RunningDog

Spot on - I've used Victoria Garage for nigh-on 16 years now, never let me down and can fix anything. My mother lived just round the corner from the garage and they'd come round to fix flat batteries, or replace a tyre, or unseize the brakes in wet weather... service above and beyond. Wouldn't go anywhere else!

Many thanks to all for the advice! At the moment I only have half an aerial on the roof and I'm pretty sure that's a good reason the radio can only find a few stations and loses signal/gains noise the moment I go over a hill. When it does have a signal, the sound quality is fine, which should indicate there's not much wrong with the circuit from the aerial to the radio once it actually finds something to pull in, shouldn't it? I've ordered a 23cm replacement aerial (allowing for threading into the roof mount, I think) and will update when I've fitted it; should arrive by midweek at the latest. I did read a few threads suggesting there can be water/corrosion problems with the mount, and that would be my next place to go if the new aerial doesn't fix things. I've also read a couple of threads indicating that 'fit a new aerial' can be a little more physically challenging than just unscrewing the old one and screwing the new one in, and I'm prepared to wrestle with it. 🙂

Thank you! I'll get a new one ordered.

Hi, just acquired a Fabia Mk II Monte Carlo estate (my third Fabia; have previously driven Mk1 hatch and estate). I've found Briskoda through searching for answers to questions on the web so often in the past that I've decided to stop lurking and sign up properly! I ask a good bit of my cars - I live out in the sticks and need to get to work whatever the weather, so they're expected to deal with rough roads, inclement weather, water splashes, snow drifts and heavy loads (I'm a smallholder), I tow regularly (haven't had a tow bar fitted on this one yet!) and I've always found Fabias to be reliable, dependable and, given winter tyres, as good as anything short of a Land Rover for getting through the drifts and floods so, after a couple of years wrestling with Another Make (Ford Kuga - comfortable, capable but very expensive and unreliable) I'm back to Skoda and the Fabia estate! I quite enjoy minor tinkering after growing up as a biker (many decades ago!) and can deal with stuff like paintwork, tyres, routine checks and small fixes, but anything computerised or engine-based lands in the garage these days. It also helps that my local garage are Skoda specialists. Look forward to contributing as well as learning here.

I noticed the aerial on my new (second hand) MkII Fabia Monte Carlo has been damaged at some point; the end's broken off. The Swing radio has very poor reception (unsurprisingly) so unscrewing the broken aerial and screwing in a new one seems like the obvious first step to fix that. I had a quick look online and there seem to be a bewildering variety of different lengths of aerial available to replace it, ranging from pencil sized to fishing rod! Please could someone with a similar age Mk II run a tape measure over their aerial and let me know what length it's supposed to be?