Chris Beeson

Mk1 Fabia 1.4ltr 16v petrol, 2002. Warning lights and bleep showing intermittently, but dealer's reader shows no faults. I get steering, EPS and ABS lights, plus the bleep, coming on while driving. Sometimes restarting will clear some or all. I cannot detect a problem in the steering. Also possibly related is that the RH green trafficator dash light isn’t illuminating. My suspicion is of a failure in the dash module itself, but I would appreciate opinions and suggestions. I've owned this car from new, it's done over 130,000 miles, and been dealer serviced every year.

Why do I bother, TMB? The throw of the clutch pedal has always bothered me, for as long as I can remember. It's the sort of thing you learn to live with; no car is perfect. It didn't occure to me that a stop might be missing until recently I spotted a small sketch in the corner of a page of the Haynes manual (which wasn't available anyway when I first bought the car, or for many years afterwards). I simply asked if anyone else had an early Fabia with a stop like the one in the diagram. Seems no-one has. I am satisfied. I wasn't looking for an explanation of how clutches worked, or how to drive a car. I've been working on my own cars (though not the Fabia as it happens) since 1970. I'll try and ask less controversial questions in the future. End of.

I don't come on this forum very often, so I hadn't realised that it was actually for people to pool their ignorance. I described the situation exactly as it was, so one or two of the contributors could do well to go back and read what I actually wrote. If you want to be helpful, it's a good place to start. My humble thanks to those who have done that. I have never said that the bite point was too high. The bite point is in exactly the right place relative to where the brake pedal and accelerator are, and the clutch has done around 5,000 miles since last replaced. The bite point has always been in this position since I bought the car new in 2002. I have never broken anything about the clutch in the 120,000 miles I've driven the car, including when I've depressed it as far as the designers intended it be depressed. The problem I have has always been that the distance from the bite point to the limit of the pedal movement seems excessive and unnecessary. When I spotted in the Haynes manual that early Fabias had been found to be fitted with a rather long stop behind the pedal, I wondered if mine should have had that. Has anyone actually opened the file I uploaded to see this diagram? (My apologies that I couldn't upload it as a picture - I haven't found out how to do that yet.) Anyway, I've at least discovered that my Fabia wasn't built with that stop, but with a shorter one as was standard in most of the Mk1s. That's all I asked, so I suppose I'm satisfied. Thank you!

Well, this is all very interesting, but it doesn't really get me any further. Why does the clutch pedal have to go down such a long way below the bite point before it reaches the floor? For the sake of clarity: I don't push it all the way down when I'm moving and changing gear; I do push it to the floor, as recommended, when I'm selecting a gear at rest, including reverse. I thought everyone did that! If I set up a comfortable driving position, where my right leg isn't in tension on the accelerator and I can get onto the brake pedal smoothly, any attempt to get the clutch pedal to the floor has me sliding forward on the seat. Obviously, I compromise on the driving position; but why should I have to? Again, for the sake of clarity: both my legs are the same length.

Thanks for the responses. I've uploaded the illustration from the Haynes. However, it looks as if mine is later than that; it's got the button stop on a metal bracket in that position. Actually though, the pedal hits the trim panel around the steering columnn before it gets to the stop. As people have pointed out, the actual bite point on a hydraulic system is fixed by the hydraulics (in spite of what the local dealer has told me, twice!). My problem is that it's an awfully long way from the bite point to the floor. If I set the driving position to enable me to get the pedal right down, my right leg is too bent on the accelerator. In practice, I rarely put the clutch to the floor, but it doesn't seem ideal, which is why I was wondering about that early clutch stop. Hey ho, back to the drawing board. Fabia clutch stop.HEIC

According to my Haynes, the 'early Fabias' (ie Mk1?) had a stop behind the clutch pedal, just below the master cylinder, to restrict down travel. This is missing on my 2002 1.4 16v, but I'm sure it should be there. Can anyone confirm this? The pedal travel is excessive, and occasionally the service garage tries to convince me that the clutch needs changing because the pedal comes up so far before it bites; but this is because they're judging it in distance from the floor. I don't suppose anyone has a part number, or a source?

Thanks to Wino and TMB! I can't believe I've had this Fabia for 19 years, and only just noticed this. I put it down to having owned a whole host of cars in the past that all had the horn circuit direct off the battery, and happily worked on all of them. It's this computer stuff that foxes me.

My 02 Fabia 1.4 16v has a strange horn problem. With the ignition off, it doesn't work at all; with the ignition on it works, but a bit half-heartedly, and sometimes only when I press the lower half of the steering wheel hub; with the engine running it works as designed. The battery is showing 12.4v at rest across the terminals. I can see there might be a voltage loss somewhere in the system, perhaps a tired battery, which would account for it working better when the engine is running; but why would it be working (sort of) when the ignition is on but the engine not running? The local dealers had the steering wheel off and cleaned the contacts, which improved matters for around 24hrs, but it's back to the situation as above.