DieselMonte

On the topic of badges, I quite like the mk1 style of badge with the TDI under it. Wonder how it would look on a mk2?

Powerflex Dogbone bushing was delivered today, so I set about installing it. Removal of the old mount was stupid easy. Looked to have been replaced at some point not long before I got it. Looked fresh but still felt very soft and mushy. Cut out the old bush with a hacksaw, only difficulty was the hacksaw getting stuck in the rubber. Needed to sand off the white oxidised crap in the console. Got 90% of it off and the console felt smooth so I was happy to leave it there. Install of the bush itself was a bit fiddly, The photo on the listing I bought it from showed it as a 2 piece design. The bush I got was 1 piece. That said it was not hard to do with a vice, just took a little more planning. I didnt get any instructions with it and accidentally put the bush in wrong (I think). The relief in the bush looks to be for helping with installing it into the car. I had to take it out and install it 180°, relief facing the back of the car. I removed the black part of the mount when reinstalling to make it a little easier. Took a fair amount of effort to get it back in, seems that since the new bush is thicker it has a hard time going in. I did all this over the pit, didnt need to take the wheels off or even lift the car surprisingly. Actually made it easier as I could sit on the step and work away. It was a little sketchy at first as this pit is made for lorries and the like, not small hatchbacks. Had a half a tyre over the edge on either side . I decided to go for Powerflex's PFF85-620R, their softest dogbone bush. Its a 65 shore bush and felt surprisingly squidgy out of the box, I wonder if a stiffer bush would be harder to install as it wouldnt contort as easy to fit through the bush? Having done a bit of driving on it I can say that it has improved the car nicely. Its a lot easier to change gears, much more predictable. I have not noticed any increased vibration at all. The only time it is noticeable is on starting the car and turning it off. Turning it off feels similar to turning off my mk1, as I removed the ASV from it. Its a difference, but not a big one in that department. I suppose it will soften up in the next few days, hopefully not much. It feels good now, feels like what it should have come like from the factory. Feels much more consistent even under some hard gear changes. Definately worth while for the cost and time to do. The great thing about having 2 fabias is that if I want a stiffer bush in this I should be able to put a stiffer bush in the mk1s mount and swap them over, both look identical so I imagine they are the same part. Overall quite happy with this mod, I like the feedback when starting and turning off the engine and its not noticeable at all under normal driving. Its the sort of mod that I love to do, much like the RARB. Next thing up is a remap, all goes well It should be mapped by the end of the month. The place i'm going with claims 145 hp and 310 nm of torque. While I think thats a little optimistic it should make a big difference. I'll hold off on the intercooler for a short while, since the weather has cooled off again its not gotten very hot since. Looking at doing a wellycooler job to it. I have my eye on an alloy intercooler that should do the job.

Nah, Sepulchrave does seem the sort to know his stuff. Could well be that my cars drums are crap and wont hold properly. All I know is that the handbrake as it sits is crap, so a disc one can hardly be worse.

The handbrake on mine is pure ****e, it was adjusted for the NCT and even still was crap. Because I live in a hilly area I constantly need the handbrake so I have to adjust it at least every 2 months. Couldnt do a handbrake turn even if I wanted to lol. There is no way discs can be worse than the current handbrake. Actually forgot about the handbrake seizing on, i've gotten into the habit of leaving it off after washing the car because of it. Mine often goes into the garage though after being washed so it wouldnt be able to roll anywhere. If thats aimed at me then yeah, only an idiot would wreck a car in an open field. You're right, the standard brakes are perfectly capable as they sit, but I do intend on getting some more power out of the car. I will be getting it mapped soon and the ones I plan on going to claim to be able to get 145hp out of a remap. 145 is opportunistic I think but even if it 'only' got to 130hp thats still the same power as a stock mk1 vRS and they were 288, 232 discs all around. Not wanting to put some showy brembos or wilwoods on quite yet, and I'm not calling every scrapyard in the country looking for a disc rear end either. I'm just trying to say that if the opportunity arose, it would be silly not to.

