Lofty

They do but there's no harm in spraying another load in there, I did all of the sills front to back on the yellow one and the wheel arches via the blacking gromets under the rear arch liner. Every bit helps and all that

It surprises me that it's already at £2300 being in that condition..... mind you Fabia prices always make me gulp a little in surprise.

The real early 1999 Fabia's that came through the dealers as W plates were very, very well put together like you say. The underbody coatings were hugely thick, especially compared to the then still current Felicia models. They really did go OTT on the protection of the early ones. Mind you the same was true of early Octavias, they were tank like in their assembly, only getting cheaper parts and less spec as they got longer in their production run.

I had a 206 GTi 180 with exactly this, on cursory inspection the sills looked immaculate, i jacked it up one weekend and heard the crunching sound of metal moving and then when prodded the entire drivers sill was like weetabix. Ended up having a complete outer sill on and it was about 9 years old at the time. Got rid after that. It was rotten as a conker under the shiny stonechip. I suspect it had rotted from the inside out as there were very few stone chips on the sills.

The originally fitted rear arch liners were of a better quality than the ones currently supplied by Skoda, the early ones seemed ever so slightly thicker and more resistant to breaking on the lower edges like you show above Ryan. I fitted new ones on my yellow one years ago a broke one the first time out, and that was new genuine stuff from TPS. The earlier cars in general seemed a little better protected from rust, I know it's almost unheard of to find SE's for example without corroded sills and arches so maybe the protection applied to later ones was lacking somehow?

Going back a few years the anti-corrosion warranty was still valid for a lot of these cars and a number of the common spots were reluctantly fixed by the manufacturer. The rust around the number plate lights was the most common to be fixed with little resistance, especially as they could not blame stone chips for the rust in that spot. Now that the corrosion warranty is long gone it's left to owners to fix these issues. Generally the Fabia is well put together and had excellent protection from the factory, however after many years of shall we say less diligent owners, they can fall into disrepair quickly. In essence there are no intrinsic rust traps as long as the car is cleaned properly and chips touched up before they fester. The sills are an issue now as they get battered by stone chips and the rust starts there and creeps unknowingly under the factory applied stone chip, festering away until they go in a hole, just in time for an MOT. Regular checks in these areas are essential and if needs be a proactive approach to remove ALL of the factory stone chip back to bare steel and then treat, and re-apply then repaint will give the car a few more years. Also in these areas are the sill lips themselves. Years of numpties jacking the cars up on the non-reinforced areas of the sill flanges causes them to bend, crack the paint and then water gets in. This affects all cars, and the Fabia is no worse than other cars on the market for this. Rear arches as Ryan pointed out are usually pretty goof and the arch liner themselves can rub the paint of the lower edge, causing a bare spot for rust to start. One thing that would frighten most Fabia owners is to remove the arch liner and look behind at the multitude of spot welds in the inner arch. By now they spot welds will have paint lifting off them so a pre-emptive grinding back and treating is a worthwhile job. At the back of each rear wheel arch, where the rear bumper meets the rear 1/4 panel is another hotbed. The bumper rubs against the 1/4 panel, rubs the paint off and the rust starts there. Eventually it will spread under the bumper and up onto the rear 1/4, again catching it early helps. Front wings suffer with being stuffed with dead leaf matter, mud, dust and crap, from behind the arch liner, again regular removal of the arch liner and cleaning out will prevent most of this. In short, most of the corrosion can be prevented by regular cleaning, looking at and touching up chips when they happen. It's obviously possible as there are cars with 200K miles on with pristine sills and arches.

Erm, nope. I've been conscripted into substantial DIY renovations at home, structural work, new Kitchen etc so the Fabia is languishing in the garage under the cover still. I'm being nagged at now by everyone to get it finished and on the road soon, so hopefully it'll be mobile this year. Hopefully. Fingers crossed.... In other news I sold my 1969 Mini and replaced it with a 1991 Mercedes-Benz 260e W124, so with that being nearer the garage door is being used for local shows and classic meets etc, further pushing the Fabia into retirement.

This. For god's sake don't get hung up on doing them in a particular order, or take them all out at once!

The shallow steel bottomed sumps are 11mm lower in overall height than the standard cast aluminium sumps so yes, despite your ever present sarcasm the volume of liquid that it can hold will be less. You will of course know with your expert knowledge that the shallow sumps do not counteract this reduction in capacity by being wider at any point, or longer at any point. Again using your massive brain, putting a fixed amount of oil into a car that has changed from alloy to shallow sump will see it register high on the dipstick. If it takes 4.3 litres of oil in a standard sump to get it to the max mark on the dipstick, then it obviously follows that you'll need less oil in a shallow sump to get to the same max mark. You will of course know exactly how far above the static oil level the crank is on a PD i assume, especially with the endless knowledge you bestow all over? But you know all of this so why come across with such blatent sarcasm? It's not funny now, and never has been. Your belittling manner gets tiring tbh, especially when folks are trying to help.

In fairness it's been garaged since 2016 so nobody has seen it!

