EpicFishFingers

My car: 2014 Skoda Octavia SE Estate with the 1.6l diesel, 105hp engine and 5 speed manual My problem: I'm fitting front pads and discs myself: my 1st try failed because the parts were wrong, and they may not even refund me. My question: how do I discover, with 100% accuracy, what exact part I need for my car? Please first just tell me exactly which parts I need, for front pads and discs, on the above car Did you use your VIN number or some other part number hidden in your car or on the brakes to discover the correct part numbers? How do I feed this number to online parts sellers, to return compatible parts? Can I reliably repeat this process when buying other car parts in the future? E.g. when I need to do the rears? So I'm new to fitting brake discs and pads: only done the pads on my mx5 before and bought EBC yellowstuff ones which just fitted and that was all; easy. Decided to change my front brake pads and discs on my octavia myself but both parts were wrong: the discs were 288mm, not 276mm, and the brake pads were too big and did not have central metal clips to house them in the caliper carrier. I only discovered this after getting the car on jackstands and stripping a corner down, old disc off, new one on and oh look, it touches the caliper mount points, so it'd rub on them when driving (if the carrier would even reseat...) Then I found the pads didn't fit either, so the whole job was a failure; I had to put the old parts back on. Absolutely gutted. I discovered this just before Euro Car Parts would close (with no car in 1 piece, I'd have not made it there anyway). Open again Monday, so discovered the error too late to be able to rectify it by buying the right bits. So on 18th November I bought the parts off Euro Car Parts, collected 1 week later. - I entered my number plate and it confirmed "SKODA, Octavia, 2015, 1.6" (mine is a 2014 but when selecting "i don't know my number plate" and entering make and model, same results) ECP then showed me compatible products; top entry was the 288mm discs, and I chose a Pagid one, part number 104441238. Same for the pads; I chose a Pagid set, part number 101442108 Between holidays and Christmas, I oonly got round to fitting yesterday; 60 days after... ECP have a 60 day return period. I processed the return online last night and it went through okay, but of course I've opened the boxes and sat them on the wet ground, pulled them around etc. So, I'm crossing everything tomorrow that they don't reject the return because Monday is Day 62 (though return was processed on day 60, and the collect-to-return day will be day 55), or reject because they're not in good enough condition due to boxes being opened, or because I "should have known they weren't right". Edit: I still want to do this work myself; I'm not just giving up and taking it to a garage. I just want to make sure the 2nd try is the successful one. You can probably sense my frustration with this: I'm seeing dozens of pads and discs, and 0 ways to be sure which ones are correct! when I search on other websites, AutoDOC, GSF, etc, I'm getting many different conflicting options and although some pads look like they'd fit, and some discs say they're 276mm, what if e.g. there are multiple types of pads with central clips? What if there's >>1 variant of the 276dia rotors? What if I get it wrong a 2nd time? I'm sure this has been asked many times but I tried searching these forums and got 0 relevant results: searching "Octavia front brake pads 2014 diesel" returned 2 results from a "brake fluid change" thread, then a thread about the Skoda Superb, then one about "are factory fitted Octavia IV batteries OEM?". Google search was also fruitless (your search may well be influenced by your online activity e.g. use of this forum so please spare me the "I found this thread straight away" replies!) Also the service manual says nothing either. Wish I'd bought the Haynes manual but would that even confirm it for me? I'm going mad, here. Please help.