DieselMonte

If you have a mk3 fabia like what e-roottoot suggests then It might not be much help. I've got both a mk1 and a mk2 fabia but but have exactly zero experience with mk3s. Still, always love seeing peoples projects in the fabia projects section of the site.

Vrs intake pipe should work to get more cold air in. You can deflap the airbox too. Stock airbox works very well, with a bit of fettling it works even better. Some airfilter have a cotton sock over them, if you were after a bit of extra noise I'd remove it, and remove the drain on the bottom of the airbox. K&N do an airbox for fabias but it is literally just a deflapped version of the standard box. Basically repeating whats already been said but heyho.

I ordered mine the 5th of august and they only got accepted by the carrier 4th of this month! Ah well, hopefully neither of our cars fall apart without them

Box of goodies came in finally, Discs, new engine mount, heatshields and a cabin air filter. Changed the cabin air filter, popped the bonnet to change a sidelight that had gone out and took a look at the engine mount. Knew it was worn but compared to the new one it had collapsed in on itself. Was intending to wait and have all done when its getting serviced but seeing the state of the original one I just changed it then and there, not too hard. Driving it after made me sorry I didnt do it sooner. Much easier to drive and less vibrations too. Did end up swapping the top bracket off the original one onto the new one cause I wasnt sure the new bracket was the one for my car, Mount itself is the same though. Anyhow since the discs have arrived its just a matter of dropping the car off and having all done. Think I'll need to paint the heatshields though, they came unpainted. Went a bit ott and ordered some very nice parts that should be coming end of this week/start of next week so I'll fit them after the car comes back. Any guesses what I've bought?

Thats pretty impressive that it worked. How did you wire it up? Or have you just "sent it" by splicing in a resistor?

Doubt it for a facelift mk2 fabia, dont know of any other vw that uses those fogs. For anyone looking to retrofit fogs, would you not just wire the fogs to a separate switch? My car has 2 blanks where the heated seat switch would go, to me that seems like an ideal spot for a switch for fogs.

Doubt the red wears very well. Ages ago I went to view a red monte with red seats. Nice car but the seats looked pretty grungy even though the rest of the car was lovely. The grey seats in my monte still look perfect aside from some light scuffing to the drivers side bolster, and it currently having a lot more miles than the one I viewed. Plenty of not so careful passengers spilling everything from pesto to milk on the seats too and they still come up a treat!

Strange theres not been a stickied one before!

Wow! The body coloured grille really finishes the look on your car!

Such a strange costcutting measure of removing the gloveboxes on the easy and junior models. The most basic of mk2 fabias don't have any glovebox either. Surely it cost just as much to have a different panel than just putting gloveboxes in all of them?

I heard about Junior models before, they also had 1.9 sdi engined ones, also apparantly without power steering. From experience with my sdi and no powersteering, I don't envy whoever bought them.

Considering these cars came in metallic orange and even fantasy green, I suppose it shouldnt surprise me! Interesting its original, even moreso that it would be a pretty rare option. I've only ever seen mk1s with old man grey (like my car originally), or old man black and beige. Somehow I don't think its gonna make the car sell quickly.

Is there diesel in the coolant tank then?

So on the same lines as me putting stiffer spring in the back of mine then , granted for VASTLY different reasons! Have to love how easy it is to swap springs on the back of these.

What did you do to the rear suspension? Stiffer bushings?

Must have been for the car behind me Heard a PING coming from the car, got home to find one of the caps gone. Wasnt hard to figure out what happened

Seat dye 100 percent. Stupid cause i'm guessing the cheap stuff would come off onto someones sweaty behind on a hot day

I've ordered 2 sets of caps for both my fabias, coming from China so probably wont get them for a while! The spyders I picked up were missing the caps and the original ones on my monte are pretty poorly. Don't be like me and get stick one ones, they were great for about 4 months and then they slowly came off one by one. Heard one of them shoot off the car at 60!

If its the backbox you're on about I got a midpipe and a backbox for about 80 euro last year. My backbox was like yours, honestly would have been fine looking back.

Cleaned the undertrays and put them back on, waiting for those to dry I sprayed the subframe metallic grey for the hell of it. Hardly noticeable unless you put a light to it. I've decided to wait and leave the brakes to be put on when the cars serviced in a week or so, all the bolts on the calipers look crusty and i'm afraid i'd strip them, or worse take the threads out with the bolts.

Dont think theres any adjustment on later mk2s, aside from bushes with offset holes for the bolts.

No, both of my tyres wear evenly. Might wear down quickly but atleast its even. Had to have it aligned quite a few times because I was replacing worn out bits as I went. Few different places too. Just seems its how it is with this car.

Mine pulls to the left, still does even after I've freshened up most of the suspension. Just a thing they do for some reason. Doesn't bother me once I got used to it. Had someone tell me it was because if someone fell asleep at the wheel it would put them into the ditch rather than into oncoming traffic. I'd take that with a grain of salt because if that was the case every car would do it.

This I might divide peoples opinions on. Inbetween waiting for coats of paint to dry I set about swapping the rear springs on the mk1 back to the apex lowering springs I was running before, after it was pointed out to me how high it was sitting at the back. Took no time for me to do and its now sitting MUCH nicer now. Looking at the springs, I thought they looked to be almost exactly as tall as the mk2s springs. So inbetween coats I jacked the rear of the car up, damper bolts off and lowered the rear beam. Springs come out and I put them side by side to double check. Side by side they're the same height, small wonder the mk1 was sitting so high up then. Took a photo of the standard monte spring vs a standard fabia spring also, in case anyone was interested. Only difference in them is that the ones I got have more coils, so they should be stiffer. Installed them and the cars sitting exactly the same as before. Took it on a small test drive and while its a little bit firmer over farm tracks, its not bad! Cornerings improved too, but I want to do a bit more driving to properly feel out how much its changed. What I was mainly thinking of when I considered swapping them, was that a stiffer spring won't sag as much when the cars loaded. Before, even just the weight of the fuel in the tank would make the car sit noticeably higher or lower. Before pic was taken with fumes in the tank, after pic is with a brimmed tank. I'll see soon if the stiffer springs sit better with the car fully loaded. Tyres look especially rubberbandy in these pics, next time I must go for 215s. Still not sure if this is going to be much of a difference overall, but it was free and very easy to do so worth a shot I suppose. I intend on getting new shocks and springs anyhow so not a big deal.

Front of the cars done happily. Not too bad actually, but when I was already doing the back of the car I felt I should stick in and do it all. Same story as before, only difference is I didnt paint over the stonechip, atleast not yet. I think the subframe looks decent in black stonechip, will probably paint over the other bits I touched up in white though. Might give the wishbones a coat of paint when i'm putting the undertray back o . Tomorrow all I need to do is clean up the plastic cladding a little and put all back on. Front undertrays looking pretty knackered, I think i'll seek out a metal one if I ever replace it.