rank_amateur

I should add that my understanding of an MOT, is that it decides whether the car is fit for the road at a given time. A customer could wish to get the last 1000 miles out of a set of discs, so the garage inspects the car and decides if the discs are ok at that moment. As I found out, if you are only presenting your car for MOT, and not really getting any other inspections carried out, you really should be a hands-on car owner. Only experience can really teach you this though.

@Flatiron210 This is quite a familiar story to me. I had a Fabia Mk2 from about 4 years old (front discs and rear drums like yours). I regularly serviced it for a while, then fell in to just changing the oil and hoping for the best in an MOT. I'm not particularly proud of that, but I don't actually think that regular servicing would have really made a huge amount of difference. Eventually I did get sticking front calipers and indeed overheating of the front nearside wheel. I also noted that the previous set of discs had not even lasted through one set of pads. I had brought this up with my local garage but was generally fobbed off with them saying it is normal to go through a set of discs with only the relatively small mileage I had done. At this point I decided this was the time to educate myself about what had been going on and I did. The garage I had been using had been replacing the pads and discs and making very little effort to clean anything up around the bracket and caliper. My fuel economy was probably taking a huge hit with the piston not really retracting (for at least a while) before getting really bad. After briefly considering refurbishing the calipers, I realised that special tools would be required to remove the seized bleed screws and pistons. (The calipers are of some residual value if you trade them in for refurbished ones.) I did the whole job myself, but changing a caliper involves disconnecting the brake lines, so I really had to learn properly what I was doing. From what I have found as a rank amateur (as my name suggests), best practice would be to check your bleed screws every two years, remove them, put them back in with anti-seize (replace with fresh ones every four or so years probably). Also, after about ten years, buy a kit and replace the pistons, or at least the two rubber seals. Also, get in around the caliper and bracket with a wire brush attachment on a drill or a dremel grinding stone attachment. Also, make sure the slide pins are clean and greased. Proper servicing would probably take the caliper off, sand blast it and replace all the moving parts and seals. This would be well before it sticks, because if it is sticking, the inside milled surface the piston operates on may be pitted already, meaning a much more difficult job of refurbishing it. Then, I moved on to the drums, and this is where I discovered that things were extremely bad. The drums themselves were okay, but there was so much brake dust that had turned into a stone like coating all over everything inside. One of the cylinders was leaking slightly and not operating correctly. The springs weren't returning the shoes to the correct position for driving, so only the action of driving was releasing them from the sides of the drum. Effectively I believe that the car was somehow passing MOT with very little rear braking input. Whether it should have passed I don't know. I do believe that the brake drums possibly hadn't been off since the car was new and it was about 12 years old at this point. Certainly it is within reach for a car owner to open up the drum and clean it out with brake cleaner every now and again, but caution should be exercised when jacking a car up and putting it on axle stands. For example, once you have the rear wheels off the ground, the effect of the handbrake is nullified. I did do the full job on the drums and I noticed a big difference in that on releasing the handbrake, the car would roll much easier. So the moral of the story is that if the car is ten years old and or has done around 70,000k miles, yes it could be completely valid that a full brake overhaul is necessary. You wouldn't do that if the car has other major problems, but if the engine seems okay and it is running fine, yes get it done. If the same regime is followed as the original one, it will be back in the same place in a few years though.

@Evolution13 Yes, it appears the classic defend, deny, deflect strategy is in full flow. Given that no servicing at all is specified, the car should be inspected within a short timescale and unless there has been some drastic alteration done, if the rust came from the inside, Skoda should put the car back to the correct state had it not happened. Preventative measures to rectify the design defect should be included as well. Given that the issue is rust, the timescale should be as soon as the car can be booked in at an appropriate repair centre. I think it is the case that the current state of the law is that manufacturers cannot specify dealer servicing for any part of the warranty. They can ask for evidence, but in the context of this thread, as above, there is no servicing stated in the terms of the body protection warranty anyway.

I'm glad Skoda sorted it out. The end result is of course correct but the route taken by the dealership in requiring extended scope servicing is completely wrong. Even an oil service has a body inspection for example. It stands to reason that, whether or not you have had your air filter replaced at the appropriate time, has no affect whatsoever on rust coming from the inside of the body. Other manufacturers do require specific body warranty inspections, but even now the Skoda policy hasn't changed regards the body protection warranty. For the paint to be bubbling on the outside, this means the rust has penetrated the full way through the sheet metal, so this didn't happen since the last inspection. You did take every single service you could have and still they didn't spot it early. This is despite the fact that it has been a known issue for years.

The problem with a £200 repair would likely be that no attempt is made to deal with the underlying cause, meaning the problem would come back. The problem is rusting from the inside out. If you were to get a torch and look up inside the wheel arch, the cause of the paint damage on the outside would likely be all too apparent.

I'm thinking if the paint on the outside of the car is bubbling there is perforation. Absolutely no other explanation good paintwork would go bad if nothing has happened on the outside. Ok, full service, history perforation = car fixed by SKODA free or charge. Simple, bring the car in, courtesy car please, see you in a couple of weeks. Should be that simple, right? Watch this space, something tells me not.

In addition to the above, the other aspect to this is that the SKODA dealer that did all the servicing and sold me the car second hand (also sold it new) was the only garage to ever look at the car and I was assured that the car was serviced completely by the book. You would think that when a SKODA dealer is selling a second hand car, that a body inspection would be done.

Having spoken to the warranty guy at my local dealership I can certainly identify with this. It is obviously a standard attempt to convince you not to proceed. In my case I bought a car with full dealer servicing at a different dealership and had it a year now. Today, he was coming up with things like the car should have had the extended range service done, otherwise Skoda wouldn't touch it under warranty The thing is all that is required is a full service history and by law a manufacturer cannot even insist on dealer servicing, only that the car is regularly serviced. In my case the car is 7 years old and only has 15,000 miles. If a full service was done say after 3-4 years and the dealer didn't notice anything, then that is enough to satisfy the warranty requirements IMHO. Given the known issues, you would think the mechanics in the dealerships would have been warned to look. In any case, this is a known fault, so the cars could have been brought in for inspection by issuing a recall. I will definitely be pursuing this as far as I can. Had a Fabia before and otherwise good cars to be fair.

I was actually searching around to get information on the correct battery because my Skoda Fabia Mk 2 1.9 TDI may actually have the incorrect battery (bought used). The websites actually come up with differing information on whether it is a 96 or 27 code battery required. Came across this thread in the process, so thought I would contribute. I have had my battery out to charge a couple of times (live in a flat). I fiddled around for quite a while in the first instance. A long flat head screwdriver should take care of the plastic clip on fastenings on both sides and the back. It is a bit fiddly for sure. There is a part of the casing that slides off the top as one unit (has all the cables going into it) to the right as you face the car. I didn't realise this at first and was thinking I would have to undo a few more cables. This enables the cables to be slid out of the harness they are in along with the part detached from the top of the casing. The connecters to the terminals go over the top of the casing, so these will need to be detached before removing the plastic casing, and I think the positive lead needs to be further disconnected with a 10mm socket because the leads are connected over the top of the casing. To remove the battery retainer I used a longish extension on a ratchet with a 13mm socket (if I remember correctly, something like that anyway). I had an issue with power windows being deactivated following replacement. The owner manual gives instructions how to reset. Hope this helps anyone attempting a battery change.