davwheat

After some shipping delays for the part, and a 2 week holiday of my own, I've finally fitted the replacement hose. The original part attached to the car was a bit different, being made of a short clamped flexible hose portion, whereas the new part is one single part for the whole thing. The trickiest part was breaking the single-use clips off the old part, plus also getting the new part to push in to the back wall of the engine compartment which needed a bit of grease first. The brakes certainly seem to actually have an effect with much less effort on the pedal itself, so I assume that's a good sign. Didn't notice any difference in engine idle which I saw some others mention. I've not tried it on the road yet as my car's blocked in by my parents' at the moment, but I might need to get used to the brakes again now. Thanks for everyone's help.

I've also seen it on here. Not sure how reputable they are, but at least the price seems to include VAT so it's a bit more tolerable. https://skodapartsdirect.co.uk/product/skoda-fabia-2004-2014-vacuum-pipe/ I've submitted an enquiry with the site you linked too.

Honestly, probably not, no. The split is far back enough that I wouldn't be confident that there's enough left of the pipe to reconnect it.

I don't recall anything, honestly. It has generally been poor weather the last week or two, so it could be water, or it could be some other contaminant, or a mix of both. I did find that the rubber part of the pipe had split in another place, to the point that putting self-amalgamating tape around the bits I had seen caused it to fall straight off the hard plastic connector. In one of the pictures, you can see the slightly split connector with a grey pen or paint marking on it, which has a plastic connector, and another rubber hose on the bottom half. This pipe leads into the engine. The rear of that had entirely split, which is why I didn't see it. I have put tape around that as well, and ordered some jubilee clips to put around all 3 connection points for my own sanity. I do feel like the pipe leading into the engine may well need replacement as it seems to be quite inflexible compared to what I'd expect a hose to be like, but maybe I'm overreacting.

Whether coincidence or not, today I noticed a hissing sound whenever I press on the brake pedal. I had never noticed this before, and I expect that might be related to the cracking on the pipe. The whole pedal has always been very light in the first maybe 2 inches of travel before becoming very firm, so I do wonder how long the pipe has been how it has. I'm surprised it's not been mentioned in any MOT, though. I would have expected this would be something checked, or at least noticed.

I can't say either way really, but it does seem like that probably was what happened. Thanks for this. It does seem split where it connects onto other parts. Pics attached. I read a thread somewhere here that the part numbers should be clearly written on the hard plastic part of the hose, and they're unique to each engine model, but I can't see any clear part number on mine without taking it out and disconnecting it fully at least. I'll try and do some research to find the right part number for my model. Probably won't get a genuine one these days though. Tyre pressures fine all round.

I have a 1.2L HTP Mk1 Classic. Recently MOT'd (less than a month ago), but whether that has implications of "surely a major issue would have been picked up then" or "did they do something when inspecting the car" I am not sure. Tonight, I was making a 150 mile round trip journey to pick up a friend near London and drive them home. About an hour into the journey, approaching some queuing traffic, I pressed the brake pedal and the car didn't seem to slow down at all. The pedal was completely firm — it didn't go flat to the floor — but the car did make some very strange noises in the process, almost like crunching or scraping. I can't be sure whether it was some kind of rogue ABS activation or what, but it was very close to a buy-new-pants scenario. After this event, I pulled into a side road and tried the brakes a number of times and everything was fine. The remaining 3 hours of driving — quite cautiously — also went perfectly fine with no other weird braking oddities. I've attached the dashcam footage of what happened, and you can hear the sounds I'm talking about over my podcast. It happened pretty quickly in the moment, so I can't say if the car eventually slowing was simply the uphill gradient, engine braking, or the brakes eventually working. Any ideas? As a side question, is the Mk1 smart enough to detect a broken brake light bulb and stop sending it current? I had a blown bulb and replaced it but it still didn't work when testing with the car off. It started working at some point, so I'm wondering if starting the engine reset something. I'm unsure because the car certainly didn't warn me about any issue with the brake light. I read that on some models you'd get a flashing glow plug light — but presumably not on a petrol! brakes.mp4

I don't think it's impossible that it was fitted with the wrong parts many years ago, then corrected later with the handbrake cable not being replaced. Really, I should look through all the service history to see if I can see any indication of it.

From what I was told, there was previously the wrong sized drums fitted to the car. I probably misunderstood that both would need to be replaced and it would just the cables, which makes sense thinking of it.

Thanks. That'll help to explain why it started rolling back a little when I parked it a few mins ago. I think I'll have to ask the garage to replace the cables and drums next time I go based on how stretched the cable already is.