I'm not going out of my way to convert my car to a disc rear end. I've been keeping an eye out for a parts car to fix up my mk1, believe it or not i've seen two vRS come up. The first was the car I bought the parts from, came a hair away from buying the rest of it but our trailer was being used so that one fell through. Another one has come up but no response from the seller sadly. The way I see it, if the opportunity arose I would be stupid not to. I take it the PQ25 rear is from mk3 fabias and the like? Interesting, I didnt know the pq25 rear was wider, aside from stability it might help fill out the rear arches. If a disc and a drum pq24 rear is the same width then that would still be fine. After doing the few odds and ends on the suspension the car feels pretty good at speed anyway. Indeed.

Wait, the rear beam on these is the same as the mk1? So if for talks sake I got a mk1 vRS for parts for my own mk1, I could put the disc rear beam into my mk2? Sorry for hijacking the thread!

I'll shoot them a message then, thanks.

Eibachs were a dealer fit option on these right? Any idea wheres the best spot to get them?

852 For sale on eBay

1.8t can make a LOT of power with just a remap, stout engines. Fabia mk1s were offered with a 2l 8v petrol, very rare cars but that would mean most of the stuff to shove a 2l in a fabia is available to get. I think swapping to a diesel unit would be too much work as you'd have to swap everything over. Atleast putting a different vw group petrol would mean you might be able to use the stock gearbox and stuff.

1.8t swap from an ibiza has been done on the mk1s before, cant be too different for a mk2. I think TrevorB33s fabia has a 1.8t in it.

I'll be honest, the black roof completes the look on these mk2 fabias, especially since the roof 'wraps' around to just on top of the doors. Wonder if its possible to get a metallic black wrap? My cars roof is a metallic black to match the Monte Carlo trim, really pops in the daytime. Contrasts well with the white of the rest of the car.

I think its only about a 15mm difference. If I'm not mistaken there was optional bad road suspension available for the fabias that raised the car another bit over standard. AFAIK my mk1 was just standard suspension and it coped fine on some very rough terrain. Mine didnt have an undertray on it and the sump never got a mark on it. If you are still worried about oil pan damage it should be possible to buy risers to go onto the engine mounts and lift it higher in the car. This sort of stuff is usually used by lowered cars but would work in your situation too. Edit: When I think about it, the vRS kit would lower ground clearance as the bumpers sit closer to the ground, my car now has a vRS bumper on it and it looks like it could reduce ground clearance. Not saying you should go so far as to replace the bumpers as that could be a bit OTT, Standard springs or the bad road springs would be fine most likely. As I said before welcome to the forum, if you are going to be keeping your car a while why not make a thread over in the projects section? I myself love seeing what everyone else does to their cars, great for giving me ideas of what to do to my own.

Greenline spoilers look good too, wonder how it would look with the diffuser on Coops car.

Firstly hello and welcome to the forum. The Fabia vRS has slightly lowered 'sports' suspension compared to a normal one, changing the suspension to a normal Diesel fabias suspension will raise it a little. What wheels and tyres are on it? Going for a higher profile tyre would marginally lift the car higher. Would a previous owner have put lowering springs on it? If they had then you'd want to put some original springs back in to raise it. What part of the car is too low? It could be that the undertray is not sitting right and is dragging along some rougher parts of the road. I know of a car locally that kept bottoming out on our dirt roads and it turned out that the previous owner had fastened the undertray to the car with zipties! Good luck with the car, from my experience with my own mk1 (non vrs) they can absolutely tolerate rougher roads, my car put up with me constantly thrashing it through fields and its still going. These cars are built tough even though they might not look it on first glance.

Would bet that its the same spoiler that a mk2 vRS has, I dont have any part numbers for it but maybe you could ring up a few scrapyards and see if they have a vrs or monte in? It looks like an adhesive job so I imagine it would be easy to install if you found one. Would imagine a scrappy would rather you buy the whole boot off them but no harm in trying.

Different sort of post today. I've had this brochure for a while and thought I should upload it on here. I had tried to scan the pages but they came out looking naff, so I ended up just taking a photo of them with my phone, hopefully they are readable.

