Ferdeche

I've never topped it up myself. The car has always been dealer serviced under my watch, but I have no recollection of them doing it (they haven't said so if they have). It hasn't needed any work outside of routine servicing.

Following diagnoses from two independent garages, it appears the clutch on my 1.6tdi estate is up for replacement (101k miles). A quote from one garage suggests that they would only change the clutch as the car has a single mass flywheel, not a dual mass flywheel. They would not be looking to change both, unless they discovered anything unseen/undiagnosed when replacing the clutch. I am quite surprised by this as I assumed it would be a DMF. I have had the car since 32k miles and I cannot see the flywheel (or clutch) having been changed in the service history before then. Scenario is that the car wont engage reverse or first when engine running, with the other forward gears being very stiff, but getting easier as you go up the box. When the engine is turned off, all gears slot perfectly. There are not unusual or unexpected noises when trying to select a gear, when engine running. I cannot find anything conclusive here on online in general, to say which flywheel this engine should take as standard. On some parts sites it just states the part as being "flywheel" as opposed to "dual-mass flywheel" or "DMF", but I'm don;t think that is conclusive of anything. Can anyone please enlighten me? Thanks

Prior to our Fabia I had a Renault Clio with an electric sunroof. I bought it around Christmas time and the following Autumn the sunroof started rattling. It rattled so badly the stereo had to be jacked up to hear over the top of it. It went in to be repaired under warranty several times over the next 15 months. This included new seals, two new 'cassettes' (the surround I gather) new glass panes etc - much like Trigger's Broom, I'd probably had at least two new sunroofs fitted in separate parts. Still no joy. In typical Renault dealer style, I was told with a straight face by the service desk guy, that had the Queen one of these cars, her sunroof would rattle too! So I got rid and got the Fabia, with air-con and no sunroof! It turned out that some parts of the sunroof surround we made of a different alloy/composite metal that others. During the Summer (warm) months they would expand, but come colder weather they would contract again at different rates, leading to gaps and pressure points elsewhere which produced all that rattling. IF this is what has happened with the Octavia (and the time of year sounds right to me) a small dose of money-making through cheaper parts could mean big (warranty) bills for Skoda, and a very annoying car for its owner. IF this is what has happened, there will be no cure unless the sunroof is redesigned or remade using revised (i.e. proper parts) from scratch and retro-fitted to any defective car. You have been warned!

I think it likely that Skoda will always be the VAG run-off brand. That's the point. Where Skoda is allowed to use up-to-date tech (e.g. MQB on Octavia 3) it is because to do otherwise would be more costly. Where Skoda cannot use up-to-date tech it is because they are getting the marginal gains from running down the older tech. If Skoda following this strategy allows them to be best-placed in the market for that brand, price/offering-wise, and sell as many as they can make profitably, then good luck to them. SEAT, in contrast, is hamstrung by having to use MQB because that brand permits neither the scale nor the positioning to use non-MQB tech (for example). Where they have done (the Toledo) it hasn't done well and is made by Skoda anyway!

In an attempt to put an end to MQB platform speculation and disappointment... 1) The Fabia 3 is based on an updated version of the Mk2's platform, not MQB. There wont be an MQB version even if a hot version comes along (which I doubt anyway). Fabia 2 has sold well despite not being MQB. I predict Fabia 3 will sell even more, again in spite of not being MQB. 2) VAG's strategy looks like this. If you want a VW (i.e. MQB platform) buy a VW. If you want a 'cheap' VW, buy a SEAT (also MQB platform). If you want a 'cheap' VAG product, buy a Skoda. At the lower end of a car range (Citigo, Fabia, Rapid) the economics of using MQB are not there. Indeed, it is probably the case that the Fabia had to NOT be MQB in order to maintain the economics of having a non-MQB platform, given how sluggish Rapid sales have been. Higher up, it would have been more economical to use MQB for the Octavia 3 and Superb 3 than to have a platform solely for them while all the other VAG cars of that size and ilk used MQB. SEATs with MQB are being discounted to try to shift them. Skoda's with and especially without are being heavily discounted, but they are being shifted! It may be that the deals on SEATs just can't be as rich as those on Skodas because they will both cost more to make anyway (Spanish labour vs. Czech labour) and because they use MQB and the cost for that needs to be recuped. The vast majority of Skoda buyers wouldn't know what a 'platform' is, let alone which one they'd like to have. They still think the car has a 'chassis' in the original sense! The same is probably equally true for most VAG product buyers. Given that Skoda can't keep up with demand whereas SEAT is still struggling, the thinking behind the Skoda product and where it sits within VAG is prudent.

