Fitzwilliam

As suggested I enlisted an auto electrician and he found the fault was in the wiring, now sorted.

Plugged in my OBD reader this morning and cleared the fault code, have done about 30 miles today in 4 separate journeys, check engine light has remained off all day, so whatever the problem was it appears to have corrected itself.

Had the post cat oxygen sensor replaced yesterday, cleared the fault code unfortunately the check engine light is still coming on and showing the same fault code, I'm gutted 😞

Thanks for that, just checked prices for replacement part, seems to be about £40 so not too bad.

This afternoon while driving my 2011 Fabia VRS the check engine light came on, nothing appeared amiss with the running of the car so I carefully drove it back home. Once home I plugged in my OBD reader to check for fault codes, this was what it read, can anyone tell me what it means and how it can be fixed ?

My 2011 Fabia VRS has developed cloudy patches on the inside of the instrument panel glass which have started to become irritating particularly when the sun shines through the side window onto the instrument panel. Is anyone able to tell me how easy or difficult it is to remove the glass to either clean or replace it as no doubt as time goes on the problem will more than likely get worse ?

Totally agree with what you’re saying, as this is the only DSG, in fact only auto car of any kind I’ve owned so I can’t comment how it likely performs with other engines, I had a Rapid 1.2tsi Sport for a couple of years but that was manual, that would set off smartly without wheel spin if I remember correctly but being turbo only there’s always a little lag at very low revs until the boost starts under load, if I accelerated hard from low revs in a gear you could feel the shove come in strong at about 2300rpm. My big bugbear about DSG is although with the Twincharger there is prodigious torque from 2000rpm the box insists on dropping down several gears if you accelerate hard and flings the Rev counter needle towards the redline. Where less than blistering acceleration is needed I’ve started using manual and using my favourite main road overtaking gear, 4th and then applying hard but progressive amount of throttle so I avoid a needless downchange, I do the same when dealing with uphill or downhill gradients where the box tends to always select a lower gear than is really needed.

I’ve got a DSG box Skoda admittedly it’s a VRS Fabia, it’s the first auto box car I’ve ever had, even with the wide (215/40 17s) tyres it’s all too easy to spin up the wheels from a standstill particularly if the road is greasy, I think the clutch engagement is rather keen if you prod the accelerator a bit quick, coupled with the gear ratio of first being very low, it’s tricky but with a bit of practice it is possible to apply enough accelerator movement to get away smartly without wheel spin, also best to leave it in D rather than S.

Just checked Autotrader, 2010 &2011 VRS’s are going for £4250-£4500, 2013 & 2014 up to £7k, latest one selling at £7k has std heating not Climatronic and no cruise control so it’s a little overpriced imo.

I’ve had my 2011 VRS for almost a year now, I’ve found fuel consumption can vary wildly depending on how it’s driven as well as weather conditions. The sort of use you say you’ll give it should produce 45mpg+, short journeys in winter have been yielding me about 33-35, cold ambient temperatures means oil temperature takes a long time to climb, even with water temperature at normal 90 degrees it can take another 10 miles + to get the oil that warm (check the display) it’s only then the economy will be at its best. You mention cruise control, not many cars came fitted with it as standard, I had it retrofitted on mine for £350 in the summer, the 90 mile round trip to Awesomegti in Manchester returned the best economy figure I’ve managed, 51mpg on a scorching hot day. Oil consumption too can vary wildly, my 2011 CAVE engine has done 60k miles now, long high speed motorway runs it uses about 0.3 litres/1000 miles but lots of short journeys from cold starts it’s closer to 1 litre/1000 miles needless to say weekly or fortnightly checks are recommended depending on the mileage you do.

Thanks for the recommendations, there seems to be quite a selection of Philips bulbs at different prices, the Osram bulbs are a bit more than what I want to lay out.

