garethw

The diesel model will have much stronger springs and stiffer dampers than a 1.2 petrol especially if it is a turbo diesel. If your car is a 2003 then you will be due a set of shock absorbers and springs it is also good practice to replace the strut top bearings at the same time. If one spring has gone the other side won't be far behind it. Given the cheap cost of new parts these days and the fact there are no nearly new cars to take parts from it is not worth fitting scrap yard parts.

From what I remember they are 8mm or 10mm nuts on the inside. I don't see how you can drill up from inside the car so good luck with that. You will need the gutter infill rails from the donor vehicle as the roof bar ones have plastic blocks inset to stop water leaking. I ended up having to buy new ones and they were not cheap. Just release the A B and C pillar trims , peel back the inner door seals and then you should be able to get behind the head lining. Its a bit of a fiddly job

I am just awkward then.

Unless you tow or continuously overload it, the fronts will break quicker than the back IMHO especially with a diesel. However hard I try I can;t justify why all the ones I have seen go break at the top on the front.... I know the back ones break at the bottom because of corrosion. When one has gone you just know the other won't be far behind.

The combination of modern springs and speed bumps makes them a consumable item. I have two of these cars, one went through all 4 springs between 95k and 100k and the other broke both front springs within a year at around 105k. IMHO replace in pairs and change the strut top bearing when you do the fronts.

You have a PM

IMHO its perfectly feasible to fit a towbar, you may have to be slightly creative as the VRS rear bumper is not the same shape as a normal bumper. The only problem you may have is with type approval and fine print in your insurance. If you are towing a small trailer with a motor-cross bike on I can;t believe it will be that stressful. When I talked to the dealer their excuse was that SKODA were worried about DMF failures. Quite how that pans out when equivalent VW models use the same engine/gearbox/clutch combination I don;t know. There are pluses and minuses to a swan neck type that you show. The main one being that you can typically get a removable version. The minus point it is slightly less convenient to mount your electrics connector and if you want a stabiliser you have to use the type that bears on the ball. This is not a bad place to start :- https://www.pfjones.co.uk/tow-bars/tow-bars-for-skoda/skoda-fabia-towbars/tow-bars-for-fabia-hatchback/skoda-fabia-hatchback-towbars-1999-2007.html

There will always be a certain amount of flickering from the headlights under high load situations and if the sensor to the PAS pump is faulty then it could cause the pump to work too hard. Another thing worth checking the alternator load wire connection is not broken at the connector on the front of the gearbox.

If the lack of communications error is to the PAS pump then it is also possible the CAN bus wiring is damaged under the battery tray. However I have replaced 3 pumps and typically the fault is caused by the pump electronics being degraded by water ingress. Replacing the pump is not a hard job and replacements are now more reasonably priced than they used to be.

I a log with one of the faults you have to my local expert and they recommended changing the motor(s). I am not certain how the flap position is sensed, if it was a pot then that would explain the limited life. 5 years later the spare motor is still on the shelf....... I have the controller memory error aswell and my theory on the controller memory error is that too many errors have possibly corrupted the EEPROM area in the controller module.

In reply to the OP. If you have a standard 130 bhp VRS and don;t plan any other mods then a fancy filter is going to do almost nothing. One of these kits that puts a cone filter on the end of a hose instead of in the airbox, will quite possibly loose performance because the air is going to be pulled in from the engine bay at a higher temperature and the amount of fuel fed to the engine is regulated in proportion to this. Although I run a K&N filter on my PD100 I am pretty certain you could get the same result by changing the standard element more often.

What @sepulchrave is not pointing out is that is that on mark 1s if you want low mileage car most of those are now going to be saloons. Because the prices have almost bottomed out you really are just buying on condition and service history not the age. Also there is the issue of how much motorway driving you are going to do i.e. a PD100 is way better suited to the motorway and fast A-roads than town driving IMHO. On short journey the PD100 is giving 38mpg compared to 52mpg for the SDi.

No brainer, there are several people on here that would be interested.

