Just started my octavia, engine fired up ok. But the dials did nothing for a few minutes before functioning. The car is almost 11years old and has done 170k miles so I can’t complain if this is very bad. Just wondering if there is anything simple that might be worth lookking at.

Don’t drive it for the 1st few minutes.

HTH

Electrics ?

My van dials did odd stuff for months – started with the fuel guage – the belt thingy that earths the battery was threadbare at one spot.

On previous motorbikes they use to use the dials on startup (as in when you turned the key but before pressing the starter) to show errors; e.g. speedo at 0mph revs at 3000rpm meant the exup valve wasn’t working.

Maybe also with a Skoda?

Was it a cold morning when this happened? had it been a while since the car has been run? you say the car fired up OK, my first thought would be the battery is a little low. If the car had not been run for a while the charge in the battery could have dropped off a bit, possibly just enough to start the car but not kick in the electrics properly. My old polo used to have this problem. Loads of places do free battery test to see if it is on its way out.

I’d also simply have a look at the battery connnections, one could be a little loose and with the vibration of the engin turning over it could have caused an intermittant loss of power for the electrics.

Well that is my guesses any way, simple and free to check out.

Drive up and down the road (make it bumpy) and get someone to stand watching your rear lights (to see if they flicker)

It could be a loose-earth.

Have you hit the dashboard?

I had a fiat uno with dodgy guages… worked when you hit the side of the instrument binnacle, must have been some thing loose.

Loose plug behind the dash? It is everything on the dash?

Actually – could be some kind of canbus problem.. something maybe failed and is messing it up. Go to a garage and get the codes read.

If it starts and stops on demand youre ahead of the game, just keep using it and see what happens. It’ll either be fine, or it’ll get worse over time so you can worry then.

it is due a service in the next couple of weeks so will have a chat with garage, Worked fine this morning and fine this evening, i had to pop out at lunch drove out of the carpark and looked at the dials to see everything blank. All came on after a few minutes.

I will worry about it in april when the cambelt change is due.

I think the instrument clusters play up occasionally!
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