[Fabia VRS won't start]

I had no warning at all that it was about to happen. It had always started perfectly before this (touches wood), one minute it worked the next it didn't.

I wish I had taken a couple of pics as it would have been a lot easier to understand what I will try to explain.

1. First off, I detached and removed the battery along with the battery casing.

2. Before taking the base that the battery sits on I detached the Maf Sensor from the air filter housing and removed that as well.

3. Once the filter housing is off the base that the batter sits on easily comes out and you can see the starter motor.

4. The cable that caused the bother was fairly thin, a little thinner than a mouse cable and runs from the loom (left side of the car) towards the starter. The cable attaches to the starter motor via a small plug and the wire managed to severe itself inside the plug.

5. I removed the plug from the starter, picked out the silicon plug that stops damp getting into the plug and used a junior hacksaw to remove part of the plug to expose the point which the wire was attached to the connector.

6. Using a soldering iron I attached a longer piece of wire (slightly thicker) and prepped the cable that came out from the loom. I attached a female connector to that wire and a male to the new piece of wire that I had attached to the plug.

7. Re-attached the plug to the starter motor and the male connector to the female connector and applied a healthy coating of electricians tape to all newly exposed connections.

8. Put everything back together again..... held breath and turned the key..... hey presto, worked again :-)

It took about 45 minutes and that was taking my time and it is a fairly straight forward job if you are used to servicing you car. Of course, if you are not sure it is best to get someone who likes mucking about with these things.

If you replace the section of wire like I did, make sure you cut a fresh section that is a good 2-3 inches longer than the old bit, the cable must have been quite tight and the vibration would have eventually snapped it as a result. A bit extra length on the cable would have prevented this from happening.

Hope this helps anyway.

Cheers

Duncan

Just had the same issue with a broken starter wire, thanks for the writeup

[Fabia door wont open / windows not working]

It does but all it does is raise the plunger which retracts as soon as you let go again, its basically deadlocked so the handle does nothing.

[Fabia door wont open / windows not working]

Hi all,

Run into a few problems with our 2005 Fabia VRS that i could use some help with. Basically the front passenger door refuses to unlock. Managed to figure out the central locking motor is not working on that door, when i use the lock or unlock function on the key i can hear the motor clunk in all the other doors, just not the front passenger. Looking in vagcom its status is "Safe" so it appears to be stuck in the locked position. And obviously the controller and sensors are somewhat working if it knows that.

Had a go at removing the door card and gave up as there isnt space between the door and dash to unclip and remove it. Cant get at the wiring on the A pillar either as glove box and trim refuse to come out with the door closed >.<

2nd issue is the electric windows dont work, started as an intermittent problem but now are totally dead. They have been dead for a few weeks now so i dont know if that problem is related.

Also tried removing the comfort control unit and checked for dry joints, everything looked fine, refitted and the only difference i found was the passenger window worked briefly using the switch on the passenger side, now its dead again. Checked the drivers side switches with a multimeter and wiring diagram and appear to work fine for the up/down and half way position.

I have a suspicion the problem may be the wiring connectors on the a-piller, but until i can get the door open i cant confirm. Read a bunch of threads on here and never found a solid solution, so in short my questions are,

A: How do i get the passenger door open?

B: Where is the fault with the elecy windows, comfort/control module or something else?

c: Any chance they are related?

Cheers guys,

Mark