VW Passat Estate (B6 2007) Tailgate Rust - Volkswage 12 Year Anti-Corrosion Warranty Claims

When cleaning our VW Passat B6 estate recently I noticed that there was significant rusting and corrosion around the numberplate light area on the rear tailgate. This seemed to be specific to the number plate light area and not spreading to other areas of the boot/trunk. From a quick search on Google it appeared that this was a commonly reported fault with the B6 Passat and due to the design of the light units allowing water to settle in the light area.


VW Passat Estate (B6 2007) Tailgate Rust - Corrosion Warranty

I took the Passat to the local Volkswagen dealership to check if this was covered by the standard 12 year VW corrosion warranty. Happily after a few checks to confirm the paintwork depth and that the car had not been resprayed or damaged the VW agent confirmed that the rust would be repaired by VW under the anti-corrosion warranty and booked the vehicle in for the work with a courtesy car provided for the duration of the works.

On the booked date the car was duly delivered to the VW dealer and the loan car provided - a VW UP! that is obviously much smaller than a Passat estate which took some getting used to! A few days later the update from VW was that the rust could not be repaired so the whole tailgate was being replaced instead which would delay matters.

Almost 3 weeks after dropping the car to VW the Passat was collected following the complete tailgate replacement. On inspection it seems that the design of the rear number place lights has been changed presumably to avoid the corrosion and rust that has occured in this instance.



VW Passat Estate (B6 2007) Tailgate Rust - Corrosion Warranty

VW Passat Estate Rust - Claiming Replacement under Corrosion warranty



VW Passat Estate (B6 2007) Tailgate showing new light holder design on replacement

Oracle Apex 4 - Chart Legend Always Shows as Uppercase

I was recently developing an Oracle Apex 4 application with charts and found that the chart legend was always shown as uppercase text regardless of what was in the chart settings.

In Oracle Apex 3.1 all chart legends were converted to inital capitals so regardless of what text was entered the legend text always showed the first letter in capitals and the rest lower case. This behaviour was changed in APex 4 so I was surprised to find that all the legends were showing as upper case in this APex 4 application when the text entered was a mix of lower and upper case.

Fortunately this was a simple one to fix and the answer was that the text was not enclosed in double quotes. As soon as this was done the legend text for the Apex Chart was displayed correctly as mixed case rather than all upper case.

select null,
to_char(created_date,'MM-YY') Date,
sum(decode(TYPE,'SERVICE', 1,0)) Service ,
sum(decode(TYPE,'MAIN', 1,0)) Main

Showed on the chart legend as  SERVICE, MAIN but the code below showed correctly.

select null,
to_char(created_date,'MM-YY') "Date",
sum(decode(TYPE,'SERVICE', 1,0)) "Service" ,
sum(decode(TYPE,'MAIN', 1,0)) "Main"

Shows legend as required as Service and Main

VW Passat B6 Heated Mirrors Not Working - Replacing Heater Element Passat Mirrors

We've had our VW Passat B6 (2005-2010) model for 3 years but until recently it wasn't our main car so didnt often get driven. As such I didn't get to test out all the features and found that the heated mirrors didn't seem to be working and clearing frost/condensation on cold days.


As of today I've realised there is part of the switch that isn't visible from the driver's seat position that you need to turn the mirror adjustment dial to so that the heated element comes on and will clear the any condensation from the mirror glass. The dial needs turning 180 degrees so that the dial is away from the default rest position and pointing to the heater element sign - obvious really - at least if you can see it properly!



VW Passat B6 Heated Mirrors Stop Working - Replacing Heater Element Passat Mirrors

If the heated mirrors on your VW Passat B6 aren't working then this would be a first item to test to check if they can work before taking to a garage for the mirrors heater element to be replaced.

Pension Scam Text SMS Messages

Have you received a text message SMS

VW Passat TDI140 Sport Remap Long Term review

We've now had our VW Passat TDI140 Sport remapped for over 2 years so it seems an appropriate time to write a long term review of how it is performing.

The remap was applied to our VW Passat TDI Sport by Angel Tuning at a mileage of 122,000 and we have now covered 132,000 so over 10k miles with the remap fitted. Some advise that remaps should not be fitted to high mileage cars but we have not experienced any problems although we are very careful to service regularly with oil changes every 10,000 miles. Any issues at the current mileage of 132,000 could be equally attributed to normal wear and tear than any negative impact from the remap. Since the remap VW have issued a recall for the Passat Injectors so all 4 injectors have been replaced under this meaning that we have brand new injectors although the car had covered 125,000 miles at the time!

