Cemersons countdown thread begins

Should post something a bit longer, lol...

Delivery was a bit underwhelming really - no covers or gifts or anything, just sat in the showroom at the front (mine was the first collection of the day I'm guessing), showed me around a bit then I drove it out and onwards! Full tank of fuel already in there, all sorted!

Didn't play with much on the way to the airfield I fly at (gliding club), but certainly had a much better look at everything when I was there. Tried out the park assist, which is very good, very clever, though it did try to reverse bay park into a space that already had a car in it at one point - think it was just bad luck though, it was a car between 2 big RAF vans, and I was a bit far away from the spaces - bit more than recommended I think. Worked flawlessly when I started a bit closer, and the parallel parking too!

Hold assist as well works very well - I keep forgetting I have it though! That and stop/start, so I keep sitting at junctions in gear and with my foot on the brakes... oops!

Tried out the ACC - absolutely brilliant, works very well and makes everything stress free, though I still have my foot hovering over the brakes at the moment until I trust it a bit more! Lane assist I've had a bit of a love/hate thing going on with - works really well at times but appears to do nothing at other times, even putting the car over the lines (I was watching it with no other cars around while I was testing), but at other times it does the steering perfectly. Maybe I just have to get used to its quirks.

Car in general is stunning - interior is very very nice, MMI works well (though haven't been successful in setting up Audi Connect yet - will try that again in a bit). Fitted my aluminium pedal caps - accelerator was a bit tricky and took a lot of time but the other 2 were very easy to do.

Towbar - This was supplied in a kind of 'tray' which sits above the spare wheel, but that prevents you from lowering the boot floor, so I've taken that out and am storing the towbar separately. I need some kind of bag to put it in really - it doesn't have a 'place' yet to live. Bit of a problem with the 13 pin electrics as well, in that they aren't wired up to the international standard (I have a friend who fits towbars professionally so used his testing kit on them), so will have to sort that out. It's not going to stop me towing anything as it's mostly right, but just want to get the missing bit (switched 12V line) in there to make sure it's all up to spec.

Only things I haven't had a chance to check yet are the lights, since I haven't driven in the dark - one night this week should be able to though!
 
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Just been out and got connect working, but I think I'd be better off with a separate sim card in the glove box to be honest, it interferes a bit with the phone's functions - eg storing incoming text messages on the sim card instead of the phone etc. This is because the car effectively takes over being your phone while the car phone mode is on (as opposed to acting as a hands free kit).
 
cemerson said:
Just been out and got connect working, but I think I'd be better off with a separate sim card in the glove box to be honest, it interferes a bit with the phone's functions - eg storing incoming text messages on the sim card instead of the phone etc. This is because the car effectively takes over being your phone while the car phone mode is on (as opposed to acting as a hands free kit).
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I got a data sim from three on 1 month contract. Data connection just worked straight away. Although you have to go digging in the settings to tell it to connect without asking, contrary to the printed manual. Haven't had a chance to play with the connect features yet. Was impressed when I got in the car this afternoon and it told me my phone battery was low so I should charge it :)
 
One thing I haven't figured out yet is to play all the songs from 1 folder on my SD card on shuffle. I loaded the folder, but when you turn on 'random' mode, it does it over the whole SD card rather than the folder you are in.
 
(All the artwork I've put in works though, so that's good!)
 
Just got myself a mobile unlimited data sim only plan from t-moblie which I'll put in the car
 
cemerson said:
(All the artwork I've put in works though, so that's good!)
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I spotted in the manual that if it doesn't find tags in the audio files it will use gracenote instead. Haven't tried it, but a nice bonus feature of connect.
 
Ooh nice - will have to try that when I've got connect set up fully
 
RossR said:
Haven't had a chance to play with the connect features yet. Was impressed when I got in the car this afternoon and it told me my phone battery was low so I should charge it :)
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My A3 doesn't have Connect, but it still tells me when the phone battery is low, so I guess that's not a Connect-only feature, just Bluetooth at work ;-)
 
Yeh, that's standard bluetooth. Got a text to say my delivery will be delayed by 24h for some reason... grr, it's only a sim card!
 
dzankizakon said:
My A3 doesn't have Connect, but it still tells me when the phone battery is low, so I guess that's not a Connect-only feature, just Bluetooth at work ;-)
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Yeah, sorry didn't mean to imply that. Just rambling :)
 
Just thought I'd post my thoughts after a few days then:

The car continues to impress, of course! It's just great :)

There are some oddities / things I wouldn't expect - or maybe I just haven't worked them all out yet. One for example is for the auto lights - there doesn't seem to be any indication that I could see of the lights being on when they were. Should there be one, or is that the way it is for others?

