Andyroo!

Hello! i've bought a 1961 right hand drive Skoda Octavia; an earlier version, with a bench seat, a column change selector and a handbrake on the left side of the car! It's a G-R-E-A-T car, and although it's not started since 2004, it did, this afternoon, fire-albeit with four new spark plugs and a goodly dose of easy-start! I've bought a workshop manual for the car and I was a mechanic in an earlier life, having done my City and Guilds training with a local Volkswagen dealer, so I'm fairly au fait with how to set up the ignition system. My question is: does anyone know the appropriate dwell angle reading for a Skoda Octavia Super? I've bought a new set of points and want to set them very accurately! While I'm here, does anyone know where to obtain the headlight lenses (the "symmetrical" ones) for a Skoda Octavia?

Yes, sorry, the plastic scuttles (mud guard inserts)

Hi! I've come to this a bit late, after searching for some advice about my Fabia, which has this problem of a good deal of condensation. After reading all the forum links I decided to clean out the plenum chambers on my car, but tackled it "inside out" so to speak, by removing the plastic mud guard from inside the wheel arch and using a vacuum cleaner to suck out the gunge from the opening in the wheel arch. My car has over 90,000 miles and I don't think the chambers have ever been cleaned.... There were things in there of interest to scientists looking for alien life, it was so smelly! Anyway, tomorrow morning at 4:30 am I'll be off to work on my first shift since before Christmas, so let's see if it's any drier.....

Yes it did but they were removed when I bough the Truckman top. It also had the long bars along the Truckman top, to which I used to mount a lateral bar & fitted a set of amber breakdown lights when I used it for recovery work. Attached is a picture of the Fun awaiting a ferry to the Isle Of wight a few years ago.

Glad to know it's still running! Our daughter, who had just passed her driving test when I bought the Fun, loved it and thought it SO cool & couldn't believe it was a SKODA! Suffice it to say she "borrowed" it quite a lot! It was an excellent workhorse cum cool car for 7 years and I was sad to wave goodbye to it, but the Citroën that replaced it was every but as good, albeit in different ways. If you want to know more about the car just contact me through here.

I've just changed the one in my 54 Fabia estate; clearly it had not been changed since the car was built! I'm considering sending the contents to the Natural History Museum, as I feel sure the organic life forms discovered therein are believed to be extinct!

OH MY GODDD! This is my old Skoda Fun, in which I covered over 100,000 miles (almost) faultlessly! I can't believe it's looking so good! I bought the number as I thought it suited the car so well and I just totally loved it. I've just read through the thread & the following might help you: 1/ The yellow headlights were (are!) legal-believe me, I'm a qualified M.O.T. tester! 2/ There was some play in the balljoints when I sold it, but that was in 2010, so it's probably become worse in 4 years! 3/ I sold it with excessively loud twin tone horns. And I mean REALLY loud! Are they still in play? 4/ I replaced the fan switch I regularly flushed the cooling system. The car never overheated but I did have to replace the water pump once. 5/ I fitted the tow hitch & used it as a recovery truck and it would pull a house down! The record tow was a Volvo 760 over about 50 miles on an "A" frame! Please get in touch if you need to know more about it! I only sold it because I needed a real 4/5 seat car & I bought a Citroën Xantia 2 litre automatic in replacement!

I insured my Citroën Xantia with the Co-Op last year and had a very cheap premium of only £179, fully comp, including my wife on the policy-good deal! This year the premium had risen to £329, (almost DOUBLE!) which unless I acted to cancel it in 2 weeks, would auto-renew! I shopped around and found, via Go-Compare, a Co-Op policy for (you've guessed it....) £179 fully comp!!! I called and confirmed that I wished to take them up on this new policy and when asked to confirm my 9 years' no claims bonus, I referred them to their own original policy number! The guy on the 'phone was genuinely embarrassed & as a goodwill gesture offered me no claims bonus protection for free (normally £11) so all in all, not a bad day on the 'phone and t'internet!

"If you want to know what owning a Citroën is like, try staying up all night burning £20 notes; the sensation is much the same." Not quite true, as mine does over 35 MPG, which for a "M" reg 2 litre automatic doesn't seem too bad! It's as strong as an ox, the suspension's FAB & it cruises at 100 (when that's legal) so I reckon Citroën made a winner there!

A ha! A subject about which I feel qualified to wax lyrical! The earlier post about yellow lamps being mandatory in France up to 1993 was correct and as a result post 1993 French garages and shops had millions of them that they sold off cheaply (I know, I bought quite a lot of them!) I fitted these to loads of cars and I sold many pairs to owners who liked the distinctive look they gave their cars. If you use them in France now (I always do!) the French drivers will hoot at you in appreciation! It's a sort-of anti E.U. thing! Why are they better? Let's dispel one rumour straightaway-yellow headlights ARE legal in the United Kingdom & you won't fail the MOT for having them, but they must be a particular yellow colour though, defined as "selective" yellow. If you have 4 headlights it's permissible to have matched pairs of lights (two outer bulbs coloured yellow and 2 inner bulbs white.) I slipped glass "selective" yellow covers over the H4 halogen bulbs in many of my cars. When driving in an urban environment one's headlights are on to be seen, as opposed to needing to see, so if you have yellow lights you may be more likely to be noticed than if you look like all the other cars. As to driving in rural situations, I've used them for years & find the roadsigns reflect more when yellow light catches them. In foggy conditions you really can see the yellow beam slicing through the mist! More important than the colour of the beam is to ensure the beams are properly aligned-badly adjusted headlights are a menace and cause more problems for other drivers!

It's on "a well-known internet auction site" (other sites are available) with this reference (but don't buy it, "coz I want it & I don't get paid until the end of the month!) http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Skoda-Estelle-Two-105S-Recently-restored-and-Mechanically-100-/181520446166?

Oh, what a topic! Why would anyone, least of all an immigrant, want to live in a small, miserable, squalid, pathetic and rather sad has-been of a country that's a third-world island 22 miles off the north coast of France? But the attraction of a job, any job, no matter how lowly paid it is, cash in hand, which pays more than they get in their homeland is better (My daughter recently wanted a new part of trainers; I gave her a 1kg bag of rice and a $1 note; "why" she said. "Vietnamese children make trainers for that; why can't you?") We HAVE to remove the incentive that makes these people want to come here; we can't make the country they left any better (50 years of foreign aid and handouts have proved that) so...we have make our own country worse in their eyes, by removing the very incentives that attract them. We all know how to do this and what action it takes, but who will vote for it?

I bought the book several years ago, along with the Russian Cars book, from the same stable. Both are excellent reads and make pertinent comments about the raison d'être for eastern European cars; that they fulfilled a job, without glamour and were hard-working cars. I think I read therein that "the new breed of Skodas are excellent cars, but their heritage is German, not Czech." Sad, but true!

Hi! I'm back on Britskoda.net after having parted company with Skodas for 5 years-it's great to be back! I bought my first Favorit in 1992 and followed it with 3 Felicias and then a Fun, which I JUST LOVED, but after 7 years and173,000 miles it left me (but I know it's still going strong!) and I bought a Citroën Xantia. A great car, but not QUITE eccentric enough. Now I've seen a delightful Estelle Two on E-Bay for £1500 and my E-Bay finger is twitching.... It's the true "base" model, the 105S, which was a special order from the dealer, as it had to be specially supplied WITHOUT the heated rear window! Did it also have non-halogen bulbs too? Its bodywork looks excellent and the seller clearly knows his Skodas....