So barely run in. I have used the PD oil in mine with no problems just on the basis one of my cars is a PD. But I have also used lower grade oils.

Having been involved with engine swaps back in the day where you didn't have the electronic constraints of modern vehicles the only time they make sense are :- 1. You have the new engine for free i.e. written off vehicle. 2. Competition reasons to meet some class requirement. 3. You are trying to make something that is a rare option or not available. In general you need both vehicles stood together buying individual parts is typically not economic/time effective. So given this just get another car, whether it is a PD100 or a VRS is dependent on how much you have to spend.

Eurocarparts or German and Swedish are where I get most of my parts. Where are you located.

I am quite surprised you can generate any black smoke because typically the need to meet emission level means the fueling is very low compared to diesels of old. All of the above posts @KenONeill and @clarendon462have the things you need to check. If you can indicate your mileage then that would be helpful. In terms of driving style it is pretty simple, there is no point in reving the engine past 3,150 rpm after this you are just making more noise and as @sepulchrave says putting needless wear on the gearbox. My general rule is to change up at 2100-2700 rpm depending on how fast i need to go and how big the load is on the engine, i.e. if you are trying to go up a big hill you will need to rev out to the higher rpm. If you are sympathetic and you know how to judge when the engine is starting to labor then is is possible to drive at 30mph in 5th. On the motorway you can cruise comfortably at the legal limit and still get 62+mpg. To make progress you need to think well ahead so if you are a new driver consider joining and Advanced driver group or at least get yourself a copy of roadcraft or subscribe on line.

Good work at least you didn;t swap your gearbox out only to find the bearing was mashed when putting it back together. So the box has 120k on it, 90k of that was on the motorway in 5th. If I was using it again I would split the two halves of the casing to cure the small leak it has (from new). Synchro is not the best on 2nd, but certainly more than usable. Not certain at the moment what a reasonable price is but I would deliver. PM me your postcode so I can work out how much grief it is to get there. Dont throw your old hub assy I have a repair kit for the guide bush pin.

Thanks for that quick list do you know which is the best gearbox code to go for ? Does the clutch bolt into different holes or do you need a flywheel aswell ? Is there anyway of re-coding the speedo instead of a new one ?

The most I have ever got out of a wheel bearing is 120k or so. If you need a gearbox I have one.

Yes, it can be done but I ended up having to disconnect the steering arm and drop link on the passenger side to get enough clearance. Perhaps I was not being brutal enough. If you post where you are in the country maybe some-one who has the tool will chip in with an offer of a loan or help.

A +1 on checking the nylon pads. I would also advise replacing the fitting kit, one of the pins failed through corrosion on my car causing the brake shoe to go out of position. You can do the job without taking the rear hub off if you are changing the wheel cylinder bu tI would recommend checking the tightness of the wheel bearing nut retaining nut as this managed to work loose on the drivers side on one car and caused premature failure of the bearing.

Hi Ken,I am certain the smoke is oil. So I stripped it down and had the turbo rebuilt at at cost of £180 + the cost of the gaskets and new lock nuts. The job was not to hard and it took me about 3 hours to strip it and 3 hours to re-build. Could probably do it faster than that now I have some idea of the best order to do it in. The oil feed and return were spotless but the EGR and ASR were really caked in black muck. A fairly decent amount of oil came out of the intercooler and pipework when i cleaned them. Car now drives much better with no smoke, will check the oil consumption once it has run for a month. Thanks for the advice.

My Sdi gearbox leaked from one of the joints about 150ml every 5k or so. I just kept topping it up. Be aware the first time you fill it you will probably put a lot more oil in than the factory did. I did 120,000 with it like that.

Mine is also AXR and has always used a bit of oil between services. It reached a critical stage recently and went to using a pint every thousand miles. Just had the turbo reconditioned as just over 50k miles. What I would say is that the EGR value and the anti shudder valve were very clogged with coke and black tar, so that may have contributed by pulling oil through the crank case breather. Short journeys and a not very sympathetic first owner probably have not helped.