Morris8

Having read the contributions on this thread and other forums I've found no-one who claims to have definitively resolved this issue; rather the general view seems to be that its most likely he high pressure fuel pump which can be noisy on some cars, including some from new, but not very noticeable on others. Significantly, Georgek said the noise went away when he disconnected the wiring to the hpfp; given this, I'm not sure why his VW dealer decided to change the lifters, and it's perhaps not surprising that this had no effect on the noise! I read of someone on a Polo forum who got rid of a tapping noise by replacing the tappet in the hpfp pump, but the noise returned in a few days, so no luck there either. At the moment the car runs fine, does not burn oil, has excellent fuel consumption, is not throwing up any codes etc. so I'm of the view that this noise on idle is more of an annoyance than anything else; i.e. unless it gets decidedly worse, and/or something obviously starts to go wrong with the engine, it's the sort of thing you could randomly throw huge amounts of time and money at for no benefit. Presumably most of these MK3 1.2 TSI models should have had or are due a cambelt change so that's a good opportunity to check the camshaft adjuster anyway.

OK , just to say that, as suggested by Wino, for my last oil change I used Quantum Platinum 5w 40 and poured about half a litre of oil into the filter canister before screwing in the filter. Much, much quieter on start up! A good result; thank you very much.

Many thanks for this reply. Getting used to the sounds of different modern engines is yet another challenge that old timers like me have to face. The agricultural sound of many modern units has a certain deja vu element to it. When I first drove an HTP the characteristic three cylinder thrumm, so beloved of many, sounded suspiciously to me like the gentle rumble of worn white metal big ends so familiar in my youth. In fact, other than the noise referred to above, the four cylinder 1.2 tsi engine in my wife's car sounds relatively smooth and quiet compared to many other engines I've heard.

I know this thread is rather old now, but I'm just checking whether anyone knows if this issue was ever resolved? I'm asking because I've just noticed that my wife's Fabia 2016 1.2 TSI 90 that she picked up a few weeks ago on just 23k miles is making exactly the same tapping sound as you can hear in GeorgeK's video. As in the video, you can hear it most prominently at around 1000-1100 rpm when revving slightly on idle, and it is not audible on lower revs or when driving along. The car drives really well; i.e. well pleased with otherwise. The car was serviced last July and it's only done a couple of k since, and was regularly serviced before then. If it is a rather noisy but otherwise 'normal' hpfp, I can (reluctantly) learn to live with it. But obviously, if it's a faulty camshaft adjuster or something else more sinister it'll need seeing to.

No I must admit I didn't use carbide lamps; even my Morris 8 had those new fangled electric bulb things. And I well remember some very dubious pub crawls in my mate's A40 Farina. Happy days!

Indeed, not to mention all that decoking and valve grinding; and it is nice not to need a starting handle in the depths or winter, or have those lovely Ford Pop vacuum wipers that come to a stop when you're going up hill!

Many thanks for these replies. As someone whose first cars had 6 volt systems and no flashing indicators it's taking me sometime to adapt to modern motoring!

Hello Everyone. My wife recently purchased 2016 1.2 tsi 90 Colour Edition Fabia which has these fancy LED running lights running along the bottom of the headlight unit. Given these look sealed into the unit, I can't see anyway of replacing them should they fail. So do I assume that I have to replace the whole headlight unit (a few hundred quid) if one of these LED bulbs fails? Another masterpiece of modern engineering? Thanks

Thanks for all these replies everyone. What I have ascertained is this for the Mk3 Fabia. 1. If the car battery is flat, and like mine, the manual lock is on the drivers door, you can gain access manually using the key, then if your car is deadlocked, you should still be able to open the bonnet by (carefully?) bending the release lever over the door trim (as I hoped). However, if the car is not deadlocked, then when you're in the car you should be able to open the passenger door with the inside door release and open the bonnet without bending the bonnet release lever. 2. If your manual lock is on the passenger door (pure Dacia) you're good to go at opening the bonnet by opening the passenger door with key, that is, unless you're up against some obstacle on the passenger side, in which case phone for a tractor or something. Having the lock on the passenger side also presents a problem if you're up against an obstacle and the fob fails for whatever reason. Does make you wonder though; if they have put the lock on passenger side on the Facelift model, is it because of the bonnet lever issue? At least the Mk3 Fabia has not got an electronic handbrake; they can be fun with a flat battery too. Ah, the joys of progress.

That's excellent; thanks a lot for your reply. Recently had to jump start my daughter's Yaris (battery stone dead after leaving lights on), so was on my mind!