VW Passat TDI140 Sport Remap Long Term review

Probably the best thing about remapping the Passat TDI is how much more fun it makes the car to drive. The overtaking on motorways and A roads is effortless; pulling out from junctions to major roads requiring rapid acceleration is great and the whole driving experience is improved. The VW Passat TDI140 Sport is one of the most comfortable cars as a driver or passenger and the remap complements this comfort with impressive acceleration.

The fuel consumption is improved following the remapping of the Passat TDI 140. The long term average is approx 48mpg which is around 1-2 mpg more than before the remap. The consumption on long journeys is the most impressive and can exceed 60 mpg. Interestingly the higher MPG figures are not really dependent on moderating speed, the 60MPG is actually achieved doing 70 mph on the motorway with marginally lower MPG at 60-65mph.

The only real negative that I have found is from increased tyre wear. The front tyres are now wearing in under 20,000 miles and with the low profile 17" alloys these are not cheap to replace. At £125 a tyre this is a lot more than our Golf but is a small price to pay for the improved experience and performance. The remap does encourage more spirited driving which could explain the faster wear as the engine pushes the increased torque through the wheels.

VW Passat B6 Estate Rear wiper arm Removal and replacement

Replacing the rear wiper arm on the VW Passat B6 Estate can be a tricky job as the metal nut in the centre of the plastic wiper arm can become corroded onto the retaining bolt. Even using WD40 doesn't free it and the only solution was to use a hacksaw to cut the nut off allowing the new wiper arm to be fitted.

VW Golf TDI 130 Remap Long Term Review

We've now had our VW Golf TDI remapped for nearly 3 years so it seems an appropriate time to write a long term review of how it is performing.

 

The remap was applied to our VW Golf Mark 4 TDI 130 by Angel Tuning at a mileage of 152,000 and we have now covered 190,000 so almost 40k miles with the remap fitted. Some advise that remaps should not be fitted to high mileage cars but we have not experienced any problems although we are very careful to service regularly with oil changes every 10,000 miles. Any issues at the current mileage of 190,000 could be equally attributed to normal wear and tear than any negative impact from the remap.

 

Probably the best thing about remapping the Golf TDI is how much more fun it makes the car to drive. The overtaking on motorways and A roads is effortless; pulling out from junctions to major roads requiring rapid acceleration is great and the whole driving experience is improved. The Golf TDI 130 is one of the most comfortable cars to seat in as a driver and the remap complements this comfort with impressive acceleration.

 

The fuel consumption is improved following the remapping of the Golf TDI. The long term average is approx 50mpg which is around 1-2 mpg more than before the remap. The consumption on long journeys is the most impressive and can exceed 60 mpg. Interestingly the higher MPG figures are not really dependent on moderating speed, the 60MPG is actually achieved doing 70 mph on the motorway with marginally lower MPG at 60-65mph.

 

The only real negative that I have found is from increased tyre wear. The front tyres are now wearing in around 20,000 miles compared to around 30,000 before the remap. At £60 a tyre this is still a very cheap replacement compared to many other cars and is a small price to pay for the improved experience and performance. The remap does encourage more spirited driving which could explain the faster wear as the engine pushes the increased torque through the wheels.



VW Golf TDI 130 Remap Long Term Review

For a period we also experienced clutch slip at around 2000 rpm with the Golf TDI which is apparently the peak torque output. However this now seems to have subsided and is currently not an issue. It may be partly weather related as higher temperatures now summer has arrived the clutch slip that was apparent during winter months does not present a problem.

Brand Registration Confirmation scam

Brand Registration Confirmation scam.

A familiar scam is still doing the rounds, this time labelled as a brand registration confirmation from China.

The same old story though that when you reply you get offered to buy the domains in question for a hugely inflated price.

In the UK you can buy .co.uk domains for £2.99 per year and .com for £5.99. These Brand Registration Confirmation rip off merchants are charging as much as $540 for the same thing and giving a variety of domains to register for you.

You will pay an inflated price and may end up as owner of a selection of Chinese or Asian domains that are of no use to you unless you plan to trade in China. Do you care if a Chinese company is using a similar name?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Email received titled Brand Registration Confirmation
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Tony Xu [mailto:tony@dg-solutions.cn]
Sent: 05 June 2013 06:11
Subject: URGENT  Brand Registration Confirmation
Importance: High

(Letter to the President or Brand Owner, thanks)

Dear President,

We are the department of Asian Domain Registration Service in China. I have something to confirm with you. We formally received an application on June 5, 2013 that a company which self-styled "QUV Global Limited" were applying to register "your-domain" as their  Brand Name and some domain names through our firm.

