Lofty

Gird your loins chaps, I have progress to report. I'd had a great idea many, many months (if not years now) about mounting the Darkside "SEAT Sport" intercooler in the same way that the Forge coolers mount, hanging off the front panel. Whilst it worked in theory, due to the deeper height of the intercooler, it then fouled on the bumper as it stuck down lower than the rad pack, so I've had to revert to the standard wonky way the coolers align using the SEAT brackets. This does mean that there would now be a chew on getting the silicone hoses to fit but I think I have got a way round that. I have ordered a set of two boost hoses with a 30 degree bend in them, which will hopefully give the right angle of deflection for them to fit without much swearing. They are due to arrive today. In the meantime, I have now fitted the intercooler, refitted the slam panel, fitted the new Xenon headlights and got all of the bulbs in, ballasts working and the gaps in the best position possible. There is much cleaning to do in the engine bay still as despite the bonnet being closed and the car under its cover, dust from the DIY has found it's way everywhere so when it's back outside i'll be giving everything a good snowfoaming down and thorough washing off before getting it brought back up to standard. Once the boost hoses are here, trimmed and fitted I'll test fit the bumper back on and try and get a step closer to getting it off the stands and moving under its own power. Still need a Milltek back box though......

1.9's are generally 90A ones

So again what are the calipers from? And what are the piston sizes within the calipers? I suspect they are a rear caliper from a Boxter etc?? The pad contact patch with the face of the disc would concern me tbh, leaving a sizable area untouched by the pads seems a tad counter productive when you're offering supposed increased braking performance. The 323mm disc and 4 pot Brembo caliper from a Leon Cupra R has much better disc coverage

Looks to be a lot of unswept disc area on those front rotors. What are the calipers from? Be interested to see the rear set ups you mentioned.

Seemingly so.

TBH the cup holder is nigh on useless, bit like the Sat-Nav, just nice to have.

You could catch the oil of course and re-use it if you wanted to. There's about 0.5 of a litre tops involved. The two seals are different, a round profile one with "locating ears" is part number 038117070A and the other one is a square profile one, number 038117070. No locating ears on the lower square profile one. Makes sense to do an oil change if it's due, if not top the oil back up and away you go

Spot on levels of Fabia Geekery right there! See here close up on mine.

Very jealous of that vRS rear seat. I even scour the on line auctions to see if anyone in Czech etc are breaking a MK1 Fabia with that rear seat but no luck so far.

That's the puppy Pete, 9mm. A deep one on a 3/8 ratchet is enough to get it off. Tap the socket onto the bolt on to try and avoid it slipping off.

This is a reasonably common issue. Easiest way round this is to drop the bottom 32mm nut of the underneath of the oil cooler, remove the through bolt and swing the cooler matrix out of the way. You will spill the contents of the filter housing and you will need to replace the two oil cooler gaskets when you reassemble. 25nm to torque the 32mm nut/cap back up when you're done. This way you can get straight onto the bolt head for the crank sensor, give it a good clean off before you try an undo it as it'll be covered in rust and muck down there. From memory its a multi point head on the bolt so make sure the tools are handy in advance

Cheers Ryan, even though it's been under a fitted cover it's covered in dust, but main focus will be to get it finally running ok then start cleaning it again. I have a custom tailpipe for the car but to get it on the road quickly I'm in need of a Milltek rear silencer, as this will mate up to the hybrid Milltek system - if you come across any for sale on the "socials" pages that is!

Covers are off! Kitchen is almost done, bit of decorating to complete then this thing WILL be getting finished. I have replaced the fuel pump relay under the dash, got all of the dash plastics back in and it did start and run just fine. I only ran it for a few mins so I will at some point get it run up to temperature and see if it dies again after 20 mins... Before that though I've got the intercooler off as I was unhappy with the fitment of it so that's next to be worked on then I can get the front end built back up, bumper on and finally get it off the stands. It will need MOT'ing obviously, last MOT was almost 7 years ago......

Look at the spec on that!! Rear Electric Windows Xenons Electric Sunroof Side Airbags Middle Rear Headrest Rear seat centre armrest - very jealous of this!!! Seems like they command good money in Czech as well as here, asking £5000 gdp for this

I've deff seen / sold an Elegance with Xenons, knowing Skoda it was probably for a limited time to get rid of parts etc, I have a vague recollection of an elderly customer ordering a real unicorn of a car, a 2.0 petrol Elegance with every option but in some hideous exterior colour / interior combo and he had to pay a massive deposit for it just incase he cancelled. I've not seen many (non SE) Fabia vRS in Europe with leather so again it could have been a UK option only. When you get deep into the ETKA parts system you can see that the Europeans had different rear seats in the vRS in so much that they could specify a fold down rear armrest in the rear, and try as I might I have never been able to source the parts over here, and only ever seen one pic of the rear seat on line. Also don't forget that the majority of Euro Fabia vRS came with Xenons as standard as nearly every one had them, even the SE's.

From memory (it was a long time ago), when I was in sales at Skoda at this time they used to add things to the options list and make little fanfare of it, first you'd see was it appearing as an option to order on the vehicle ordering system, then you'd see amended price lists. Not everything was shared via bulletins and updates to the network. I remember when Xenons were suddenly available to order on Fabia Elegance models late in the MK1 production run, we found out more by accident than anything else that it had even become a configurable option. Few of our Fabia vRS MK1's were ordered with the factory leather option as with a £1300 price increase it pushed the overall price of the car closer to the Octavia Mk1 vRS so made that look better value then than the Fabia. We certainly never specced up any Fabia vRS demos with leather, normal options for those were Cruise Control as everything else made them pricey.

Reminds me of an incident many years ago when a colleague had a week old Ford Orion company car that he took the family to West Midlands safari park. He was driving through the Giraffe enclosure when a baby Giraffe walked between the two lanes of cars, fell and hit the A post, breaking the screen, bending the A post and door frame. The picture he drew for the insurance claim form was hysterical! The Giraffe was fine by the way.

The rear screens cannot de-laminte as it's a single pane item, what happens is the window adhesive eventually shrinks back enough to pull the black coated surround with it, highlighting a now clear line in the black outer part, especially when viewed from outside. The only cure is a new screen, which is why i fitted a Sundym SE tinted rear screen in my Yellow one. It's not a UV problem either, my Dad's 54 reg Fabia (40k miles) has been garaged from new and that's gone the same as well. It affects Octavia MK1s as well

Yes they built them with a double skin I would imagine to help manage the exhaust noise. You'll be fine by trimming off the decaying outer skin and leaving the rest. The rear exhaust box used to be readily available from Skoda but is now NLA ( I wanted one for a parts stash and was too late), and any aftermarket one will be possibly quite different to the fit and finish of the original. One of the quietest stainless steel exhausts out there, which look ok to the untrained eye is a Miltek system, alas they are not cheap and even a "cat back" system will class as a modification for insurance purposes, so be careful with that as well.

Best bet would be to pay a PDR guy to do it, they can get some pretty magnificent dents out but often have years of experience to do so. Depends how you value your time etc.

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?