Cars & Driving

Don’t RTFM

For some years now, I’ve very occasionally used SEAT erwin, an online source for the official workshop manuals for Seat cars, and also the VW version.

Erwin is brilliant: you can get all the same information the dealers use, tailored you your car exactly, for a few euro to access for a time period. Wiring diagrams, official repair procedures, details of recalls.

Which made it annoying to get this email:

Dear erWin User,

We would like to inform you that, as of 18-12-2025, the erWin Webshop will no longer be available to private customers but exclusively to business customers.
Of course, you may continue to use your active flatrate subscriptions until the end of their contractually agreed term – even beyond the above-mentioned discontinuation date.
Should you have any questions, please contact our support team at https://seat.erwin-store.com/erwin/showRequestSupport.do .
Thank you for your understanding.

Kind regards,
Your erWin Team SEAT/CUPRA

https://seat.erwin-store.com

The reason given to a forum user was:

thank you for your E-Mail.
Due to stricter legal requirements, additional documentation obligations, and increasing support efforts, continuing the service is no longer economically or organizationally feasible. Significant adjustments to contract terms, liability regulations, and information obligations would have been necessary, which are no longer justifiable for the private customer segment.

Back years ago, it was common to buy the equivalent thing, elsawin, as a pirated bit of software on multiple CDs from Ebay, and I do wonder if someone will find a way to pirate erwin and sell it, but it’s a backward step: the pirate copies of elsawin were always a bit limited as they couldn’t be tailored to individual VINs, and of course, they weren’t up to date (and no such thing exists for recent cars).

What I have done is (legally) downloaded and printed to PDF some key sections for both our cars: this seemed worth the less than £10 cost for an hours access.

Cars & Driving, Life

South

We went away.

I chose to go to Cornwall, when we’d usually go abroad in November. This was an error.

It was shit. Really Shit. I picked up a really unpleasant cold that arrived the Friday before we left, then my dear better half got it, so we spent the only days with good weather feeling like shit, then got the shit weather. When we did venture out, it wasn’t great- St Ives and Penzance were still busy enough to make parking near impossible.

Our holiday property was great, thankfully, as we spent a lot of time in it, but driving over 500 miles in total for two meals out and getting frozen at Land’s End wasn’t great.

cats, Life

More Teefies

Our furry children had a checkup back in July, and unsurprisingly the boy needed his teeth looking at. Considering his sister is now toothless, he got away a little more lightly, he still has a few teeth, just not many.

Discussions with the vet at the checkup said that we should look at it “between now and Christmas”, so we took him in at 9 last Thursday. A few checks and we left our chomky 6.1kg boy behind.

His sister wasn’t happy, even when she did get her breakfast (late, when we got back), clearly wondering where he was.

We collected him late afternoon, looking very slightly wobbly, and he came home, had some food, and settled down for a nap, later that night snoozing in his mom’s arms.

His recovery went well, and today we took him back for a checkup, and all was well, except perhaps for the waiting room experience: a few people with very noisy, uncontrolled dogs were stressing us and the boy- why, FFS, would you seat yourself and a noisy, barely controlled dog next to a couple with a cat carrier in an otherwise empty room?, so my dear better half took the boy outside while we waited. When we were called in, the poor lad didn’t want to come out of the carrier, but once out he was checked over and given a clean bill of health. Back home to his food and cat bed 🙂

Life

Sofa so good

It all started, some time ago, with a unpleasant snap as I sat down.

Our sofa was last replaced when I had hair, in the last century- about 1998, to be more precise.

My better half offered the opinion that we needed a new one. I didn’t disagree, but I was resistant to put a new sofa into a room last decorated and carpeted in 2011.

As it was, that didn’t work out. We ordered a new sofa in February, and it arrived in June, but we hadn’t got as far as that room in the long, expensive, and difficult sequence of events starting in March, triggered by this.

That room that was decorated in 2011 was the last room we decorated, the kitchen units were falling apart (being the shitty ones that were fitted before we bought the house in the early nineties), and the bathroom was last touched in 2006, the dining room in 2004. You get the picture, things got in the way.

At time of writing, we’re part-way through. The hall has had floor tiles and been painted, we have a new kitchen and shower room with new tiled floor, one bedroom, the stairs and landing have been carpeted and painted, along with the lounge with the new sofa.

Even with the huge cost of doing this (we’ve paid someone for much of the work because it’s too much for us these days) there’s been a good amount of DIY: replacing an electrical back box and socket, lots of filling, SDS chiselling old floor tiles (and some plaster in the cellar), fitting new blinds, assembling furniture, lamps etc etc etc. We’ve had help from friends with some bits which has been much appreciated.

It’s a good way through now, but there’s still the rear lobby area (and a new back door), the dining room, and the back bedroom to do.

Cars & Driving

Limited Spannering

I don’t much work on cars these days, compared to the days of changing clutches and gearboxes, to the degree that I’ve never actually laid tools on this Leon (well, apart from VCDS).

I changed that, firstly by scraping the passenger mirror on a wall when parking. I was lucky, and got a replacement in the right colour from Ebay for a fraction of the price of a new mirror and paint.

Fitting wasn’t so bad: remove the door card (the clips are tight and need a surprising amount of force to remove and refit):

The passenger door, less the interior trim
The passenger door, less the interior trim

disconnect the cables, remove the speaker and a bit of foam for access, and undo one nut. Job done.