Now we are handling this registration, and after our initial checking, we found the name were similar to your company's, so we need to check with you whether your company has authorized that company to register these names. If you authorized this, we will finish the registration at once. If you did not authorize, please let us know within 7 workdays, so that we will handle this issue better. Out of the time limit we will unconditionally finish the registration for "QUV Global Limited".Looking forward to your prompt reply.

Best Regards,

Tony Xu

 

Whos On Heart Winning Names

The Whos on Heart competition running since Jan 2013 has finally been won and a lucky listener of Heart Radio has won themselves £125,000!

The names of the winning voices are:

David Duchovny
Jamie Bell
Belinda Carlisle



Whos On Heart Winning Names

I'm sure Heart were very pleased with the competition as I'm sure that it raised more money for them than the cost of the prizes due to the premium rate phone line that they used but one listener has walked away with a great result!

Acer Aspire V5 Memory Config - How Many RAM Slots/How much RAM can be fitted?

We've recently bought an Acer Aspire V5 laptop and prior to purchase had great difficulty finding out the default memory configuration to see how many slots for RAM were available and how many were used.

Our Acer Apsire V5 had a Pentium B987 processor with 4Gb RAM installed. This is a single RAM chip that occupies one of the two slots available.

If you want to upgrade the RAM in your Acer Apsire V5 then you can add another RAM chip into the memory slot up to 8GB so giving a total of 12GB. If you replace the original RAM you could go as high as 16Gb of memory in your Acer Apsire V5

Google Censorship Protecting Scams

Are you aware how much Google is now protecting scams in the UK by censoring search results?

It is now possible for companies to get information removed from Google so that it isn't visible in the UK but is available elsewhere.

So the UK version of this blog only shows a Google page warning content has been removed.

http://modelling-advice.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/luxe-models-review-is-it-free-are-kube.html

But if you are outside the UK and able to view the US version of the site the information is still visible

modelling-advice.blogspot.com/ncr/2013/01/luxe-models-review-is-it-free-are-kube.html

Is this really what we want to be happening in the UK?

Certainly if information is illegal or defamatory there should be a process to get it removed but factual, true information being deleted with no legal process would make even the Chinese government proud of our systems.

Shame on you Google, maybe "Do no evil" doesn't matter when you are now a massive company!

VW Injector Recall for Golf Passat TDI Models

VW are sending letters to all owners of VW Passats with Diesel PD140 and VW Golf 170BHP engines for the injectors to be checked and replaced. Apparently the failure rate of these has been exessively high and when they fail the car engine stops immediately so it is a fairly important safety issue.



VW Passat Volkswagen Golf TDI Diesel Piezo Injector Replacement Recall: Photo credit : 1810martin

My VW Passat 2007 Sport went to the main dealer yesterday and all 4 piezo injectors were replaced as part of this replacement programme. Not bad at all when some owners have previously been charged over £1000 for a single injector to be replaced! Even better when the car has over 125,000 miles on the clock and these should last the same mileage again

I have been very impressed with the way Volkswagen handle warranty and safety related issues on their cars. Some time ago when I owned a VW Golf Mark 2 it was recalled for replacement of the heater matrix. Quite incredible when the car was 13 years old at the time and the original matrix had clearly worked ok for all that time.

More info about the VW Passat injectors can be found here

Whos On Heart Name Ideas

The first correct guess for Whos on Heart was David Duchovny.

I'm absolutely convinced that another one of the voices is DIDO. She wasn't guessed as an answer for the 2012 Whos on Heart competition and hasn't yet been given as one of the names for Whos on Heart 2013.

If you manage to get through give the name a try - if you win the £20,000 or £125,000 as a result remember you read it here first and a few quid won't go amiss!

New Email Spam Attacks with Weblink, Account Name and Date March 2013

There seems to have been a massive increase in email spam that is getting past spam filters over the last week or so. The messages appear to be sent from compromised email accounts that then distribute spam to all the people in their contact list.

The format of the mssages is a link to a website followed by the account name and sometimes a date as per the messages below:

=============================

http://www.occamobile.com/qeru/smmht/dddcb/ezyig/tli/ywdxl/mbgdx.fng

Pedal Lovers

==============================

 

http://www.pedeplanta.com/tc/doa/nrbg/hrxp/msfuk/lcna

 3/9/2013 11:02:09 AM
Becky Marshall

==================================

Fujitsu Lifebook AH512 Pentium B960 Laptop Review

Fujitsu Lifebook AH512 Pentium B960 Windows 8 Laptop Review

The Fujitsu Lifebook AH512 with Intel Pentium B960 2.2GHz processor is a bargain priced laptop but with some premium features not consistent with a price of £240 from Ebuyer.com. The standard  Lifebook AH512 laptop comes with only 2Gb of RAM but this is installed as single chip so it is easy to upgrade as there is second DIMM slot free. At the time of purchase I bought an additional 8Gb RAM to upgrade. This was easily fitted - once the rather stiff rear panel was removed - to bring the spec up to 10Gb RAM which is an ideal amount for Windows 8 to use for decent performance.