There are some screens in the MMI (artist/track/album listings) where I would have expected it to be obvious to include a search function, and allow you to write letters on the touchpad etc - but I couldn't seem to find out how other than turning the wheel fast enough to skip ahead loads. I'm sure I had this before though so would be interested to see.

One of my gripes with the media bit has gone though - I thought you could only select tracks but still have every track on the card in the playlist, but actually you can load just the folder - there is a folder icon with the word 'repeat' on one of the control buttons in most of the selection screens, which is really good - I can even load all tracks by a certain artist (because of my folder structure), and have all those tracks on shuffle, etc.

Lane assist I'm still playing with, though the corners I often present it with are too sharp really. I had the vibration warning on, and I had wondered whether this meant 'don't steer for me, just warn me instead'. The warning worked when I tested it (only when I went over the line, not just got really near it). I turned it off and have had some success with it doing the steering away from the edge thing, but i've been too scared to let it go too near the edge of the road to test it in case it doesn't do anything in time! I suspect it will work a lot better on the motorway, and I'll get a chance to test this tomorrow.

The ACC is still fantastic, one of the best options on my car IMO - it works pretty much flawlessly. Strangely it doesn't detect people pulling out in front of you (eg, someone turning right onto my road from a road on my left, so crossing my lane but not staying in it), but the manual says this is the case. I had thought it would just detect objects with the radar whether they were moving along your lane or not - maybe there is danger of false readings if it tried to do that? I'm not sure. Either way, it's brilliant.

Also had the unfortunate situation of being able to test Pre-sense front the other day when the idiot in front of me decided to slam his brakes on because he didn't see a stationary car in the road until the last minute. I saw a message in the DIS come up saying pre-sense front is appyling braking or something like that (I had started braking myself before this of course), so it certainly worked but I'm not sure if I was able to tell if it helped and adjusted the braking force or not.
 
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One other thing as well - the bootliner that was posted in a thread a while ago (3rd party one, not the Audi one - about £40) is absolutely brilliant. I only have a couple of things in my boot at the moment (including the heavy towbar - in a bag), and despite the emergency stop I mentioned above, and some 'energetic' cornering I've been doing at times, the things in my boot haven't budged an inch, because of the rubberised / grippy surface. I'm really happy with that!
 
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cemerson said:
One other thing as well - the bootliner that was posted in a thread a while ago (3rd party one, not the Audi one - about £40) is absolutely brilliant. I only have a couple of things in my boot at the moment (including the heavy towbar - in a bag), and despite the emergency stop I mentioned above, and some 'energetic' cornering I've been doing at times, the things in my boot haven't budged an inch, because of the rubberised / grippy surface. I'm really happy with that!
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I'd be grateful for a link to that actually, as I plan to get that and some rubber mats as well! :D
 
Glad you're pleased with it!

There is no indication of lights coming on with Auto lights - I agree it would have been nice to have a green dipped light indicator on the dash. There is a general search option in the MMI for music, but you have to select 'More' in the Media Centre to find it - not fantastically placed.

I didn't spec ACC as I hadn't ever used it when I ordered and couldn't see the point - however I have since used company Golf MK7s with this and was very impressed with how well it works. Could certainly be tempted to add it next time! I looked at pre-sense when I ordered, but was a bit disappointed Audi didn't provide this as standard.
 
Karl Alesbury said:
I'd be grateful for a link to that actually, as I plan to get that and some rubber mats as well! :D
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http://www.audi-sport.net/vb/new-a3-8v-chassis/183452-sportback-boot-liner.html

This is the thread - the link is somewhere near the bottom of the first page. It took a while to arrive though as it was on backorder. The important thing is that it fits fine when the boot floor is in the lower position, whereas apparently the official Audi one doesn't!

Edit: Link in post #24 - http://www.audi-sport.net/vb/new-a3-8v-chassis/183452-sportback-boot-liner.html#post1881531
 
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mjcourtney said:
Glad you're pleased with it!

There is no indication of lights coming on with Auto lights - I agree it would have been nice to have a green dipped light indicator on the dash. There is a general search option in the MMI for music, but you have to select 'More' in the Media Centre to find it - not fantastically placed.

