jon15

I created a playlist with my favorite songs in iTunes and then exported a .m3u file onto my Mac, and then from Mac to my SD card, hoping to play it in Bolero. But when I tap on the .m3u playlist file in Bolero it says "No playable files available". Needless to say that my entire iTunes library is already on that SD card, but I would like to play that specific playlist. I thought once I tapped on the playlist file in Bolero it would then automatically find all these songs on the SD card and index them to be played... Any ideas?

Looks nice! And 4.6 L/100 km is very impressive, though I'd assume a greater portion of your trip was downhill rather than uphill?

I keep my Start/Stop system on most of the times, except when I know that my car will be idling for less than 10 secs. (I read some research that idling for more than 10 secs uses more fuel & emits more CO2 than restarting the engine. Not sure how reliable it is, though.)

Makes sense, thanks guys.

These dents are below all 4 doors and seem to be on all Fabias. What's the purpose?

53 mpg. My daily commute is 7.5 mi one way, of which cca. 80% is a regional road and the rest is town.

In my Fabia going from 2nd to 3rd gear seems the worst.. and reverse too. The rest is fine.

110 6-speed manual, 16" tires (215 45 16). In mainland Europe our 6-speed Fabias come with manual transmission rather than DSG. My average fuel consumption over the past year was 5.35 L/100 km...which is cca. 53 mpg. I tend not to use AC all the time if not needed. Here are a few of my observations regarding fuel consumption: 1. In the wintertime the consumption is clearly higher due to winter tires and cold temps, so it's more like 5.6 or 5.7 L/100 km, but in the summertime it's easier to get lower consumption, i.e. 5.3 or 5.2 L/100 km, so it combines into cca. 5.4 L/100 km. My daily commute is 12km one way, and I should mention that my usual drive doesn't involve more than 20-25% town, which helps a lot in achieving better fuel consumption. Town drive with constant stops and acceleration is a real killer for these TSI machines. 2. Tire size & pressure definitely also have quite an impact on consumption. I'm sure I could get several dcl lower consumption if I had for example 185 60 15 tires. And if I lowered the tire pressure to 2.2 bars (or even 2.1 bars). I keep my tire pressure on 2.3 bars (all 4 tires), but I tried lowering the pressure to 2.2 bars for a couple of weeks this past summer and consumption definitely seemed to have increased by a couple of dcl. The ride, however, became less stiff... which is a good thing. So it seems it's either slightly softer ride with higher consumption, or stiffer ride with lower consumption... for now I've still opted for latter.

Nice, looks really good.. (perhaps even slightly too low up front, I'd be a bit anxious when it comes to pavement curbs :) ) So I'm assuming the ride is now even stiffer than it was previously on your sports suspension? As far as my Fabia is concerned I'm actually OK with the front part, I'm mostly annoyed with the height in the back...

Exactly! The sports suspension is only 15 mm lower than regular suspension as far as I know, which is pretty much a joke indeed. Should've gone at least 25 mm with it. It looks good in the front but if you look from the back it's just too high from the ground ("up on stilts" - yes, that's a good way of putting it, hah). P.S.: I see that you have a Monte Carlo so I'm assuming 17", which probably makes the arch gap less apparent.

I see, thanks. Could I use this to lower just the rear suspension, or would I need to replace the springs in the front as well? Would it make the ride even stiffer if I lowered the rear part for, say, 2 cm?

My Fabia has a sports suspension & 16" alloys, but one thing that still bothers me about its appearance is the arch gap on the rear side. The car looks really good in the front where it's considerably lower than in the rear, so I wish I could lower it 2-3 cm in the back. Is that possible or would I need to buy new springs? If possible, could it in any way have an adverse effect on my car in the long run? Also, would it make my ride even stiffer? (Sports suspension already makes it rather stiff.) P.S.: if I lowered the suspension in the back, would it affect aerodynamics and thus fuel consumption?

Thanks for your input, everyone. I'm still looking for options -- I'm not from UK though...

I have a Fabia with sports suspension and 16s and the ride is rather stiff. I can only imagine it'd be even stiffer with 17s... I do still wish, however, the suspension were a couple of cm lower in the back. As someone above mentioned "it looks like its on stilts". Well, it's not that bad.. but seeing Peugeots, Kias, Hyundais and the likes all sitting nicely low on standard suspensions makes me a bit annoyed with Skoda!

Does anyone have this & is it durable? http://www.superskoda.com/Skoda/FABIA-III/Fabia-III-Hatchback-original-Skoda-netting-system-under-the-parcel-shelf

Oh, and the pics:

Within the last month I got 2 dents on my Fabia wheel arches: one on the front left and one on the rear right arch. It really ****es me off because it almost seems it were done intentionally by someone. Anyway, is there an easy way to fix this? (yes, these are small dents but noticeable enough for me to be annoyed with them )? It seems the paint didn't get chipped away, by the way.

Thanks, I came across that eBay store where they sell touch up paint myself, but it seems they have only one black color for all, which makes me a bit sceptical. I'll probably just order the black gloss color of the roof and try to apply it to some scratches on the wheels. If it doesn't do the job I'll try Halfords gloss black touch up as Forge above suggested.

How can I update my Bolero? By entering my VIN number on the Skoda website's Update Portal (http://updateportal.skoda-auto.com/en-US/Updates/TMBEN6NJ5FZ011009)? If so, I've done it before but there were no updates for my VIN... Or is there another way? At any rate, looks like I'll have to convert my Asian mp3 ID3 tags into pinyin (Chinese romanization system)...

Is that the same color as the black paint of the roof?

I'll be ordering some touch up paint for my Fabia at the local dealership and was thinking I'd also use some of it on my black beam alloys. My Fabia is dark metallic gray/black combo (black roof and black alloys), and I've managed to find the paint code for the gray part + the roof, but it seems that the alloys are of a slightly brighter shade of black than the roof, so I guess I couldn't just use the roof touch up paint for some of the scratches on my alloys? Does anyone know the paint code for black beam alloys?

I checked my Asian mp3s and most of them are in the UTF-16 unicode format, anyway. A couple of them in UTF-8 format and some in ISO-8859-1. If anything, at least UTF-8 should have worked, no? But none of them are displaying in Bolero - all I see is crossed out squares. Really disappointing, especially after the local dealership also confirmed there was allegedly no language pack that could be installed, either. :(

I called the dealership where I bought my Fabia and as expected they didn't know if it was possible. They said they'd check if there are any updates available online (like Asian language pack) though they said it most likely won't be possible and I'm pretty skeptical myself about it. Is there an official Skoda email address where I could send my inquiry to?

Thanks for your reply. I'll try this first and see if it helps! Somehow I still think it's Bolero software problem - after all it doesn't even support any non-European languages in the menu to begin with.

Anyone? :/ It's pretty annoying not being able to see what song is playing, but only seeing squares instead of the fonts.