Hello Everyone Sorry if this query has been answered already, but I can't find a thread on it. My wife has just bought a 2016 Mk3 Fabia 1.2 tsi 90, Colour Edition. In standard Skoda fashion, the bonnet release lever is on the LHS. No problem for my Mk2, as even when the passenger door is closed you can still release the bonnet. However, as far as I can see, with the MK3 you need to open the passenger door to operate the bonnet release lever; of so, then presumably if the car is deadlocked as it would normally be, you would not be able to open the bonnet if the battery were flat (so can't jump start etc.). So, two questions: 1. I note that with regard to the Octavia Mk3 (which has the same problem), some members have said that the plastic bonnet release lever is sufficiently flexible that you can still open the bonnet with the passenger door closed by bending the lever inwards as well as towards you. Is this also the case with the Mk3 Fabia? 2. If I have the car recoded so that it requires two clicks of the lock button on the fob to deadlock it (rather than one), like on most Japanese cars, then then in most instances the car would not be deadlocked and presumably it would be possible to gain entry using the key manually in the drivers door, and then opening the passenger door in the normal way using the inside door lever. Would I be correct in assuming this? Many thanks for any help. (Don't you just love the way they market cars these days; metallic paint, black alloys, bluetooth, touch screen, ticket clip on windscreen etc.etc. , but, by the way, if the battery is flat you're stranded because can't open the bonnet; great.)

Many thanks. Bought myself a rivet gun. Using it is less hassle than I thought (especially using aluminium rivets).

A quick question for anyone who has done this repair. If you remove the rivets from the speaker, when you come to mount the speaker again do you replace the rivets or can you reattach it using something easier to remove next time, like self tapping screws? Thanks.

Just to clarify, in a nutshell, my interpretation of Kral et al's conclusion is that even if you're using long life oil, if you're using a variable (extended) service interval based on the manufacturer's recommendation, you're asking for trouble no matter how you drive. No surprises there. However, it's also the case that if you're using a fixed interval schedule (because of severe driving conditions) you're better off with a more conventional oil. Now that is interesting. They don't actually go into why the latter is the case, but this thread is long enough already without speculating about that!

As an addition to this thread, I thought I’d add a piece about some extra research I’ve done. The particular issue that drew my attention was the proposition that longlife oils like vw504 spec. might actually damage your engine in the long run(in relative terms). As I said in my original post, if you look at basic specs. (like Lubrizol and oilspecifications.org), you might expect the contrary to be the case; i.e. you’d expect longlife oils to outperform more standard specs oils. However, at the same time, I’m keenly aware that, in the end, what really matters is what happens when you go out of the laboratory and test the oils in real cars, on real journeys. As I also intimated in my posts, one of the main problems in evaluating the characteristics of longlife oils is separating the effects of the oil from the service interval. If you only use longlife oils on extended intervals, and extended intervals lead to more engine failures, then inevitably there will be a correlation between engine failures and longlife oil use. Anyway, rather than again going over endless posts on this on various discussion websites, subjective personal opinions, and claims made by various manufacturers, I decided to look myself to see if there is any scientific literature that could help. I was particularly interested in scientific/engineering papers that had used actual vehicles on roads. I accessed these mainly through my university library which has papers for the Engineering Faculty. To summarise, my first main finding was that, notwithstanding a few anomalous reports apparently showing that some oils might actually improve a little with age up to a point, there is considerable empirical support in the engineering literature for the idea that stop-start short journeys, where the engine never warms up properly, play havoc with the oil (no matter what its quality). Moreover, even with modern synthetic oils, a severe or even dangerous degradation in the oil can occur with this kind of driving within just a few thousand miles (and the degradation starts almost immediately). Style of driving is thus very critical to the rate at which oil degrades. Another finding I came across is that timing chains are particularly susceptible to wear through carbon/ soot formation (which interacts with additives like zinc) which can accumulate very quickly as the oil ages, especially in gdi engines (TSIs on extended intervals? ). Moreover, these damaging particles are, in the main, too small to be captured by the oil filter. These findings, of course, will hardly be news for most members of this and other motoring forums, but it’s nice to know that these ideas are not just subjective opinion or oil ‘myths’. However, I could only find one paper that looked specifically at longlife oils (see, J. Kral jr. et al., 2014, Degradation and chemical change of longlife oils following intensive use in automobile engines. Measurement, 50, 34-42). In this, they examined the characteristics of longlife oils in a number of cars (petrol and diesel) driven in various ways for various mileages. Although, in my opinion, there are some issues with the sampling and interpretation in this paper, the conclusions definitely give one food for thought. The main finding was that the oil evaluation sensors in the cars they looked at (BMW and VAG) significantly underestimated the amount of oil degradation that was taking place. In other words, irrespective of driving style, the longlife oils they looked at were severely degraded long before they were officially due for renewal. In fact, so poorly did they perform that the authors concluded: On the basis of results obtained, the use of longlife engine oils is not recommended for the interval defined by the oil manufacturer…. We recommend careful consideration of the use of longlife engine oil fillings under negative conditions since the use of standard engine oil could be much more favourable (p. 41). I’m not quite sure how they arrived at the second part of this conclusion, or even if they used a vw504 oil specifically (though I guess they did). However, unless I or anyone else can come up with scientific/technical papers to the contrary, for the moment at least, that’s enough for me. For my next oil change I’m following the advice of Roottoot and Wino putting good old Quantum Platinum vw502 in my Fabia. Thank you for your input guys!

