BlackMaria

It is mate. Send me a PM if interested as I get a notification to my phone. Replies to this topic I only get notified on a Sunday. Cheers.

For sale 2 X 4L cans of Castrol Edge bought for a 1.8t vRS. Unopened, brand new, the proper grade oil for the 1.8t, NOT Magnatec. Also have 1 x Bosch oil filter. Collection only (or I'll box if you arrange courier) from Manchester. Quick sale £50 the lot. Please PM me if interested. Nick

For sale, black mk1 Octavia estate tailgate in good condition barring a bit of a dent on the top edge. Easily filled. No rust. Complete with heated screen, wiper mechanism/arm, stop light and wiring loom. £65 collected from Manchester.

Attached are a load of photos from various angles, showing the inside and out, plus the rust on the tailgate. I've also included a shot of the replacement tailgate. Any questions, please ask.

Standard vRS estate for sale. This car has covered 123k and had a new cam belt kit (belt, hydraulic tensioner, idler and water pump) at 118k. At the same time the oil pick up pipe and oil pump were replaced and the engine thoroughly flushed to remove any oil build up. I recently changed two of the coil packs as well. At the same time as the service items above, I also changed the front and rear shock absorbers using genuine Skoda part. Also had two new Goodyear Efficient Grip tyres on the front a couple of months ago. MOT until June 2016. The car is half black leather, half white cloth interior which is in good condition throughout, accepting some signs of age, but no rips or tears. Air conditioning is still ice cold. The engine uses no oil or coolant whatsoever. The car runs beautifully in all driving, from a quick trip to the shops to a 10 hour journey travelling to the south coast and back. I regularly get 37mpg and have made over 40mpg on long steady runs. 180bhp 1.8T engine is sweet as a nut and is very rewarding to drive - it's very gentle at lower revs, but has some real go about it when on fast country lanes. It's been a great car but I've decided to get a diesel because I have a new job which involves a lot of driving. Things that I want to point out. The tailgate has some rust below the window (shown in the photos), but I have a spare tailgate with no rust in the same black which I will throw in. There are a couple of chips in the windscreen, but they are not an MOT failure. The engine light is on but I am told it is just a sensor - it doesn't affect the way the car drives, and again is not an MOT failure. I'm based in Manchester, and I'm happy for you to come and view the car, and test drives are fine as long as you can demonstrate that your insurance covers you to drive the car (I still have it insured). Thanks for looking. Get in touch and grab yourself a retro classic!

Bit low that, Leeboy. £180 posted next day delivery..

I'm open to offers as I'm having a major clear out and just want to recoup some cost. Promise not to bump this again

Thought I'd provide an update on this. Bought a head from ebay and used it for donor parts. Got my old boy over to help me as he's an aircraft engine engineer. We took lifters out of my head and dropped new cam in. Taking the lifters out enabled me to torque the cam up on all bearings (bar the one that died from oil starvation) and because there's no valve spring tension (lifters taken out) we could turn the cam by hand by hand. Then we systematically fitted each of the donor bearing caps and torqued down. First bearing retainer was too tight and I couldn't turn the cam. Repeated until we found a donor cap that was spot on. As a crosscheck we then removed all caps except the tensioner and the donor cap. No discernible play whatsoever. Put the whole thing back together, making sure we drowned the top end in engine oil and started her up. Sweet as a nut! That was 2500 miles ago, weekly daily driving to work and a family holiday to Cornwall and back and it hasn't missed a beat. So the moral of the story is don't be too hasty to scrap your 1.8t just because of a bit of black sludge ;-)

Now Sold. Thanks Mankee!

Mankee, call it £135 and you're on. I'll drop them off at a collection point today, although they may not get picked up until Tuesday with it being a bank hol and all that.

I have now sold the ARB kit, but do still have the 20mm lowering springs for sale.

Cheers Big Lee. Yeah that's a shame timing-wise. I see you've got a TT and a vRS - these arbs fit both cars! :p

Hello and thanks for looking. I have for sale a pair of TT cast wishbones, left 8N0 407 165, right 8N0 407 166 and a complete set of Lemforder bushes and ball joints to suit. The rear wishbone bush is the proper solid type without the voids in the rubber. The wishbones are from a 2002 car and are therefore used, but the bushes and ball joints are brand new in their boxes. Bushes in arms front 8N0 407 182A LEMFORDER 266060 rear 8N0 407 181B LEMFORDER 2713201 As you can see from the above photo, these are OEM Audi branded bushes that have had the logo removed. Ball joint 8N0 407 365C LEMFORDER 2836002 I'm asking £200 for the lot, open to offers. Please let me know if you want any further details, I'm happy to provide any further info or photos. I'm based in Chorlton in Manchester, and I'm happy if you want to come and view before buying. Cheers, Nick

Hello and thanks for looking. I've got a brand new in box set of H&R -20mm springs for a mk1 vRS. The H&R code is 29124-1 and are the set shown in this link (except they are blue in colour) http://www.awesomegti.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=AWS35635 Springs Cost £170 - asking £150 I'm based in Chorlton in Manchester and I am more than happy for anyone to have a look at the parts, or to request photos or more details. Cheers, Nick

So the saga continues. This is the car that conked out the day I bought it due to low oil pressure. It's had a new oil pump, multiple flushes and a new pickup pipe. I've also replaced all the suspension, and bought an H&R ARB kit (never fitted - might soon be for sale!). Not massively relevant to this thread, but just an outpouring over the amount of money thrown at this car... Came to dismantle head tonight to replace chain tensioner (taken out by oil starvation I suspect) and found that journal cap 4 and the journal itself are toast on the inlet camshaft. Question for everyone on here. Does anyone have a spare inlet cam and the original retaining caps? I'm aware that they are inline bored, but I reckon that I've got half a chance if I get 4 and try them all for fit. It would be a shame if it was the end of the road from an otherwise good car... All help/advice/spare camshafts and retaining caps gratefully received!! EDIT... Picture of the journal and retaining cap added... It's not pretty :-@

Oh yeah, the other thing you can do is look at the sticker on the inside of your service book. It's got a load of PR numbers arranged in a matrix. Type them into this page http://prsearch.planetvag.com/ and you can figure out which is the spring listing for your car (I think!)