What is First Correct Answer for Whos on Heart 2013? David Duchovny, Jamie Bell and ???

Whos On Heart 2014 now ruhning - First Correct Answer


The first correct name has now been guessed for Whos On Heart competition 2013. By a process of deduction the correct answer for one of the Whos On Heart 2013 voices is:

David Duchovny

Update: The second correct answer guessed is JAMIE BELL.

But in order to get the list running I need the names guessed each day to be posted so I can add them. I have some info already as well as the answers guessed for 2012 but if anyone can post the names guessed each day that would be really helpful. If you guess the next correct voice as well as David Duchovny then you will win £20,000!

Click here to Search List of 2013 Whos On Heart Guesses

Search List of 2013 Whos On Heart Guesses


I might even post the name that I'm convinced one of the celebrity voices is - the person saying Whos!




Whos on Heart 2013 Searchable Guesses & Wrong Answers

The first person to name one of the celebrities wins £10,000, second gets £20k and the one naming all 3 gets £125,000.

The first TWO names have now been guessed - David Duchovny and Jamie Bell. I'm certain that the third name is Dido so if it wins you £125,000 please share some with me!

Whose on Heart 2014 Listen to the 3 Voices

Whos on Heart 2013 Search List of Guesses & Wrong Answers

If you are following the Whos On Heart competition where you can win £125,000 and want to check the wrong answers and names that have already been guessed then at some point Heart will provide a list of incorrect guesess. In the meantime I thought it would be a useful project to design up a little app to search the names.

But in order to get the list running I need the names guessed each day to be posted so I can add them. I have some info already as well as the answers guessed for 2012 but if anyone can post the names guessed each day that would be really helpful.
The first TWO names have now been guessed - David Duchovny and Jamie Bell. I'm certain that the third name is Dido so if it wins you £125,000 please share some!

Click here to Search List of 2013 Whos On Heart Guesses



Search List of 2013 Whos On Heart Guesses


I might even post the name that I'm convinced one of the celebrity voices is - the person saying Whos!




Whos on Heart 2013 Searchable Guesses & Wrong Answers

The first person to name one of the celebrities wins £10,000, second gets £20k and the one naming all 3 gets £125,000.

The prizes sound very generous but the calls to the Phone line to guess the names cost 50p each. At a rough guess there could be 2000 people calling per hour and 8 chances per day, thats £8000 per day they are making from the calls.

Whos On Heart has been running a month, 6 days per week so potentially 24 x £8000 already made in calls - thats £192,000 in the first month so you can see why they would want to run it for as long as they can.

Obviously these numbers are complete guesswork but as a national competion with a large prize you would expect a lot of entries. Even if they are remotely correct it means that there is absolutely zero cost to Heart from running the Whos On Heart competition.

TomTom Battery Replacement - What Screwdriver to Open?

How to Replace the Battery in a Tom Tom 510 Sat Nav

What Screwdriver do you need to undo screws on a TomTom 510 SatNav?

If your TomTom has stopped working and doesn't hold any charge the chances are that the battery has failed and needs replacement. Our TomTom 510 wouldn't turn on anymore but had previously not lasted very long without being connected to mains power so I thought the battery might be a cause. Checking online it seems that the battery in a Tomtom can last for around 2 years so the 6 years we got from ours was good going!

The price of the TomTom battery on Ebay was £8 and the screwdriver head was £2.50 so for a total outlay of £10.50 we now have a working SatNav and have saved the £100+ cost of a new one!

This guide is an excellent and detailed instruction on how to replace the battery in a TomTom 510 satnav but also should cover other TomTom devices like the 520,710,720 etc.

The only items that I found missing from the guide were to explain that you needed to remove the SD card before starting (found out the hard way!) and which screwdriver you need to undo the screws to open the TomTom up.

Consulting my local hardware store, the excellent Johnsons of Rainham, I was able to determine that the screws needed a T-6 Torx screwdriver to remove them. The cost of this was £2.50 but compared to the hassle the writer of the TomTom battery replacement guide above had it was a doddle to remove the screws and no problem at all to replace them without any of the injuries to the hands that they received.

