Lofty

The only easy one to add is the middle rear headrest - by finding a backrest for sale with the headrest in. Theres no way of retro fitting it as the parts are no longer available from Skoda. I found a complete (but dirty) interior for sale for not much money, with the extra rear headrest, bought the lot, chucked the rest of the interior away as it was worthless and have the backrest to be valeted and fitted in my yellow one. The complete list of factory options for the Mk1 VRS are as follows - Note not all options were available from launch 1.) Metallic Paint ( Silver or Black) 2.) Electric Tilt and Slide Sunroof 3.) Xenon headlights (with headlamp washers in front bumper) 4.) Cruise Control 5.) ESP (Electronic stability programme) instead of ASR (Anti slip regulation - normal traction control) 6.) Passenger airbag deactivation switch 7.) Heated Front seats 8.) 6 disc CD changer (under passenger seat) 9.) Third rear headrest (middle) 10) Front Side seat airbags 11.) Sat Nav (came with Maxidot clock set and 6 cd changer and different Aerial base) 12.) Full factory leather (with red piping round rear of front seats) - these are the same as vRS SE seats but un-numbered and with the red piping instead of blue - Note these still had the normal black cloth trimmed door panels. This was a fairly late addition to the Fabia options list - probably 06 onwards. Now this is where I need Ross to confirm - the rear "sundym" tinted glass was never available as a factory option on the Mk1 - if you see a Mk1 with it, it's been retro fitted Dealer fit options were . 1.) Seat Surgeons full leather interior - this usually included the door cars and could be in a number of colour options 2.) Mudflaps - Front only. The dealer would refuse to cut the rear bumper to fit normal fabia rears 3.) Boot liner 4.) Headlight protectors 5.) Rear boot storage bags 6.) Under parcel shelf storage bag 7.) Roof bars There are prob things I've forgotton from my time selling these cars new - it was a long time ago now!!!

Bit of an update folks... I loaded the new map onto the ecu, a base map for a 2.0 PD with the bigger nozzles, repaired the broken wire to the fuel temp sensor and then went for a fire up. It ran but badly, wouldn't rev up, as soon as any revs were applied it died, showing up crank sensor fault. Replaced with new genuine crank sensor and while it'll now rev up, it wont idle, throwing up Glow plug flashing light and eml light. Still showing as crank sensor fault. Could it be another faulty sensor? Anyone got any ideas how to check the sensor in situ to see if it's duff? Or how to check for wiring breaks up to the sensor connections? I kept the original crank sensor just in case as well.

Love the colour coding Ross, Will look very much at home in the Cayenne bay.

About time I started to document the changes that have happened to my Fabia vRS in the last few years.. Back in 2003 I was working for Skoda and had the chance to run the then new Mk1 Fabia vRS as my company car when they were launched. I had a fair few of them with various option on and fondly remember the punchy nature of the car, the frugal nature of the unstressed PD130 power train and the rarity on the roads. Fast forward 12 years and I'm now in a position to replace a rather crusty Peugeot 206 GTi 180 that I'd been using for high days and holidays with something different that could still see the occasional trackday, and be a willing B road car when required. At this point I'm still in the motor trade so the new toy would be a garage queen most of the time, and be a hobby for me to indulge in. I was quite specific in what I wanted in the Fabia, it had got to be Yellow, and more importantly it had to be the later (2006 onwards) brighter Sprint Yellow as I preferred that over the earlier more pastel like Lemon yellow. Downside was there were not many sold in the later brighter colour as the SE models were out at the time and they were easily more popular... Why Yellow? Why not, I drive very nice but very grown up cars every day so wanted something a bit in your face and obvious... odd for a 40 something bloke but hey ho.... I looked at a few utter turds in the process and finally stumbled across a vague badly photographed trade advert for one on the Autotrader "oop north". From the add I could see it had a sunroof, but there were no mentions of the Xenons, or heated seats that I could see in the pictures. One phone call later and myself and my car geek sidekick are heading north to pick it up. Quite a reasonable if old fashioned used car garage, when I got there I noticed it had in addition to the Electric Sunroof and Xenons, that it also had ESP and side airbags.... on the downside it had a swimming pool in the rear footwells and the rear brakes were about dead. Cue some hard bartering and I drove away, happy with my purchase.. Pics from the Autotrader advert.. The car was originally a company car for Hitachi Capital fleet and still had their rear number plate on, it had done 80k in the first four years of its life down south and had got a full Skoda FSH with it, One private owner and continued history from then until 90k. It was showing 99k when I bought it so was rapidly approaching it's 100k birthday. First pictures when I got it home.. The more eagle eyed amongst you will notice the rear door cards missing in the last pic, yes, first job on day one was to reseal the rear doors with plumbers gold and dry the rear carpets out. The car was at this point utterly and totally standard, due a 100k service, needing rear brakes, a couple of tyres and the wheels refurbing.. being a fussy old bugger means if its worth doing it's worth doing right. The next few weeks saw very little driving but an awful lot of driveway fettling. I drew up a list of items to replace upgrade in one go, sounds daunting but sometimes getting stuck in is the only way. The car would be used for trackdays and European holidays so braking and suspension upgrades would be necessary and why replace with standard if QUALITY performance parts could be utilised. No cheap upgrades here. So, suspension wise the following were purchased (all new.... ouch) Bilstein B8 Dampers front and rear Eibach 30mm Pro-Sport lowering Springs Genuine Drop Links Gen Top mounts and bearings Gen Bottom Ball joints Gen front damper dust bellows Gen rear top mounts Gen rear bump stops I sourced a good used Jabba RARB and sent that off for powdercoating. Braking wise the 312mm conversion was the most obvious upgrade so I sourced a set of low mileage Octavia mk1 VRS front calipers, got a new pair of genuine VW 312 front discs and a set of OMP road and sport pads which I have used for many years with good results. The rears were treated to a new pair of Genuine skoda green rear calipers, new VW 232mm rear discs and gen skoda pads. While the car was living its life on 4 axle stands the wheels were taken to City Powder coaters in Birmingham for a full refurb in Light Gunmetal, and a set of new 205/45/16 Hankook V12 Evo2 tyres fitted. I had also bought new genuine alloy centre caps and a complete set of wheel nut covers in black from TPS. End result after a few weekends of skinned knuckles and swearing.. My private number plate had also found its way on by this point. More to follow... mostly intense detailing and really getting into the car to get it looking its best.