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mrdaf

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    Bristol, UK

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    X reg Fabia Skoda 1.4 MPI 16v Comfort

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  1. Always good practice to use axle stands. Where abouts are you? I'm in Bedmo. If you want a hand, give me a shout. Not around much this week, but from Wednesday next week I'm available most evenings.
  2. Right, key fob battery won't have anything to do with the starting issues. Have you checked your car battery? Could be a dodgy earth.
  3. You'll need to take the lower engine bay cover off to access the drain plug for the radiator, it's possible without jacking it up, but you'll have to get down on your back. You'll also struggle to get a container under there to catch the coolant. Once you've drained the coolant, you'll need to: Take off engine cover/air filter housing Remove battery Remove battery housing You'll then have access to the thermostat housing. I used mole grips on the sprung hose clip and removed that before taking the housing off, made it just a little bit easier to manoeuvre, but I think it can be done without removing the hose. Then fit the new thermostat, and put everything back together. If there's one thing I've learnt from this car, is that it's really easy to get to grips with, incredibly forgiving, and you'd have to seriously f**k something up to ruin it. Don't be scared of it, having the confidence to do things yourself is 1/4 of the battle. (1/4 is knowledge, 1/2 is having the right tools!)
  4. http://www.theskodashop.co.uk/product/Radio_Facia_Adaptor_%28Fabia_00%3E07%29_6Y0857231B41
  5. I wouldn't suspect the timing is wrong per se, Everything is marked and locked, and pretty easy to do. The tensioner however, if too tight can cause slight drift. Make sure you've got the right thermostat, I can't remember where I got mine from, but it was wrong the first time, you want the one that looks like this: It is pretty simple to fit, as sepuldave has said. Once you get the cover off, it should slide straight out. You may struggle to get the cover back on with the new one in, but just tighten it up gently and evenly and you'll be alright.
  6. This. You can reset it yourself, I believe it's in the manual somewhere.
  7. Sounds like your rear exhaust o2 sensor. Before you do anything else, try a bottle of cataclean before you fill up next. It'll clean out your cat and improve your emissions. The o2 sensor helps with regulating fuel injection, and could also be causing the misfire by allowing too much fuel into the cylinder. Wait until you've got less than 50 miles of fuel left, add full bottle of cataclean, after 20 or so miles delete error codes and go for another drive. Check for codes again after.
  8. That is a fair point, but I took the advice of the gaffer at the garage. I have been putting it through it's paces though, with a few 200+ mile journeys and aggressive back road driving. I've not checked the cylinders or compression since, but I have kept a very close eye on oil levels that don't seem to be going anywhere. I'm happy with the work I've done, and even happier with the car's performance since.
  9. Well for anyone who's interested, I've have more issues and have done a lot more work on the little beast. The oil burning issue didn't go away, I was going through about 5 litres every 400 miles, which is just ridiculous. I've been offering free labour to my local garage on a Saturday since February (part of my future career plans) and they've been uber helpful. In April, I took a week off normal work, and took my car into the garage with the intention of sorting out the issues! I started off with a compression test, which every single cylinder failed on. Can't remember the readings but it wasn't good either way. I took the engine apart, leaving the cylinder body and crank assembly in the engine bay. Took the pistons out, which wasn't any trouble at all. The bores were glazed with a mirror finish, and the rings weren't providing much of a seal. The rings were replaced, and the bores deglazed. I had the cylinder head out, and removed the valves, the stem seals were shot, and only one seal still having the tension spring on it. The valves were filthy, coked up with 10mm thick in parts. I cleaned each one by hand, back to bare shine. They looked beautiful when I'd finished. After degreasing and cleaning the head, I lapped the valves back in, what a bloody tedious job! Spent several hours doing that. Put the clean valves back in with new stem seals, and water tested the valve beds. All good. I put a new head gasket on, and put it all back together with a new cam belt kit and water pump. New inlet manifold and exhaust manifold gaskets, cleaned the crankhouse breather again and put in new o-rings, and put in a new EGR valve. This took 4 days, whilst helping out with other jobs in the garage, and I eventually got it all going on the Thursday evening. Started first time! Absolutely chuffed to bits. Left it at the garage on the Friday idling all day, letting everything bed in before taking it out on the road. Since then, I did the whole 1000 miles taking it easy and running it in, before a full service. During the service, I noticed a lot of oil seeping from the head gasket, and down the engine block. I spoke to the chaps at the garage, and suggested I check the head bolts. The instructions for the head bolts seemed a bit weak when I initially did them up, but I double checked and left them as instructed. So I checked the head bolts, and whilst not loose, they comfortably turned another 45*. Since then, leakage has been minimal. This evening, I finally got around to fixing my aircon. Quite a common problem with the aircon wire breaking off at the plug, located towards the front of the engine in the middle, right next to the alternator plug. I tried saving the plug, but made a mess of it, I ended up lopping the plugs off and wiring them together using crimps, and protecting them with a lot of insulation tape! All good. Only a wheel bearing to sort out, when it gets too loud to put up with.. If anyone has any questions, fire away, I'd be happy to share my experiences with this wonder of a car!