There are 12 different screws including the 4 on the outside case so it is well worth investing in a proper tool to open them rather than modifying a philips or flat head screwdriver.


What Screwdriver do you need to undo screws on a TomTom 510 SatNav

T-6 Torx Screwdriver to undo screws on a TomTom 510 SatNav

T6 Torx Screwdriver to undo screws on a TomTom 510 SatNav

Whos On Heart Wrong Answers - Incorrect Guesses for 2013 - Voices for 2014

Whos On Heart  Competition 2014 - Name these Voices



The Whos On Heart competition is running again for 2013. You can hear the 3 voices saying "Whos" "On" "Heart" here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_IjTboCMCw

The prize for guessing all 3 secret celebrities is £125,000 so it is a massive jackpot to win!

Click here to Search List of 2013 Whos On Heart Guesses

Eventually Heart will start to show the wrong answers on their website but in the meantime post the wrong answers as replies here and we can build up a list of who has already been guessed for the Who's On Heart Competition.

The first TWO names have now been guessed - David Duchovny and Jamie Bell. I'm certain that the third name is Dido so if it wins you £125,000 please share some!

Oracle Apex Error - Application alias Cannot be converted to unique application id

The Oracle Apex Error  message "application alias can not be converted to a unique application ID.Contact your application administrator" can be encountered if you have the same application alias used on multiple APex Workspaces on the same Apex server.

Apex prevents you using the same Apex Application alias more than once in the same workspace on the same server but doesn't prevent the same alias being used on different workspaces. To check that the application runs correctly use the URL with the application ID not the alias and the app should run without any issues.

If you receive this error then it means another developer has used the same alias on a different workspace on the server. The app runs correctly with the application alias if you are logged into apex admin as you have already specified the Workspace to use. When not logged in the URL must determine which workspace the app relates to.

When the Apex application alias is translated into an application ID it cannot find a unique Id that matches the alias so returns the above error.

The solution to fix the Apex Error message "application alias can not be converted to a unique application ID.Contact your application administrator" is to rename the application alias on one of the applications so that the alias is unqiue on the server. Once this is done then the APex application will run correctly.

How to Set Field to Uppercase in Oracle Apex

I needed to get a field set to uppercase in Oracle APex (Application Express) so that when a user types into the field any letters entered are automatically converted to capitals.

What appeared to be a tricky task was actually very simple!

All you need to do it to enter the following code into the item element field.

onchange="this.value = this.value.toUpperCase();"

With this code, the user can type into the field in upper or lower case but as soon as they leave the field the content will be converted to capitals / upper case.



How to Set Field to Uppercase in Oracle Apex

The screen shot below is taken from an Oracle Apex 4.2 installation so may look different in other versions.

VW Golf Radio MP3 Iphone Adapter - Play MP3 Music via Gamma Radio

Do you have a VW Golf Gamma Radio and want to play music from your iPod, MP3 player or Iphone through it using a 3.5mm jack socket adapter?  How to Play MP3 Music via VW Gamma Radio

 

Video showing how to add MP3 connection to VW Golf Mk4 Gamma radio

You can buy an attachment that clips into the rear harness of the VW Gamma radio and replaces the output from the CD player so that when you switch to the CD player the line source is played through the radio speakers. I've had this fitted for a few weeks now in my VW Golf Mark 4 and it is fantastic. The fitted CD player was only intermittently working and the radio transmitter iPhone adapter was patchy with interference in many places on my journeys.

 

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/VW-Golf-MK4-Aux-interface-Adaptor-Aux-MP3-iPod-iPhone-/370393417268?pt=UK_In_Car_Technology&hash=item563d2b0634

 

Do you have a VW Golf Gamma Radio and want to play music from your iPod, MP3 player or Iphone through it using a 3.5mm jack socket adapter?

Do you have a VW Golf Gamma Radio and want to play music from your iPod, MP3 player or Iphone through it using a 3.5mm jack socket adapter?

Connects2Adapter Mp3 ipod on VW Gamma radio



Control box for iphone, mP3, iPod adapter for VW Golf radio



Control box & leads for iphone, mP3, iPod adapter for VW Golf radio



3.5mm jack socket allowing music to be played through the VW Golf Gamma radio

This is a similar adapter for VW Golf Mark5 Radio MP3 Iphone Adapter
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/VW-GOLF-AUX-IN-INPUT-ADAPTER-INTERFACE-CABLE-LEAD-CAR-RADIO-IPOD-MP3-3-5MM-JACK-/360549569833?pt=UK_In_Car_Technology&hash=item53f26dd529