deadtom

Thank you both for the replies and suggestions, however what little affection I ever had for it has totally evaporated, so I just want it gone. I'll stick a 'warts and all' advert up in the classifieds here (unless there is a minimum time / post count needed for new members that I haven't met yet) and ebay and just get it gone.

Well, I was all primed to come back here with good news; turns out that as suspected, the previous owner really had fitted the lower ball joints on the wrong way around! Sadly having had new ball joints fitted (the correct way around), a new genuine Skoda OSF spring and damper (turns out the old spring had snapped, which must have been very near the end of the coil as I know these are prone to it and I have checked, as had another garage, but spring looked OK), both left and right inner and outer track rods and laser alignment done... it still drives like **** and wobbles around like jelly. I am about fed up with the wretched thing. If it weren't for the £1000+ that I have poured into it recently I'd gladly drive it to a scrap yard myself and pay them to crush it while I watch just for the satisfaction of it. Sadly I am rich enough to do that (if I were I wouldn't be driving a 15 year old Skoda in the first place...) so can anyone advise on an approximate value for it in its current state?: 150k miles, 12 Months MOT, not particularly rusty and is in a fetching shade of green. since I have had it (just under a year) as well as the above bits it's also had a new EGR, new rear dampers, new front discs and pads, NSF wheel bearing and CV joint, OSF brake caliper. When I bought it it also had nearly new rear springs, discs and pads. it's recently started saying a service is due, however it's been less than a year on only 6500 miles since the last one. No idea when Haldex was last serviced, but it clearly works as it did a great job of carting us around the snowy highlands earlier this year. Four matching Kumho Solus winter tyres, rears are down to only a few mm tread though. AC doesn't work, probably the compressor that is kaput as the system holds pressure so sadly not just a regas needed. I realise this isn't the right section for it, but wondering if it is even worth spending the time advertising it if It's only worth scrap?

Hi Albert, Sadly no not yet, life has been hectic lately so I've not had a chance to get it back up on axle stands. We have a second car so I have just been avoiding using the Skoda as much as possible. I hope to do have a look at it this weekend. I have been mulling it over though and it does have new front lower ball joints fitted by the previous owner, and the ball join mount plates look to be close but not quite symmetrical, so is it possible that left and right have been fitted the wrong way around? this may well explain why the front wheels are slightly set back in the arch and would almost certainly result in some weird handling due to slightly altering the steering geometry. In other news the MOT is due in less than a week, so it's an important few days for the car

I've already done and even made sure to put both sides on axle stands to make sure that there was no twisting load on the ARB which might be removing any play in the joints, but I could find no obvious play in the bushes, linkages etc OS top mount replaced recently by my local garage, and I assume they would have checked the NS one while they were there but didn't report anything wrong with it. Lower bushes were all replaced as they come with the wishbones which I did a few months ago Thanks for taking the photos, yours definitely look nice and central compared to mine, and you're right, mine is sitting very high even accounting for my photo being taken at a lower angle. The line where the bumper trim meets the front quarter panel looks to be the same height as the top of the tyre on your, but is clearly well above it on mine. hmm Oh and I think it's just the massive gap between the top of the tyre and the arch that is making my wheels look smaller. Mine are also 225/50 R17 you might be on to something actually. I won't have a chance to get the wheel off to have a proper look at the strut for part numbers until at least this weekend though. The previous owner was a mechanic, but I wonder if he just chucked any VAG parts on it that he had lying around and would fit even if the spring and/or damper rates were wrong. Thanks for the replies everyone

that sounds a bit different to my problem, as mine does it regardless of acceleration. Maybe Octavia Scouts just take any opportunity to get a wobble on? out of interest, does the wheel sit centrally in the wheel arch on yours, or is it set back slightly like mine (photo in my first post)?

ah OK, well the 8Q1 code just shows as 'headlight range control' and 8Q3 is 'dynamic range control', with different suspension wishbones for each

Thank you for your reply, and for the link to the parts list, that is very useful. I actually have the list of all the codes for my car, a few pounds on Ebay well spent. Mine has the same 2UB code for the damper strut and bearing housing as yours, and the PR code relevant to the wishbone (which is what I meant by lower arm; my mistake!) is 8Q1 (which the decode says is actually related to active headlight levelling but I guess this affects the suspension due to level sensors?) am I reading the parts list correctly that the one highlighted blue means for cars built up to end of August 2006 and red circled means for cars built after that date? If I am understanding it right, it looks like for cars built after August 2006 the wishbones are the same between FWD and 4x4 variants, but maybe I was supplied pre 2006 arms for my 2008 car. Do you know if there is any way to find the dimensions for the parts listed?