  10. Hmm, unable to edit my post. Anyway, all sorted, I've just by-passed the plug. Aircon working fine and dandy.
  11. Bringing back the dead.. I've got this problem, one wire snapped off right at the connector. I cut the other wire and pulled the connector out to make it easier to rewire, but I cannot for the life of me figure out how to the get dead wires out of the connector. Any ideas would be more than welcome. Thanks.
  12. Apologies for the double post, but my edit buttons have all disappeared. I managed to recode the engine last night, changing the baud to 9600 worked first time! Happy days. Drove to work this morning, 15 miles of back road fun! Checked for engine for DTCs when I got in, and only the EGR code remains.
  13. I'm actually going to put the old coil pack on later, and see if the error goes away. Didn't get any coil pack DTCs with that one. The only reason I'm not ragging it is because of the misfiring issue, so if it works, I'll do my best. As for the fuel, I've been filling up with either Momentum or Shell V-Power since I've had her at home. Edit Just swapped the coil packs over, erased all codes, and then took it for a 4 mile test run. It stuttered a couple of times on cold start, dipped to 300-400 revs for a couple of seconds and tried to stall, but recovered and kept steady. Pulled out of the car park, was a little dodgy still. Pulled out on to the main road, and up the steep hill in 3rd, wincing, waiting for the misfire, I plied the throttle a bit more, 3000 revs, so far so good, got to the top of the hill, turned off down the back roads and let rip. PERFECT! Felt amazing! I don't think it's ever felt that powerful! So bloody happy! I checked the error codes when I got back, only the EGR and ECM code remain. I do think I need to get a proper set of boots for her though, she was all over the place!
  14. Blimes, it's been an eventful 9 days. Last weekend: Piston soak 1 - MMO for 16 hours, cylinders 1 and 4 were empty within 3 hours, topped up and left over night. All cylinders were empty at the end, and didn't look any clearer. Changed oil and oil filter - replaced with 5w30 Replaced Coil Pack, HT Leads and Spark Plugs. After this session, it started miss-firing when hot (only misfired when cold previously). I've lost engine power (new symptom) and had to pull over on a couple of occasions, each time I've removed spark plugs immediately, with oil smoke coming from cylinder 1. Thursday Night: Cleaned Throttle Body and as far into the intake as I could, replaced gasket ring and replaced. No more throttle valve errors. Took off EGR, with pipe, and cleaned the hell out of it, re-fitted with new gaskets (there weren't any old ones on). New thermostat fitted, up to temperature quicker and gets to midpoint on dial and stays there. Removed front lambda sensor, left to soak in vinegar overnight. Friday Night: Refitted lambda. Got a myriad of o2 sensor codes from that! Bought a new one and fitted it this morning. No more o2 sensor errors. Capped off crankhouse breather connection to throttle and it's now vented to atmosphere through filter. Piston soak 2 - using Seafoam, again cylinders 1 and 4 emptied pretty quick, cylinders 2 and 3 were still full when I checked after 3 hours. Cylinder 2 was still full in the morning. PROGRESS!! After a month of research, 2 weeks of messing around, dismantling, cleaning and bodging, I had my MOT retest yesterday (first one was on the 4th November, failed because the emissions were so dodgy, they couldn't actually perform the test), and it bloody well passed! Whilst I'm over the moon I can keep it going for another year, I am now left with the following DTC's: 18020 - ECM Incorrectly Coded 16684 - Random Misfires 16685 - Misfire Cylinder 1 16688 - Misfire Cylinder 4 16786 - EGR Flow Excessive 17756 - Ignition Coil Stage 1 Open Circuit I plan on replacing the EGR valve as suggested, but that can wait until after payday. I'm not too sure on the misfiring. It's a new coil pack (albeit a cheap one), but I think it's because oil is getting into the cylinders and fowling the spark plugs. Although, the Ignition Coil Stage 1 error points to the Ignition pack Ignition Coil Stage 2 Open Circuit came up during the week too, so it might be the coil pack. I bought a Vagcom usb lead from ebay, and ran VCDS-Lite on my laptop. Plugged it in and it picked up all modules bar 01-Engine. So I shan't be purchasing VCDS-Lite and recoding the engine. I don't know what impact this will have, but I can't see any issues that aren't explained by something else. So after all that, I'm not getting a new engine. I'm hoping a few more piston soaks and some longer runs (without ragging it) will do it the world of good! I've noticed the oil level not diminishing so fast, I didn't have to top it up on Saturday morning! sepulchrave, thank you so much for your help, it has been greatly appreciated (you've saved me quite a bit of moola!).
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