Now the winter is in full swing I’ve started doing quite a bit of driving in the dark and I’m finding the headlights on my 2011 Fabia VRS are barely adequate considering the performance of the car, beam pattern on dip and main beam is fine it’s just that the intensity is poor. Can anyone suggest an upgrade headlight bulb that will give a brighter and whiter light output at a not too excessive cost (under £20). I have seen some bulbs advertised which supposedly give double the brightness of standard bulbs, that imo is probably going too far, I’d be happy with 25-50% brighter, any suggestions ?

Having had my steering rack replacement in situ for nearly two months now I have to say the improvement over the old one has become more noticeable the more I drive it, I think there was rather more up with the original than just worn seals and fluid loss, I get the feeling that the rack/pinion teeth were pretty worn as well and there was probably some amount of play which had gone unnoticed , with the new rack the turn in is now so much sharper than before, it almost seems like the steering ratio has been made quicker, not sure if there was ever a change made to the ratio through the production run at all, anyhow the car has a much more chuckable go cart like quality now which really puts a smile on my face, helps take the sting out of how much it cost me.

Not sure if you may have seen my posts on the VRS oil consumption issues thread but my 2011 Cave engined VRS has a lot of variation in how much oil it uses depending on the type of use the car gets, my normal driving, short journeys of under 10 miles after a cold start gives an oil consumption of approximately 800 miles per litre. Based on a recent long motorway run I made the consumption for that worked out at around 0.3 litres per 1000 miles. Depending on how many miles you’re doing I’d suggest you check the oil level every week and try to keep it topped up to the maximum on the dipstick, the more you drive with the level low the faster the oil will get used imo.

Well as it turned out 5 months on, with increasing mileage the steering fluid leak just got worse and worse to the point of the leak showing on the ground noticeably where I park my car so I’ve had to have the rack replaced. Managed to pick up a recon rack from Steering Specialists Ltd who are based in Wakefield and who sell via ebay, paid £119.99 delivered. Surprisingly not done on an exchange basis. Unit delivered in 2 days. The rack appears to have been remanufactured to a high standard, basically looking just like brand new. Got the car back from my mechanic this morning, cost for fitting including retracking/ wheel alignment £280, so a grand total of £400, I believe a new OEM rack main dealer fitted would probably have been well into 4 figures so I got off fairly light. Although the steering with the original rack was pretty good the “feel” with the replacement rack seems better.

Did my 300 mile round trip yesterday. Probably 200 miles at 65-70 mph the rest a mix of enforced 60 and50 limits. During the journey oil temp was pretty stable at 94-95 degrees It would appear that the numerous suggestions from other VRS owners that lots of short journeys after cold starts gives high oil consumption is right on the money. Having set the oil level at the maximum before yesterday’s journey this morning I half expected the level check would see it down to the hatched area, to my astonishment (and joy) the level drop was tiny, maybe down 0.5mm or so from the maximum mark, I’m guessing on the journey it used under 100mls, maybe 60-70mls at my best estimation. Even if 100mls had been used it would make the average consumption 0.33 litres per 1000 miles, which I have to admit that I’d be perfectly happy with. I have to admit in all the cars I’ve ever owned I’ve never observed such a big difference in oil consumption with the type of usage the car gets, the VRS obviously prefers high speed long runs. I was hoping the journey would see the car top 50 mpg, so the 47.6 mpg the trip meter registered was just a little disappointing.

Edit to last post I meant 5w30 C3 🙂

Since getting my VRS in January I’ve been trying to get a handle on exactly how much oil my car is actually using, after a few months of checking and topping up my car has now covered just short of 4K miles and I’m now getting close to having used all of the 5 litres of 5w40 C3 oil I bought when I got the car I’ve been able to do a pretty accurate calculation, the result of which is an oil consumption figure of 735 miles per litre, tbh it’s quite a bit better than I expected considering the comments by other users about lots of short journeys from cold starts causing higher consumption. The 100% accurate figure may be a bit lower as I did do an oil and filter change about halfway through the 4K miles, so 700 miles per litre may be a better estimate. Next week I’ll be doing a journey of 300 miles or so, the longest since I got it, it will be interesting to see if the oil consumption is less on a longer run. From my accurate measures when topping up my oil I’ve estimated that from the very maximum mark on the dipstick to the top of the hatched area is 0.3 litres so I’m going to set it at the maximum before I set off and then check the volume needed to refill the morning after to see if the consumption is less.

