Dez' 'fleet' thread. Another bl00dy transit!

Back on the Lupo.

This turned up-


As it’s a pretty common problem on these (and polos and golfs and t4s, and anything else VAG that used this switch) I thought I’d show you how to swap one. It’s a 20min job, but only if you’re forewarned about a few things. The new stalk is a whopping £15, and easily matches OEM in terms of finish and feel.
Some people moan they’re a plop design, but it’s a 20 year old plastic switch that gets pretty constant use in the uk, and always gets knocked when getting in and out and scrabbling around for the ignition, so I don’t think they’re particularly short lived given the abuse they get.

first, disconnect the battery if you don’t like airbags going off in your face. You have to be quite forceful with it to get it out, and they have been known to not like that. Turn the ignition on so the steering lock comes off and swing the wheel through 90 degrees so you can put a screwdriver under the column and into the hole on the back of the steering wheel spoke, like this.


There is no fixing for you to undo, what you’re trying to do is lever the big spring clip inside the steering wheel out of its groove.
This thing-


As you can see, this wheel has been off a few times! You lay the screwdriver flat against the column then swing it away, you’ll hear the clip click if you’ve got it right, get you fingertips in the groove between the airbag and wheel spokes and you’ll feel it move a few mm if you’ve got it unclipped. There’s a bit of a knack but you’ll know by feel and sound when you’ve got it.

Now what most guides don't tell you is that if you let go of it to turn the wheel round 180 to do the other side, it’ll spring back in. So you either need to keep your fingers in the gap, or wedge something in there to stop it springing back if you plan to let go.

Once you’ve got both sides done you have to push the airbag up slightly to get it to dislodge from the third clip at the bottom, then it’ll come out. Unplug the yellow connector and the horn wire and set it aside.

This pic shows how the screwdriver unclips the big spring clip.


That is by far the hardest bit of the job, and the bit everyone struggles with.

Once you’re in, then remove the column lower plastics (3 screws) then it unclips, and undo the yellow plug for the airbag clockspring. Undo the centre nut, square the wheel up before you remove then wiggle it off. The big VW fine spines are never that tight a fit in my experience and come do pretty easily.

You then unto these 3 screws, give the indicator switch a slight wiggle whist pulling up gently, and it will unplug from the wiper switch below.




Set that aside for the minute. You then have to unplug all the wiring from the wiper switch. There’s 5 plugs, 2 red and 3 black, as the indicator/dip wiring plugs into sockets on the wiper switch that the indicator switch then plugs into. Quite a good design really.
The wiring plugs have two tabs each, a male on one end and a female on the other. Once you’ve got the first one figured you can do the others by feel.

You’ll realise then there’s nothing else holding the wiper switch on (as it’s just sandwiched by the ind switch and the screws you’ve already undone) and it’ll slide straight off. Just make sure you note where the wiring for the red flylead plug goes around the transponder.

When you get it off, it’ll Proably look something like this, especially if it’s been bad enough to let the magic smoke out, or your wipers won’t turn off any more. If they’re really badly melted sometimes you have to pry that plug out as the plastic will have glue or in when it’s reset!


Once you’ve got this far, it’s just reassemble is the reverse of removal. Plug it all back together, be careful not to pinch any wires when putting the column plastics back on, and at the end plug the airbag and horn back in but don’t refit it before connecting the battery and testing, seeing as getting it out is the hardest bit.
If all is good clip the airbag back in, they go in much easier than they come out. If not go back and check all your plugs are in properly.
Job jobbed.

It’s not that bad really, once the wheel is off. I’ve known people to not use vehicles in the rain for a long time because they’re putting off doing it though, all becuase of the airbag/steering wheel removal.

Could you have used the car’s seats too?

Not that I think you shouldn’t keep the funky ones, just curious.

No sense of adventure. 🤣🤣🤣

In all honesty, unless something major breaks the car will just be kept 100% stock and used. It’s interesting enough for me to not hate driving to when I do, but the mrs can also happily use it as a daily driver. Although she has paid out for private parking near to the school she’s currently working at rather than leave it in the school car park in an attempt to keep it nice!

So the gearshift on the Skoda felt pretty awful. It was to the point it was hard to tell what gear it was in there was so much play, and going for reverse meant a knee/knob interface 😂

With it on the ramp, it was apparent it wasn’t just any one bush that was the culprit, and the whole setup was rather baggy.



(And yes, unintentional rickroll, I’ll have it though 😬)

Some looking around online and I concluded you couldn’t but separate bits anyway. A closer look at the linkage bars and I noticed this-


I’m going to surmise that when the exhaust let go in the past, it also smashed half the shifter linkage to bits, and this quality workmanship* is the result.

So I decided to just buy the complete setup, which I’d seen listed on eBay. I thought £80 was quite expensive given the relative cheapness of parts for these things though, so I went to google and found these guys-


They’re in the Czech Republic, but have a pretty good website where you can order internationally with vat and duties already paid. What’s more their prices are very good, even after a small fee from my bank for processing the currency conversion it came in to pretty much £55 delivered, so quite a considerable saving.


I did have to wait 2 weeks for it to turn up, but I can’t even blame fed-ex for that as they got it all the way across mainland Europe in less than two days, then it sat in Stanstead for over a week because a load of gammony old idiots think putting up boarders with your closest neighbours is a good idea 🙄

But, here it is-



You get absolutely everything in between the shifter shaft on the box and the gear knob. You even get a new rear hanger/mount that bolts to the body, so literally everything that could have worn over the years had been replaced.
There’s one bolt on the torque arm at the front that is easy to swap over.


The rear mount is just two bolts and slipping the rubber boot over the selector and making sure it sits in the groove correctly.


Tbh the front joint was quite tight and took some getting on, I knocked it on until the hole for the roll pin was half lined up then used a taper drift to get it aligned. I think you’d really struggle with this if you were trying to do it on the floor tbh. My only other tiny criticism would be you didn’t get a new roll pin with it.


It feels tons better now though. I mean it’s not cable shift ‘tight’ but it’s as good as a linkage type gets, and definitely the best 50 quid I’ve spent on this thing so far.

Sport buttons are generally more useful on higher tech cars with automatic gearboxes; typically holding gears longer on part throttle, improving throttle response,  making traction control less intrusive, tightening up steering and suspension, and in some cases lowering ride height.

A sport button on an automatic is the dictionary definition of oxymoron.

Been there, done that, spent the whole time wishing it was a manual!

Gordon Bennett, I thought that I was the old Luddite😎;- I converted an automatic because I couldn’t find an example of that model with manual transmission. Within minutes I realised that I had made a grave error. Manual transmission may be ok on low powered cars, but automatic is superior in every way, under every circumstance. It can be overridden on the rare occasions when that is desirable; track use, mountain passes, or preparing for single carriageway overtaking, and that’s about it. At other times, it’s always in the right gear, it changes much faster than you or I, and does so cleanly every time.
Taken to its logical conclusion, should sporty also come with manual advance and retard levers on the steering wheel, and brakes only on the rear?