They have a little roof spoiler on the roof looks to be the same idea as the mk1 vrs so its a very minor difference from a standard car. Unless they all come with that little 'spoiler' on the back. I could be mistaken. Edit: Went out and took a pic of the "spoiler" on mine. I happened to buy a sales brochure for A monte carlo on eBay last year and in the standard equipment section it says "Black roof and Tailgate spoiler" so I imagine it is different.

Can always cut the bumper for a tailpipe. Did you just put the rear diffuser on or did you change the bumper? Looks good. I imagine you could get a spoiler off of a monte too. They just look to be put on with some sort of adhesive.

Nice, what size tyres are they? Look meaty.

I own a 1.6 tdi candy white monte carlo so I'm going to put my 2 cents in. Mine is a 105hp version and it has been nearly flawless in my year of ownership. Cheap to run and I have not yet had any trouble with the injectors. Apparently the dieselgate fixed cars are more prone to injector failures, mine has had the fix done to it and its not had any trouble. The only trouble i've had was a p0101 code over the last few days of hot weather, car drove fine. Its not come back after the weather has cooled off so who knows what its doing. I do plan on remapping mine soon and hopefully it will remove the dieselgate fix from it too. I have done a bit of fettling with mine removing the flow restrictor and such so that could be a cause, but I removed them a year ago now so it makes no sense why it would start throwing a code now. Otherwise i've not needed to spend much on it other than doing a bit of modifications here and there. Mines sitting now at 96000 miles, bought with 89k.

I think the next round of mods for this will be a bigger intercooler, stronger gearbox bush and a remap (Finally). I've been looking on here and saw someone use a skoda yeti intercooler in a fabia with a little bit of work. I figure I can get one in a scrapyard easy enough and it should help lower intake temps. With this warm weather I noticed it getting to nearly 40 degrees on Torque Pro! I know powerflex do dogbone bushes and they seem to be a good option. I also saw a thread on here (iirc) of someone buying resin and doing it themself. I think it would be interesting to try and do it myself, this way if I had some left over I could do it on the mk1 too. Finally, a remap will let it be as quick on the straights as it is in the corners. More oomph trying to pass people on these roads would help, constantly running into cars going 10mph, then slowing to a crawl for every corner and not having enough space to pass them is getting pretty old. My mk1 is far from forgotten though, Its still sitting quietly in the shed waiting for a parts car to come along (or some bits off of a breaker) to see it right for the road. Covered in an inch of dust at this point but still there. I have been waiting and watching for a parts car to come up but nothing lately.

After driving it for a few days I can say there is definately a worthwhile improvement. Front of the car is a lot quieter, no knocks over speedbumps now save for the odd squeak when cold. Handling seems to have drastically improved too, much more grip when being pushed hard through corners and feels much more stable through a corner too. The urethane bushes were pretty cheap direct from psbushings, about £40 shipped. Both ball joints worked out to about 40 euro from the place I ordered them from. I havent noticed any difference in NVH either, so its not really noticeable driving normally except for the car feeling tighter. Strut top mounts do feel like they'll need changing, given most of the rest of the front end has been renewed. I want to hold off as long as I can and do the suspension in one shot, No sense to me in going through all that hassle only to be replacing the suspension in a few thousand miles (hopefully). 96,000 miles on it now so I do want to replace it in the future. Having said that it still performs just fine, but I do know that these roads will blow out the original struts eventually. The springs look pretty new though, so if I do replace them I might use the front springs on the mk1 as its dampers seem ok. We've been experiencing some warm weather here lately and since then I've been getting a p0101 code for the maf. Car runs and drives fine, no loss in economy or power. Might need to use some maf cleaner on it or something.

I forget the name for it but you can set it to unlock all doors on the first press.

My old ones looked like this and I passed our NCT in November with no advisories. I can feel a big difference after swapping in the new urethane ones so they definately were on their way out. I only noticed how bad they were when I did track rod ends a few weeks before.