I was outside just now re-attaching a door seal which had started to come off of the car, and decided to take a quick look underneath the car by pure chance. I saw this curved piece of metal hanging freely from around the rear nearside. It seemed to just be caught on a bit of the underbody and that's the only reason it was hanging there. I lifted it out so it didn't fly away at some point, but (as someone that understands almost nothing about cars) what actually is it? And, more importantly, should I get someone to put it back where I found it? 😅

So a rather happy update from me... I managed to find a passenger side door panel from a breaker yard on eBay which came with a manual window crank and a winder handle, which I promptly ordered. Based on the decent weather outside today, I decided to give it a go this afternoon. I managed to take the door card off relatively easily, discovering a few interesting surprises on the way, and started to take the inner door card out to do a straight swap with the one I ordered online... that was until I realised I could just rip off the motor and swap the crank mechanism onto it of course. After that, taking out the glove box to rip out the cabling that was installed, and finally managing to get the door card back on and everything, I'm happy to say the swap works perfectly. I did swap the handle out for my own new-old stock version I had bought months prior to this as obviously looked much cleaner. Some pictures to help anyone else in the future... This is the replacement inner door assembly I bought off of eBay: Here is what the door frame inside my car looked like before anything I'd done. You can see the blue+black cabling for the electric windows, which had been run through some existing gromits (with holes poked through them), directly through the door wiring harness thing and to the centre console. I took off the electric motor and adapter gearing, then snipped the connector off the end so I could pull it all the way through from the centre console to remove it. Here's the door assembly with the motor removed. And here is the manual crank mechanism attached on to the car's inner door assembly. There was an adapter gear between the mechanism and the regulator itself. This was actually what had made me think I'd need to swap the whole regulator assembly (I thought they might be different between electric and manual), but thankfully I didn't need to in the end. ...and the old motor after removal below. It wasn't an OEM part, branded ELECTRIC-LIFE and labelled "Skoda compatible", but it was dated 19-04-2002. I think it's done quite well to last 23 years. As for the surprises... I did need to take out the whole glove box in order to remove the cables. They had been quite liberally zip-tied to the existing car's wiring, so I had to snip those to remove it all. It also gave me a fantastic opportunity to re-route my Android Auto head unit's USB cable properly, as well as tidy up its microphone wiring. Overall, it was looking much cleaner after this! You might have also noticed the zip tie on the locking peg thing on the door. This wasn't me! Someone in the past had, seemingly, broken or disconnected the linkage which connects that to the lock, and in order to not make it fall down inside the door, decided to zip tie it to hold it in place. It does, surprisingly, still work, but doesn't pop up properly when unlocked. You can shove the car key down the hole and push it down to lock it. Not a big deal, but something I should look at in the future (if I care enough). I have absolutely no idea when this happened, though. Anyway, now I just have to do the drivers side in a few weeks I suppose! I ordered a Polo drivers side door assembly as the mechanism appears to be the same. I'm hoping it also has the translation gear as well, though, or I'm buggered... I'll be honest: the most difficult part was actually putting the door card back on because of the whole zip-tie thing! I did also notice after all this that one of my low beam bulbs had gone out, and my tyres were all low on pressure, but those are all unrelated and were also very easy to sort. :P

Right... I'm looking more closely into this now as we're leaving winter and I'm more amenable to doing some work outside! I'm working on the assumption that the drivers side regulator is absolutely screwed so I'll be needing a new one of those. All the parts I find online seem to be suited to electric windows so don't have the shaft to connect to a manual winder, which is rather frustrating. For the passenger side, the regulator is fine (as far as I know), so I think I'd just need the part that connects from the regulator and provides a shaft for a manual winder but I can't find any of those anywhere. The Mk4 Polo part looks a bit different to the one I've seen attached to some LHD parts, and the sellers also want close to £60 for it from what I can see! I tried to take one of the caps from the door cards out, from when the car had manual windows fitted from the factory, but they appear fastened in place somehow from behind the door card and I was just making scuff marks on the cap instead. Based on the rear ones, the cap wouldn't be flush like it is if the shaft between the regulator and where the winder used to be was still in there! I'm starting to feel like I might have more luck going to a scrapyard and scouting out a Fabia there at this point!

Got through fine, and enjoyed the wonders of Inverness, Kyle of Lochalsh, Wick, Thurso, Fort William and Oban. The car does, in fact, have small ciruclar caps in the door card where the old manual levers would have been. I've not yet tried popping one of them off (I'd rather do that in the daylight because I know I'll inevitably drop it, never to be seen again). Gives me hope that the conversion is actually possible!

I'll probably give that ago when it's decent weather! Heading up to Inverness on the sleeper! Hope it makes it through as I'm trying to tick off all the Scottish branch lines while I'm up there.

I seem to remember that there's a small plastic cap over where the winder handle would be, probably just push fit into place. I really did pick the wrong day to post this as I'm off to Scotland by train for just under a week so can't check!

Hi all. I recently got my hands on a 2003 Fabia that's been passed down the family. Its front drivers side electric window doesn't go down as it should. When the car was new from Skoda, I'm pretty confident it had manual windows all around, as the owners pack has a slip of paper detailling how the car was fitted with a electric window kit by the dealer prior to sale in 2003. This kit was a little panel of switches screwed into what would have otherwise been the recessed cubby/storage bay below the cassette deck. I've not seen any pictures online of any other Fabia that had this (picture below). I swapped out the cassette deck with a Sony double DIN head unit, so there's no space for the old window switches. I've been debating whether or not to retrofit proper power windows around the car (or at least at the front), or restoring the front back to manual windows. I know the front window regulators have destroyed themselves at least three times since the car was new based on my brother's experiences and the service record prior to that. Does anyone know if this would be possible? I guess the only way would be to open the door card and have a look. I'm just mindful that Skoda Parts only lists a window crank handle under "rear doors" and also claims it does not fit my car. Thanks in advance! David