I'm really no expert! I've only had a Skoda for a month, but what I have learned is that TPS (The Parts Specialist) are probably the best place to go if you want the right part for the car (I wasted a lot of time with after market shocks). Having said that, with your car having standard (not sports) suspension (correct me if I'm wrong anyone), you may find standard springs pretty cheap on CarParts4Less - that's where I get most of my stuff from these days... http://www.carparts4less.co.uk/car-springs They list two different rear springs (£37 / £45) and one front spring (£44) all Sachs...

Have you had a look for the part numbers here? http://www.partscats.info/skoda/en/?i=cat_vag_models&brand=sk

They are the correct ones for the vrs. I saw it on the screen PR-G85 which is the sports suspension. Should have mine fitted in next few days and will report back. I must have wasted 24 hours of my life trying to find the correct part as most manufacturers cross reference say their shocks fit but don't have the mounting for the arb. These ones do.

Right, in case anyone wants to know for future reference, I just got front and rear shocks for my mk1 Octavia vRS estate (1u5) from TPS in Trafford Park. They were really helpful and got me the OEM part numbers and the part number for the front struts from their FourPlus economy range. Fronts 1J0413031CM - Gen VAG Skoda part number (£200 pair) JZW413031N - Gen VAG FourPlus economy range (£86 pair) Rears 1J9513025A Superseded by 1J9513025E (Sachs on sticker) - Gen VAG Skoda part number (£100 pair) I ended up going for the FourPlus on the fronts. Asked the guy why anyone would not go for them and he didn't really have a good answer. He showed me the listing on the computer and both front shocks are for the PR-G85 suspension set up, and they DO HAVE the mounting bracket for the drop links on the vRS. Thanks to Wino for steering me in the direction of TPS. I had read somewhere on the forum that people were having trouble shopping there as they were clamping down on retail customers, but Trafford were really helpful to me. I'll post back once I've had the parts fitted with the verdict on the FourPlus parts...

Right, in case anyone wants to know for future reference, I got the parts I need from TPS in Trafford Park. They were really helpful and got me the OEM part numbers and the part number for the front struts from their FourPlus economy range. Fronts 1j0413031cm - Gen VAG Skoda part number (£200 pair) JZW413031N - Gen VAG FourPlus economy range (£86 pair) Rears 1j9513025a Superseded by 1j9513025e (Sachs on sticker) - Gen VAG Skoda part number (£100 pair) I ended up going for the FourPlus on the fronts. Asked the guy why anyone would not go for them and he didn't really have a good answer. He showed me the listing on the computer and both front shocks are for the PR-G85 suspension set up, and they DO HAVE the mounting bracket for the drop links on the vRS. Thanks to Wino for steering me in the direction of TPS. I had read somewhere on the forum that people were having trouble shopping there as they were clamping down on retail customers, but Trafford were really helpful to me. I'll put these part numbers in the DIY OEM parts list post as well, to make them easier to find.

I went to TPS in Trafford Park today and they were very helpful. Ended up buying their economy range front shocks for £85 pair and ordered a pair of OEM shocks for the rear £100 pair, so as long as 'economy' doesn't mean 'sub-standard' then I'll be a happy man. Cheers for the lead, Wino.

I appreciate your help, Wino. I've learned everything I know about vRS suspension from extensive Googling and trawling this forum for previous owners in my shoes, plus a couple of other people have replied to another post. I'd found a website similar to the one you linked (the reference one), but it was all in Russian or Czech and I was having to try and work out what was what... I was under the impression TPS wouldn't sell to retail. There's one only a mile or two from me, so I'll give them a try.

Wino, thanks for the info. I've already found the code - 1J0413031CM, which is the PR-G85 for sports suspension. There are no alternative parts listed as far as I can see. What I cannot find is someone who sells an equivalent for these! I've already bought a set of four Bilstein B4s from GSF car parts, but whilst the rears might fit (not tried), the fronts won't because they don't have the mounting for the drop links... If necessary I'll get some from the main dealer, just trying to avoid the main dealer prices :-)

Afternoon everyone. I've just joined after buying a Mk1 vRS estate from a friend of my Dad's. I previously had a well-sorted Fiesta ST but a new baby forced sale. The car is in nice nick, and I knew it needed a bit of work on things like tyres, but I don't think any of us expected the oil pump to fail after 20 minutes of driving! I got the AA to tow me back from Derby to Manchester - I live in Chorlton if anyone is nearby. Anyhow, I've had the pump and oil changed, new cam belt and water pump and sorted the tyres and it's a great car. One thing I've really noticed is that the chassis is really not up to the power! In short my shocks are totally shot, I'm pretty sure they are the original (12 years, 118k miles) and I've spent the past few days trying to track down a set of fronts that will actually fit the vRS. Found plenty of threads on here with people having the same problem, but can't find anyone listing correct part numbers... So if anyone can shed any light on it, I'd be very grateful! I live in Chorlton in south Manchester, so if anyone is nearby, give me a shout. Cheers, Nick