Thank you Wino. If I can get my HTP Fabia anywhere near the mileage of yours I'll be more than pleased. Reinforces the point that no matter how good vw504 might look in terms of spec., there's plenty of examples showing that, in practice, 502 seems to do absolutely fine!

In my owners handbook (p. 230) for petrol engines on fixed service intervals (QG0 and QG2) it says, vw 501, 502, and 504; and 503 and 504 for flexible service intervals (QG1). The confusion about this, and different specs from different sources, was exactly what promoted my original post.

No, my cgpa engine does not have an EGR valve, but if one believes the Lubrizol charts and other sources, and your car does have an EGR valve, the principle should apply. Obviously my car has a cat. The reason I personally chose 504 was that I could get it cheaply and the specs looked superior. However, as I said, I'm genuinely ambivalent about this; I'm absolutely not trying to promote Longlife oil, I'm just reporting what I found in my searches.

Assuming the rattle woes are not just due to rubbish engines, I think the difficulty is deciding whether the problem is due to the oil or the service interval. As I said originally, on paper the specs for 504 look pretty impressive, but having said this, for simple petrol engines I can also see merit in the idea of sticking to what seems to work in practice (i.e. fixed interval vw502); i.e. if it ain't broke don't fix it.

As far as I can see, the idea that Longlife is superior comes from data like the Lubrizol charts. But as you say, whether it makes any real difference in practice is another matter.

Yes, I’m raising this old chestnut of engine oil again! However, as I’m now retired I have the time to indulge my passion for looking things up. So I thought I’d give you the benefit (?) of what I think I’ve found. When the family purchased its 2010 htp 12v 70 b.h.p. Fabia a year ago, the choice of oil seemed simple. The handbook says either VW504 or VW502 specification for fixed interval servicing (1 year or 10,000 miles whichever comes first), and VW504 only for variable (extended servicing intervals). As I try to run my cars for as long as possible, I went for my usual 5000 miles (or 6 months) OCI . Ah, but then choices; do I run VW504 or 502, and what grade? 504 only comes in 5w30, 502 comes in a variety of grades. Remember, I’m trying to run my car for as long as possible; I’m not interested in a couple of extra miles per gallon fuel economy; I want my engine protected so it can last, and if I have to pay a few quid extra at each oil change I’ll happily do this (a lot cheaper than a new car or recon engine every few years). My first port of call was the Lubrizol oil performance comparison website. This has a neat little tool that enables you the compare the performance of various oil specs. If you plug in the latest 502 and 504 specs there is no contest: 504 outperforms or equals 502 in every respect; most important for me, 504 is much better for reducing engine wear. So, choice made I thought; I can get 5 litres of vw504 spec. Quantum Longlife 3 on ebay for under £30, what’s not to like? Well, my next check was various websites including Briskoda, Bobistheoilguy, Audiworld etc. The knowledge that some of the guys on these websites appear to have is mind boggling, so to a relative novice on oils like me, making sense of it is not an easy task. My conclusion trawling through pages and pages of this stuff is that there is indeed a lot of support for putting 504 in most VAG engines, but there are some quite persuasive detractors, to the point that some argue that 502 is actually better than 504 for some engines, and might hold up better even over 10,000 miles. The first point to make is that, contrary to what one might think, 504 is not a simple advanced replacement for 502 (not like API SM superceding or replacing API SL). This is why you do not find oils claiming to meet both 502 and 504 specs. For example, 504 cannot be used with high sulphur fuels whereas 502 can. This meant that up until recently, 504 was not recommended in parts of the the USA where low sulphur fuels were not readily available (this might also account for the fact that some older handbooks specify only 502 for fixed intervals). Also 502 has higher initial ‘TBN’; this stands for Total Base Number, which I understand indicates the ability of the oil to neutralise corrosive acids. However, this in turn has led to debates about whether or not the TBN for 504, though starting lower, holds up better as the oil declines with age. In addition, 504 apparently has lower NOACK evaporation loss, which apparently is good, as this means the oil is likely to evaporate and go thin on moving parts at high temperatures; so more protection. But then 502 is higher on zinc, which is supposedly good for engine protection but rubbish for catalytic converters (which is why 502 is allegedly much poorer on ‘after treatment compatibility’). And then there is some debate about the efficacy of other additives in 504 that compensate for the loss of zinc. And so it goes on. What about grade? At present 504 only comes in 5w30; 502 comes in a variety of grades but 5w40 seems to be the most popular. The jury seems well and truly out on this one; I've read that 40 is thicker so reduces wear and reduces oil consumption, 30 is thinner so gets less hot and reduces wear and oil consumption, and the 30 and 40 specs for vw 502 and 504 are so close that it makes no difference. etc.etc. I soon gave up on this one. Right, so there is a quite a movement in favour of 504, but with some often very vocal disagreement, and both claim to back their views up with technical arguments. But then we come to another point. Let’s say, on paper, like on the Lubrizol chart, for even for fixed intervals, 504 is a clearly better choice overall (if you don’t mind paying extra), does it really make any difference in practice? Clearly, some experienced contributors to this and other websites appear to have run their VAG cars to very high mileages on 502 spec. oils with no problems. (Indeed, I ran my Mk2 Golfs to over 190,000 miles each on vw500/501 spec oils before one was written off, and the other traded in for a bigger car.) But might they have lasted even longer on 504? We don’t know. There is also an argument that the move to 504 might have contributed to some of the catastrophic engine failures that have plagued VAG over the last decade or so; but it’s not clear to me whether this is confounding the effects of 504 with variable extended service intervals. Is there any definitive evidence that 504 results in more engine failures on fixed intervals? Again, we don't know. So what have I learned about whether you should put 502 or 504 in your petrol Fabia on fixed interval service schedules? If you want to save some money and especially if you don’t intend keeping the car for long, you’d probably do better putting 502 in it. On the other hand, if you don’t mind spending a bit more and intend hanging on the car, you might consider putting 504 in it, especially if you love your EGR valve and catalytic converter. But, as far as I can see, no-one really has a definitive answer, at least for now (as I said, there seem to be plenty of VAG motors around on very high mileages that have never seen a drop of 504 in their lives). For the moment, with the Lubrizol chart at the front of my mind, I’ve got Quantum vw504 spec in mine, fingers crossed! Good luck.