The second bit was the washer pump, which had decided to expire. Gratifyingly, this is the only actual component failure since I’ve owned the car, but it had done this once before, logging this code:


787212 - Windshield Washer Pump
B1261 01 [00001000] - Electrical Failure
Intermittent - Confirmed - Tested Since Memory Clear
Freeze Frame:
Fault Priority: 3
Fault Frequency: 1
Reset counter: 46
Mileage: 70168 km
Date: 2025.09.01
Time: 06:37:06

one morning on the way to work (for once, the timestamp is correct). Last time, clearing the code brought it back to life, but no such luck, and the ECU locked out the headlight washers too.

Not too bad to fix: jack up and remove the front nearside wheel, remove part of the arch liner (8 T25 screws), and the pump is there and just levers out, and the connections unclip.

Inside the front bumper of my Seat Leon
The washer pumps: Headlight (left) and screen (right)

The new pump was just over a tenner, and fitting wasn’t hard.

Cars & Driving, Life

New Forest

We went away: to Brockenhurst in the New Forest.

We’d last been around here in 2010, visiting our friend in Totton, and we were meeting up again, as well as doing some R&R on our own.

We had a good journey down- just over 3 hours driving, and no serious arseholery, and got into our holiday property, which was considerably better than May’s (but not cheap).

We got to the first of the pubs. The New Forest area has quite an alarming number of really very nice pubs: the only slight duffer was in nearby Southampton, and even that wasn’t awful.

We drove around the New Forest, we went to Milford-on-Sea a couple of times as it was such a nice place:

A view of the cost from Milford-on-Sea. It's bright and sunny.
Milford-on-Sea

We got chauffeured around Southampton, saw the Titanic exhibition, and parts of the old walls. We saw some lovely gardens, and we totally failed to find any foraging pigs.

Surprisingly, despite being in a car a lot, driving standards weren’t at all bad. Is this indicative of having expectations lowered by the Midlands?

The week went quickly: catching up with said friend meant time flew. The return journey was OK too, about 3.5 hours driving.

Life

69, Dude

We went away for a few days. My dear other half suggested Ironbridge, but as it was a bank holiday, I really didn’t fancy anywhere too touristy, because, well, people.

So we ended up on the M69 and travelling towards Leicester, more specifically Enderby. Enderby has, in places a village feel, with a conservation area containing several old thatched buildings- we ended up staying opposite a thatched pub.

I really didn’t know much about Leicester beyond glimpses of the coach station and the colour of the very multicultural Narborough Road glimpsed from a National Express coach in the late 1980s, a sight relived by catching a bus into the city (an electric bus, none the less, which seemed very well suited to the stop-start of Narborough Road).

A more attractive city centre than I’d expected. The Lanes, near the (surprisingly small) cathedral in particular. Some nice parkland, a large choice of places to eat and drink.

We also got out to Foxton, Melton Mowbray (Mmmmm, pie!), and Market Harborough – a place we’d last visited before the existence of this blog, when we’d walked from the Sun Inn (now a private house) at Marston Trussell to Foxton locks, on to Market Harborough, back when we were younger and fitter.

The journey back was quite different: trusting the sat-nav saw us on back roads to Tamworth, and then the A5: it’s quite remarkably rural quite quickly. It’s also shorter…

There were a few pubs.

Site news

Theme Change

I’ve changed the site theme, as the old theme doesn’t seem to work with PHP8.x and WordPress is whining about PHP7.4. I’ll tidy things up later, but as this is a security issue, this is what you’re getting for now.

The GeneralStats plugin seems to be fucked, too, so that’s disabled.

Life, Public Transport, Retrospective

From Cullercoats to Whitley Bay

Well, we didn’t actually go to Cullercoats, but I’m not going to miss the chance of squeezing in a song lyric.

Back in May (I’m writing this in late August, but will fudge the timestamp) we went away, to Whitley Bay, staying almost opposite the famous Spanish City:

Whitley Bay's Spanish City on a sunny day
The Spanish City

We had a easy journey up (though the return one proved to be tedious), notwithstanding me gouging lumps out of the passenger mirror in our parking space, and found our way into the property. The property was a bit of a mixed bag: spacious, but a bit tatty in places, but with a stunning view (including the Spanish City).

We had sunshine a lot of the time, but it was cold for May for a good few days, a hazard of the North East, I suppose.

We wandered about a little, went into Newcastle and Gateshead to see the Baltic:

The Baltic Arts Centre, Gateshead, from over the river
The Baltic Arts Centre, Gateshead, from over the river

The Metro was excellent: between that and the Ferry (and a short cab ride to the Baltic) we got around to Tynemouth, North Shields, South Shields, the city centre, Gateshead, and back quickly and efficiently.

There were a few pubs.

cats

Teefies

Poor Fanty has been in the wars, she’s just passed her 3rd cativersary with us, and needed dental work in 2022, and now is no longer in possession of any teeth after a further visit 🙁

Her last check had warned ominously of this, but “if she seems OK and is eating that’s probably OK”, but then she’d started drooling a lot, and had got smelly breath.

A visit to the vet confirmed all was not well and she was booked in for the next day, and we were at first upset to learn she was now toothless, but the return home changed our minds: she’s clearly happier and brighter and is eating normally. Poor Fanty: 6 is young to be toothless (Mr Catface reached 16-17), but it was clearly very uncomfortable for her.

Papa's got a brand new Pig Blog