Good to see progress again. The seats can be tiresome to clean but they are SO worth it when they are mint, plus soon hardly any vRS's will have original seats in them. I second the post above about the covers disintegrating in the wash, the outer cloth rests on a thin layer of foam called scrim foam, then another thin cloth underneath sandwiching the scrim foam, the foam is what breaks down with age, sunlight etc, and can be seen when wet vaccing the seats, as the action of being wet and then vaccumed strongly can break the foam up into tiny particles, you'll see what looks like tiny dark dots in the weave of the top cloth.

The main issues with the M12 bolts in the console is not the bolts themselves, the threads can suffers from some sort of corrosion (galvanic corrosion) between the alloy console and the steel bolt, meaning that quite often the bolt brings the console threads out with them, rendering the consoles pretty much scrap. New bolts from VAG come with a coating on the threads, not infact any type of threadlock, but an anti corrosion substance to stop it happening, hence VAG saying the bolts are one use types.

The capacity is a fair bit different looking at the pics, so i imagine putting the suggested amount of 4.3 litres of oil in will see it register up higher on the dipstick. The question as to if that oil level is then too high and the crank will be splashing into it is one i don't have the answer to, but the post above about that being a bad thing is quite right.

Long term vRS serial owner here, yes I have a Sprint Yellow garage ornament and for many years, along side the show pony, I also ran a Black Magic 2005 vRS. The Black one was bought as a "theoretical" breaker, as it had a number of tasty bits i needed for the Yellow project, but I ended up keeping it and took it from 100k to just shy of 200k in 3.5 years. Hand on heart, at 185k it drove every bit as well as it did at 100k, probably because it had been maintained on the button and if it needed replacement parts they were always fitted. Like any car, you can come across a 60k mile minter that is in all reality on the cusp of needing lots of remedial work due to age etc, so buy with your head not your heart and I wouldn't discount something with over 100k if it's got good provable history and drives well. Even my Black one had no body corrosion, no scabs on the sills, no rusty arches and it stood up well when cleaned / polished. A good moto to remember is "crap cars attract crap owners" so anything that's been all over the social media doing burnouts, smoking like a chimney bouncing of the limiter is probably going to give you a fiscal fingering so do some digging on the reg number etc. I agree with your sentiments on Yellow, it's a marmite colour, so get one you love, there are still some lovely examples out there.

Yeah we used to fit them on PDI for some classic customers. The kit of 4 x rubbing strips used to be dirt cheap back in the day. Quite a few fitted too high or too low though, used to make my teeth itch looking at them.

It's probably easier to remove the oil cooler out of the way. If you can change an oil filter you can remove and refit the oil cooler. You'll need the two rubber seals for the oil cooler, and some oil to replace what comes out. Straight access to the crank sensor then.

You may end up damaging the old ones getting them off. When I had a set of door mouldings smoothed, painted and carbon dipped i had to start off with new mouldings as the old ones were ruined on removal.

If the paint is not bubbling/peeling it will more than likely be a different shade nowadays to the rest of the doors as it'll be unfaded where the strips have been for 20years.

Standard Fabia vRS seats probably will have a good market for them once they have all but vanished. Only then will folks be able to get sensible money for them as they will be simply unavailable anywhere. I'm afraid that is probably a long way off so for now they are not worth a great deal. My advice would be to put them in the loft, hang onto them if you have the room and flog them in a few years time

Saddens me that this does appear to be the *majority of Fabia vRS owners on the old "social medias". I pray to god that there will be enough of these cars broken for spares in the coming years and it leaves the better ones to actually gain a following instead of an image problem. Knowing my luck that following will just about coincide with the social birching that will come from even daring to own a diesel vehicle.

Yeah the standard 2.0 Elegance was only identifiable externally by the 2.0 badge and the (rather pleasingly designed) 15" Alloys.

The backrest release handles are still available from TPS and they are very cheap. I certainly would rather have a new one than used as they do degrade over the years. I think I paid less than £3 each for them earlier this year.

The thing is, even with knackered glow plugs, the PD's start quickly. I had a glow plug snap off in the head on my black vRS, it snapped as I was changing them due to it throwing the EML on the dash. It stayed snapped in the head for 80,000 miles and even when we had the real bad winter in 2018 (i think), it would start fine in -7c temps. It coughed once then ran clean all day. If you do identify a failing plug, be very careful about trying to remove them, especially if you have no dash lights on yet, as they like to stay where they are, despite all the tricks in the book about taking them out of a red hot engine etc.

Good write up. Lack of blood which on reflection is a good thing. For those with a Mk1 vRS who are looking for a middle headrest, and are hoping to find one from another VAG car with vRS material, then I wish you all the luck in the world.

I've quoted you in this Wino to see if you have any thoughts? I've had the lower dash out just now to get the relay out of the car, from position 15 on the relay plate. On closer inspection the relay in position 15 is a "53" relay, with part number 141 951 253 B on it, not a "109" relay. Looking on ETKA, it actually differentiates the relays in position 15, on cars up to 2005 it's suggesting a "109" relay, and for cars 2006-2008 (which mine is being a dec 2006 build car) it's saying it should indeed be a "53" relay with the number of 8D0 951 253 A. I assume that the relay in position 15, regardless of number, controls the same functions on the car? Namely comms to the ECU/Fuel Pump? I'll get TPS to get one of these "53" relays in anyway. Cheers Matt