Thank you, that's reassuring. As I said, I don't really know what to make of the very brief mini clatter that occurs at every start up; unless I'm imagining things, I'm sure I can hear it on a number of YouTube videos of supposedly normal cars with the htp 12v engine. It was the one-off pronounced rattle immediately after the oil change that particularly concerned me, but even if I can't get rid of it, it's nice to know it might not be doing anything catastrophic. (p.s. Obviously I meant I use 5w 30 oil not 3w 30.)

Thanks I'll let you know.

Thanks for the reply Wino. The engine code is CGPA. Looking at the fuse layout in the owners manual the injectors fuse looks another possibility, so I might try pulling that as well as (carefully) part filling the filter canister. I'll also avoid my usual practice of going off for cups of coffee while I'm waiting for the oil to drain. I take take your point about the oil, but I got the Longlife cheaply so, assuming I'm not actually doing any harm, I'll use it.

Hello, I’ve been following this forum for a while now and I’ve found it very informative so I wondered if anyone could help me with an issue I have with my Fabia Mk2 htp 12v 70 (2010, pre facelift). I’ve had the car for about a year; it has done 50,000 miles (i.e. approx.. 5000 miles a year) and has a full service history (the oil has been changed every year since new). I do a low annual mileage so I’m now changing the oil every 6 months (stop start journeys and all that). I’m using a genuine Skoda filter and Quantum Longlife 3w 30 fully synthetic. The engine runs well; it starts first time, sounds fine, and uses no oil or coolant. However, each time I start, whether it be cold first thing in the morning, or whether the engine is warm after a few seconds after turning it off, it makes a slight clattering diesel like noise for a brief second or less. I’ve had Golfs before with hydraulic tappets and I’ve never noticed this sound before, but having listened to a few allegedly ‘healthy’ Fabias and Polos starting up on YouTube this sound seems to be quite common in the this cylinder engine, so I assume there’s no cause for concern (?). However, I also noticed that when I started up immediately after changing the oil and filter I heard an additional and rather more pronounced rattle, again only briefly for about a second, but much more distinct and suspiciously timing chain like. Going from what I’ve read I’m guessing this is rattle happens because the tensioner needs to fill with oil after the oil change. Nevertheless, hearing it was quite disconcerting so I’m wondering is this common and ok, or again something to be concerned about? I’ve never heard it at any other time (i.e. only once briefly after the oil change), but even if it is a ‘characteristic of the engine’ it sounds so horrible I can’t see it being great for the engine, so I wondered whether there is anything that can be done about it. I can’t fill the filter holder with oil because it goes on upside down, but how about pulling the fuse from the petrol pump after an oil change so I can turn the engine over a few times to build up pressure before it fires? Your advice would be much appreciated.