Leaderboard

Recently got ourselves a Karoq, first Skoda for us and we really like it. Replaces a Tiguan for the family moving duties. Anyway for whatever reason the lighter socket on the Karoq is always live which isn't very useful for powering a dashcam. Had a look for a how-to for tapping a switched feed from the fusebox but only found little bits of info here and there so here is my quick guide to how I've done it. Convieniently there is a fuse box right behind the glove box (UK RHD car). Getting to the fuse box was in my opinion the most difficult task! The instruction manual does describe the process but it still took some figuring out. The glovebox is hinged at the bottom, has 2 bump stops (one either side) and a damping arm. The damping arm is removed by first pressing the lowest pivot point of the arm towards the engine, this should free the bottom pivot point and allow the arm to be detatched from the glove box. The 2 bump stops are freed by pressing them away from the glove box, see photo. From there it's pretty straigh foward. I used piggy-back/add a fuse to take a switched feed from fuse 47. For a return I used a ring tag on the T27 torx bolt that holds the fusebox in place, it's not ideal as the fuse box is plastic but I couldn't find anything easier or better that didn't probably involve taking more things apart. Routing the cable to the dashcam was simple, drops easily out the back of the glove/fuse box, behind the rubber seal up the door frame/A pillar and along the top of the headlining/windscreen. Hope this helps others with installing a dashcam. Cheers John

About time I started to document the changes that have happened to my Fabia vRS in the last few years.. Back in 2003 I was working for Skoda and had the chance to run the then new Mk1 Fabia vRS as my company car when they were launched. I had a fair few of them with various option on and fondly remember the punchy nature of the car, the frugal nature of the unstressed PD130 power train and the rarity on the roads. Fast forward 12 years and I'm now in a position to replace a rather crusty Peugeot 206 GTi 180 that I'd been using for high days and holidays with something different that could still see the occasional trackday, and be a willing B road car when required. At this point I'm still in the motor trade so the new toy would be a garage queen most of the time, and be a hobby for me to indulge in. I was quite specific in what I wanted in the Fabia, it had got to be Yellow, and more importantly it had to be the later (2006 onwards) brighter Sprint Yellow as I preferred that over the earlier more pastel like Lemon yellow. Downside was there were not many sold in the later brighter colour as the SE models were out at the time and they were easily more popular... Why Yellow? Why not, I drive very nice but very grown up cars every day so wanted something a bit in your face and obvious... odd for a 40 something bloke but hey ho.... I looked at a few utter turds in the process and finally stumbled across a vague badly photographed trade advert for one on the Autotrader "oop north". From the add I could see it had a sunroof, but there were no mentions of the Xenons, or heated seats that I could see in the pictures. One phone call later and myself and my car geek sidekick are heading north to pick it up. Quite a reasonable if old fashioned used car garage, when I got there I noticed it had in addition to the Electric Sunroof and Xenons, that it also had ESP and side airbags.... on the downside it had a swimming pool in the rear footwells and the rear brakes were about dead. Cue some hard bartering and I drove away, happy with my purchase.. Pics from the Autotrader advert.. The car was originally a company car for Hitachi Capital fleet and still had their rear number plate on, it had done 80k in the first four years of its life down south and had got a full Skoda FSH with it, One private owner and continued history from then until 90k. It was showing 99k when I bought it so was rapidly approaching it's 100k birthday. First pictures when I got it home.. The more eagle eyed amongst you will notice the rear door cards missing in the last pic, yes, first job on day one was to reseal the rear doors with plumbers gold and dry the rear carpets out. The car was at this point utterly and totally standard, due a 100k service, needing rear brakes, a couple of tyres and the wheels refurbing.. being a fussy old bugger means if its worth doing it's worth doing right. The next few weeks saw very little driving but an awful lot of driveway fettling. I drew up a list of items to replace upgrade in one go, sounds daunting but sometimes getting stuck in is the only way. The car would be used for trackdays and European holidays so braking and suspension upgrades would be necessary and why replace with standard if QUALITY performance parts could be utilised. No cheap upgrades here. So, suspension wise the following were purchased (all new.... ouch) Bilstein B8 Dampers front and rear Eibach 30mm Pro-Sport lowering Springs Genuine Drop Links Gen Top mounts and bearings Gen Bottom Ball joints Gen front damper dust bellows Gen rear top mounts Gen rear bump stops I sourced a good used Jabba RARB and sent that off for powdercoating. Braking wise the 312mm conversion was the most obvious upgrade so I sourced a set of low mileage Octavia mk1 VRS front calipers, got a new pair of genuine VW 312 front discs and a set of OMP road and sport pads which I have used for many years with good results. The rears were treated to a new pair of Genuine skoda green rear calipers, new VW 232mm rear discs and gen skoda pads. While the car was living its life on 4 axle stands the wheels were taken to City Powder coaters in Birmingham for a full refurb in Light Gunmetal, and a set of new 205/45/16 Hankook V12 Evo2 tyres fitted. I had also bought new genuine alloy centre caps and a complete set of wheel nut covers in black from TPS. End result after a few weekends of skinned knuckles and swearing.. My private number plate had also found its way on by this point. More to follow... mostly intense detailing and really getting into the car to get it looking its best.

Various available to download: