocked at how bad the fuel economy has been. First tank fill was avg 13.5L/100km and second fill was avg 11.2L/100km. We do alot of frequent short trips, but engine always reaches running temperature on any given drive, shortest trip usually about 10 minutes, longest maybe 30 mins? We have had the car for 2 months now and put about 2500 km on it, the avg usage seems to be dropping with each tank fill, but is still obviously twice what it should be.

Coolant temp never goes over 90, but I've seen oil temp up to 105. Never any warning lights, no limp mode, but occasionally when i turn the car off and hop out it feels awfully hot around the front of the car and the thermo's continue to run for an extended period after the car has shut off (sometimes >5 mins). On occasions there has been a slight burning smell from the engine bay. I know what overfuelling does with egt's and i'm more than a little nervous something is going to die very shortly.

I have already contacted the dealer, who has confirmed that it should obviously not be using that much fuel and obviously said to bring it back so they can run diagnostics on it.

With mine and my wife's work schedules and two young kids in the mix, it's looking like i wont be able to get back to the dealer for at least another month, so my question is mainly is it worth acquiring a VCDS and would i be able to log any data/parameters that would tell anyone anything useful in the mean time (sensor gone haywire etc) or am i better off just waiting and taking it back to the dealer? I'd prefer not to melt it on the drive back there and may have to look at having it transported.

Sorry for the long read, any help would be much appreciated.

Cheers, Steve.