Hello Briskoda, thank you for having me. Apologies for length, be gentle, it's my first time etc. I have a 2008 Octavia Scout 2.0 TDI (PD) with just over 150k miles, and it wobbles. It is most noticeable at 60 mph on constant radius left hand bends; worse when going down a gentle slope. It is also becoming noticeable at lower speeds, but always worse when turning to the left. It's not wheel balance or buckle as the frequency is much too slow to be that. As the title suggests, it feels a bit like repetitive tramlining, or what would happen if you deliberately applied a few degrees of steering left, right, left, right, left etc at a frequency of maybe one or two cycles per second. It's enough to get the whole car body wobbling to and fro. That being said when it does the wobbling thing, I can't feel any feedback through the steering, which make me think the problem is at the rear axle I read an old thread on here that described similar symptoms and it was solved by replacing the rear control arms, so today I had both ends off the ground and went round and given the wheels a good shunt in all directions using a pry bar, but I have not been able to feel any significant play in any of the bushes or ball joints. There seems to be a little bit of front to rear movement in the rear trailing arm where it meets the body, but it's not much and the movement is not in a direction that would induce a rogue steering effect. Mechanically the car is reasonable but not pristine. I have had it just under a year and in that time it has had new front lower arms (more on that later), new rear dampers, OSF top mount and bearing. When I bought it the rear springs looked very new, and the fronts are still there and in one piece. The geometry has been checked and is within spec (mostly; more on that later and possibly related to the new lower arms). The front dampers are, in the words of my local garage, 'showing a bit of oil mist around the seals but still seem to be working OK'. The rest of the suspension bits are the usual level of grotty for this time of year but as noted, seem OK otherwise. It's on four matching Kumho Solus something-or-other winter tyres. The front pair have a decent amount of tread but the rears are down to the first set of wear bars (They look to have two sets; I assume the first are to show when they stop being as good in the snow, and the second are the actual legal limit?). Tyre wear is even across all four tyres. So based on all the above I don't think it's failing suspension, unless these cars are particularly sensitive to suspension wearing out and handling problems arise before the usual rattly and knocking symptoms of bushing wear happen? My next guess is that I possibly have the wrong arms fitted and have messed up the front axle geometry, and I have the following questions about that: - are there different front lower arms between the different variants; hatch vs. estate. vs 4x4 vs Scout? - should front / rear position of the front wheel be perfectly central in the arch? You can see in the photo that I have tried to attach that mine sits slightly closer to the rear of the wheel arch than the front. It's the same on both sides. I would guess it's about 10 mm offset to the rear. I have tried searching images of other cars to compare, but it is very hard to find a photo that is side on and level with the wheel centre to compare. If the answer to both of the above is 'yes', then I suspect my local motor factor supplied me the wrong arms. They fit on easily enough and the wheels don't scrub the arches at full lock, but it would possibly explain. the main handling problems I have. I did line up the new arms with the old before fitting them just to make sure and they appeared to line up exactly, but maybe I didn't check carefully enough. Last time I had the geometry checked the caster angle was a bit out on both sides, and this would line up with the horizontal position being messed up by the wrong parts. I don't have the geo result to hand but I think the caster was around one degree from what it should be. However if all MKII Octavias all use the same arms, but the wheel should be neatly centred in the arch then that's more worrying as I don't know where the rear offset has come from. Maybe it's just that the motor factor supplies crap parts; they were suspiciously cheap. If the problem is none of the above I don't know what else to consider. It's a very long shot but possibly the difference in wear (and therefore radius) between front and rear tyres, plus different axle speeds when going around a corner is tricking the 4x4 system into thinking the front axle is slipping, so it's locking and unlocking the Haldex clutch? It definitely feels like that explanation is clutching at straws though, and this would be easy to check by pulling the Haldex system fuse and going for a drive so maybe I will do that tomorrow. If you have made it this far, then sincerely thank you for sticking with me, and I really hope someone here has come across this problem before and can help. TL;DR Car wobbles, please help. Thanks, Tom