Just thought I’d put in an update since I did the oil and filter change and went to 5w40. I’ve done about a further 1500 miles since changing to 5w40 and tbh it’s made no difference whatsoever to the oil consumption that I can detect, unfortunately it’s had a detrimental effect on my fuel economy to the tune of 10-15% so not good, even fairly long runs being a struggle to get close to 40mpg.As soon as I realised this was happening I started doing my topups with 5W30 C3 again. Having now put in over a litre of C3 in topups the fuel consumption is beginning to recover noticeably and will hopefully return to what it was previously once there is not much residual 5W40 left in the sump. A 30+ mile trip out of town the other day returned 43mpg which is a bit more promising. In all other respects the car is performing beautifully.

I realise this thread is pretty old but I thought it probably better not to start a new one. I’ve been looking around for quite a while to try and get some paddle extensions for my 2011 Fabia VRS, I’ve seen plenty on Ebay and Amazon but virtually all of them fix on with double sided adhesive pads. With the recent spell of hot weather we’ve had I get the feeling in use they are very likely to come adrift so I’m not considered them. I have seen advertised online paddle extensions for Mercedes which clamp to the existing paddles with grub screws which seems a much better idea and is far less likely to come adrift in use. Does anyone know of any that are available for my VRS with this type of fixing ? If so can you put a web link in your reply. Cheers Steve

Took my car in yesterday for the MOT, passed no problem with no advisories, strange that it got an advisory last year, 3k miles ago for disc brake corrosion and scoring yet no mention this time. Also noticed that the max tolerances on the emissions tests have been tightened up, fast idle CO max is now 0.2% last year 0.3%, natural idle now 0.3% previous 0.5%. Got some comfort that my car measured 0.00% on the natural idle tests, same as last year, fast idle was actually better having dropped from 0.02% to 0.00% and the HC emission dropped from 21ppm to 14ppm, with the high oil consumption I thought it might have been worse this time, perhaps the recent oil and filter change may have had an effect.

Having done a reasonable number of miles since the oil change to 5w40 I’ve come to the conclusion that if there is any difference to the oil consumption relative to 5w30 C3 oil it appears to all intents and purposes to be negligible, I even did all the topping up with a graduated measuring cylinder to make sure I knew exactly how much oil I was adding, by my calculation my car is using approximately 1 litre of oil per 900 miles, a little disappointing but not unexpected. When the 5w40 is all used up I’ll make use of the remaining C3 stock that have left, be interesting to see if the MPG goes back to what it was previously.

I’m not sure if that’s true but I honestly doubt it, I had cruise control retrofitted to my Fabia VRS a few weeks ago, I had the work done at AwesomeGti in Manchester, I’d advise you to contact them as they specialize in all VW group vehicles so I’m sure you can get it done there, cost me £349.

The first trip of the day restarts trip 1 automatically, I leave trip 2 alone to run to give me the average over time although I did reset it after the oil change, tbh I rarely cover more than 10 miles in a single journey, I go to Doncaster about once every 3 weeks which is a round trip of about 25 miles, maximum speed normal roads 50mph, it was this trip that showed up the difference in fuel consumption, got 46.8mpg last week, same journey before the oil change gave 49.9mpg but the earlier journey was with the temperature about 5-6 degrees warmer which could have had an effect.

Tbh I never brim the tank, being a pensioner I rarely have enough surplus cash to do it, plus it’s carrying round extra weight needlessly, I just stick £15 or £20s worth in when I get paid, another reason I don’t do brim to brim to calculate the MPG anymore, the trip computer on my previous 3 skodas before this only had a 2-3% overread which is close enough for me, this ones probably closer to being accurate with it running 215 tyres, it’s just useful to see if anything’s changing.