I didn't spec ACC as I hadn't ever used it when I ordered and couldn't see the point - however I have since used company Golf MK7s with this and was very impressed with how well it works. Could certainly be tempted to add it next time! I looked at pre-sense when I ordered, but was a bit disappointed Audi didn't provide this as standard.
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Pre-sense front comes as standard with ACC I think, whereas the pre-sense basic is the one that you see as an option (I didn't spec this)
 
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mjcourtney said:
There is no indication of lights coming on with Auto lights - I agree it would have been nice to have a green dipped light indicator on the dash. There is a general search option in the MMI for music, but you have to select 'More' in the Media Centre to find it - not fantastically placed.
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It's a bit worrying almost - I know auto-lights have trouble with fog for example, so I'd want to know whether my lights were on or off in this case, so I could do something about it if they weren't on! Seems very strange. I'll check the manual to see if it's supposed to be there or not.
 
cemerson said:
It's a bit worrying almost - I know auto-lights have trouble with fog for example, so I'd want to know whether my lights were on or off in this case, so I could do something about it if they weren't on! Seems very strange. I'll check the manual to see if it's supposed to be there or not.
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I might be wrong but I think some green indicators come on around the headlight control knob (near your right knee). Not very easy to see down there though.
 
Went out for a bit of experimentation, there is no dipped beam indicator at all on the instrument cluster, even if you turn them on manually - only one for main beams! I didn't check the indicators around the control knob though, will have a look there later
 
I noticed there was no dipped beam indicator in the DIS binnacle this morning. Auto lights did put on the dipped beam though in this mornings fog as saw the reflection in the car in front of me. Will check later if there is one on the light switch (by my right kneee) not sure of its usefullness there though.
 
Yeh, it's strange really. I would have thought the symbols from the dial would be on the instrument display to show you when each one was active.
 
I forgot to mention as well - Advanced Key and Folding Mirrors make a great combination. You know you've managed to lock it when the mirrors start folding, even if you miss the flash from the lights!
 
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Agree about the Auto lights, I had that thought a few day ago. Only way I knew was the light reflection by the car in front when in heavy traffic, but that's no good in normal traffic as too far away.
Must admit, when at a standstill, I switch lights from Auto to off, and could see the change in lights by the reflection in the car in front. Could see lights on, then Xenons on!
 
The indicators around the dial don't do anything different with the lights on or off, tried it this evening. You can tell by reflection, yes, but there should be an indicator.

Got my unlimited data SIM card for Audi Connect today, stuck it in, but it's having trouble updating the list of services... perhaps it needs to activate properly with the network first. I'll try it again tomorrow. It said there was 3G signal though, so not sure on that one. I've at least connected my phone to the in car wifi so I'm not using up the data on that, might as well use the car's if it's unlimited!
 
Just went out again and tried connect - still nothing. Perhaps it's just a dodgy signal area - I'll try again on the way into work tomorrow.
 
Just been outside to check and on s-line the LED's round the light dial change from red to green to indicate which lights are on or not (side and/or main beam). This works in auto mode or if selected manually and despite not being where I expected the main beam indicator to be it is pretty obvious to your peripheral vision.


btw just noticed how good the rear LED's looked :thumbsup:
 
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Hmmm, I'll have to have another look tomorrow. I find it hard to believe it depends on trim level. My ignition was on, but not the engine, and I was stationary - wonder if that makes a difference?
 
cemerson said:
Hmmm, I'll have to have another look tomorrow. I find it hard to believe it depends on trim level. My ignition was on, but not the engine, and I was stationary - wonder if that makes a difference?
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Same here, ignition on but engine not running. Might be 'cos of the one optional extra you did not spec- internal light pack!!!
 
cemerson said:
I forgot to mention as well - Advanced Key and Folding Mirrors make a great combination. You know you've managed to lock it when the mirrors start folding, even if you miss the flash from the lights!
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Hahaha....that's what I do, sometimes I forget if I locked it so I just if the mirrors have folded in.
 
Yeh, though you have to be careful - just because the mirrors are in doesn't mean it's locked, cause they don't open on unlock, but it's a good way to tell that you've just locked it
 
My car is going back to the dealers on the 19th to have it's towbar electrics modified (some of the connections weren't there that should be according to the international standards), and I asked if the dealer had a 184PS TDI that I could have as the courtesy car for the day - he said he'd see what he could do, so here's hoping :)
 
I've got the green indicators for dipped and side lights on my S line.

Anyone else with a sport our SE care to check?
 
Checked today - mine in fact do change, but there's a half second or so delay after you move the dial, so hadn't noticed it before. Guess that sorts that one out!
 
Got connect working now :) There's some pretty nifty stuff in there - I just tried dictating a text message and it worked perfectly!
 
Just did a fair chunk (50 miles) or so of the M1 in rush hour, and didn't have to touch the accelerator or brake once! ACC is awesome :) Lane assist meant I didn't have to steer either pretty much, though it does moan on the straight bits that you've let go and threatens to turn off (even when you haven't)
 
RossR said:
I've got the green indicators for dipped and side lights on my S line.

Anyone else with a sport our SE care to check?
Click to expand...
Yep, lights set to Auto and I get green lights when they main beams and dipped are on
 
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