Bodge

Clean your throttle body first and then look for leaks in all the breather hoses. It's easy to find vacuum leaks with the engine idling, just don't burn yourself! Have a good poke around under the inlet manifold. Basically have a good look at all hoses and connections.

My guess is that it's the turbo to manifold gasket leaking. I need to change mine at some point...

Yeah this is a vacuum leak. Also a leak of blow-by gases when on boost. Going back to the standard system will certainly give you loads of space back in the engine bay and make things look much neater. Go fluorosilicone where you can. Probably also worthwhile replacing the one-way valve and PCV.

If the dim and rusty number plate lights bother you, you can buy them from Skoda for a few quid. They come as an assembly with the seal, two screws and washers attached. They only screw into the plastic boot handle anyway, so they're not going to get stuck. I replaced mine a long time ago now and the screws haven't rusted this time. Perhaps Skoda moved to a higher quality screw after the 1st gen parts corroded so much...... I remember one of mine being mega dim due to a misaligned seal letting crud in. I've had the Philips Silvervision indicator bulbs in mine for almost 6 years now. Never had a problem and they're lasting well!

Yeah those are pretty damn wide! If you wanted to maintain the standard clearance from rim inner edge to strut with a 9" wide rim, you'd need an offset of 12.6mm (pushing the outer rim edge out by 50.8mm). Which would be 43.4mm on an ET20 (takes inner rim edge 7.4mm closer to strut so you might have a clearance problem there too). Yes, spacers artificially reduce the offset. Spacers are nasty things so you want to avoid as much as possible!

What's the width? You just need to worry (not worry!) about the poke.

Like Bowders said, you need to leave the reservoir cap off when refilling the system with the engine running. If you don't you'll create an airlock and the engine may overheat. Easy mistake to make, but you'll only do it once!

Another great guide Bowders. When I removed the combi valve I wasn't happy with the feel of that o-ring when putting everything back together (but i didn't have a replacement to hand), so ended up removing it and carefully cleaning the very crusty o-ring! Hard coolant deposits had built up on the housing/o-ring and mating face on the head. Like you found, the o-ring was pretty flat as well. Been keeping a beady eye on mine since but I might swap it after your experience.

Vultures! One Mk1 dies as others live on off the scraps... Speaking of scraps, Billy give me your shiny wheel!

Hi Billy! Let me know if this chap doesn't end up wanting it, because I'll come grab it off you instead. How's Octavia-less life treating you?

Manual says: Fuel tank capacity/of which spare = 55/7 litres I can manage 50 miles after the range drops to 0. Although I pushed it a little too far the other day and the engine started spluttering 1/2 mile before I hit the forecourt! Brown pants moment! I'm a weirdo and I like to get the tank as empty as I can before brimming it as much as I can! Probably something to do with how much I hate going to petrol stations and waiting for retards to do their weekly food shop while dumping their car next to a pump. Petrol stations generally drive me insane. I sound old. Brrr.

Yeah you shouldn't ever need one really! It's just a valve with a slower response time, so you get a temporary boost spike on initial spool up. Some people say they help fix problems with dippy maps that surge. I'm still using the original N75 with 143k miles and 11years behind it. Shark told me it was still spot on when I had my new custom map last year. Win! I guess it's just something else to play with and fit on your car, so that's reason enough for most!

Yeah I get this when driving on the motorway in very heavy rain. If you haven't touched the brakes for a while a film of water builds up on the discs and it just takes a second for the brakes to bite. I find the problem very rare. If yours is worse, then maybe you're missing the shields behind the discs or some of the plastic splash guards under the car. Can't think of much else. Standard alloys? Wouldn't touch anything drilled or grooved personally.

You sure there's nothing getting tangled up in the shifter mechanism on top of the gearbox? Common for the SAI inlet pipe to dangle down and get in the way.

Running Weitec's. The rear spring seat top is flush with the top of the threaded tower (highest setting with full thread engagement), then the front is set slightly lower. Measured and set it up on a perfectly flat workshop floor. I wrote the ride heights down somewhere years ago!

Identical torque to mine (Shark)! 354Nm (261lbft), but mine peaks at 3197rpm. It's all about that area under the torque curve! No peaky diesel BS!

Could the floor pan repair be from jacking damage maybe? I'm fairly sure you can't fit any of the standard springs upside down?! Unless you're blind/mental.

I've taken that route from Milan to Basel before. I can't really remember it so it must have been okay! I remember Milan traffic being mental. I always completely cut out France when going to Austria. Cheaper and the police are not as vindictive in Germany! I guess you'll go Belgium->Luxembourg->Germany->Austria->Italy if you want to take the Brenner, so you'll need the Austrian vignette. Luckily it's not too pricey. Deffo wouldn't risk blagging it as the Austrians are "thorough"! Sounds like you've been having too much fun! I'll be down in Villach with the Skoda in August. Looking forward to the mission.

It's good to see Mk1 Octavia RS prices outperforming Mk4 Golf GTI 1.8T prices. Total of 4,791 vehicles (hatch & combi) in Q4 2006. Q3 2012 shows 4,083 registered. So over 700 cars lost in under 6 years. The rate of vehicles SORN'd is only going to go up now too. Lloyd, a car like yours should eventually start creeping up in value. If that car sells for £5k it'll help..... Actually, I can buy your car for £10k, then sell it back to you straight away for £10k! That would spice second hand values up a bit! We could all buy eachothers cars off eachother and drive up values! Muhahahahar

I had this. Rear nearside caliper dragged badly. Totally kills your fuel economy! Pads overheated and eventually broke up and disc got eaten. New caliper fixed mine.

Agree on the oil vapour contaminating the charge air. But the amount of actual oil I got out of my catch can was minute (I left the mixture to fully separate, which stank!), so I would imagine it had no effect (relatively). I always thought that increased charge air humidity was a good thing. I thought increased humidity actually did the opposite and lowered the engine's octane requirement. My cars always felt a bit perkier on humid days anyway. I've run with and without a catch can and it made no difference to perceived performance. Suppose if you tuned the nuts off your Scoobies then it had more of an effect then. My weedy Skoda doesn't seem too bothered anyway! Wish I had a track toy......

Rename the catch can a condenser! Without the catch can that water would have remained as vapour and would have been burnt by the engine. So the catch can has robbed extra power from your engine.....

Seems a shame to decat it. That was a nice cat. Have you had it chipped too?! P.S. Awesome cat.

The OE filter is a MANN item (part number is W719/30) by the way. VAG P/N is 06A115561B. So you can buy the identical filter from Skoda in a VAG box or from GSF in a MANN box. GSF charge roughly half what Skoda do, for the same part. [The bypass valve has an opening pressure of 2.5Bar, and it uses the 14 sided 76mm filter socket.]

You could run it down to ##!!##nique on the Sarum business park (http://www.alltecnique.co.uk/index.htm). Or even Janspeed (http://www.janspeed.com/) on Castle Road. Janspeed recently built me a custom exhaust system for my car. ##!!##nique helped me out with a CEL when I first bought my car 5½yrs ago, so they have all the equipment.