To be precise, sales of cars in the UK 2013 (selected brands): Volkswagen - 194,085 Audi - 142,040 Peugeot - 105,435 Citroen - 78,358 Skoda - 66,081 Renault - 46,173 SEAT - 45,312 Dacia - 17,146 Total four main VAG Brands: 447,518 (19.76% of market) Total three French brands + Dacia: 247,112 (10.91% or market)

Not only would you have to change to km/hr, you'd need to change all the road signs and anything relating to speeds or distances. Rather a large change to clean up your dashpod, and going against 120 years of motoring in this country. Converting is good for the part of the brain that deals with mental arithmetic I guess. Also, perhaps the worst case of mixed measures I can think of is tyre sizes... "185/65 R14" as per my car gives us "Metric/Metric Imperial" in one hit!

Don't necessarily assume that higher tax rates equal high tax revenues. Fuel duties are rather flexible i.e. the more tax levied, the greater the return. Income taxes are much less flexible - people give up earning or take great efforts to hide it. There will be a limit to how high fuel duties go before people give up paying them or avoid them somehow. If we are near that point now (and we may well be) than lowering duties (or not raising them thus making them lower in 'real terms', accounting for inflation that is) could glean greater revenue as more people buy more fuel. Having the top rate of Income tax at 45% raises more revenue than at 50%. When it was dropped from 80% to 60%,then to 40%, the amount of money raised shot up. Higher tax is not the same as more tax...

I bought our Mk1 Fabia estate in 2004. It didn't look like it had the interior of a £13k car then. Eight and a half years later, however, and the fact that it is still in one piece, doesn't rattle etc etc, suggests that it was actually worth it! The Peugeot interior may look nice, but how well is it actually screwed together and to touch, will it feel like elephant arse-hide like they all seemed to?

They ought to have kept with a big juicy diesel engine and kept the vRS as something of a left-field hot hatch. The 2.0TDi in 140 or, better, 170hp guise, at 119g/km would have been ideal. Seeing the 140hp version as an Ibiza FR shows it could have been done. A petrol automatic (albeit one with plenty of oomph) was never really going to cut it as a hot hatch. Given the DSG is used in all VAG variants of that size (Fabia, Ibiza, Polo and A1) I guess it was someone up on high who insisted that VAGsmall hot hatches were all going to go down the same route. A short-sighted shame.

http://www.prix-carburants.gouv.fr/ Outside Calais you get Gazole for around 1.33-1.35Euros or so, or £1.15-£1.17-ish a litre, so yes, cheaper than home.

Is it me or does the three door A1 look a bit like a three door Austin Allegro?

Bumping the thread a bit I know, but I've just noticed that Seat have the Toledo with a £2500 deposit contribution so long as you take out their 7.9% Finance over 42 months. Give or take a bit that abut pays the finance on a high-end model, and more than covers it on a low-end one. Now if Skoda offered that instead of £1000 off, they might shift a few more. That said, I wonder who you can haggle more off over and above the deposit contributions...?

I recall that the Poll tax levied in full was somewhere between £300-£400 per annum. Were you really earning somewhere in that region per annum (1991) or is your judgement being clouded?

An email today from our local dealers... SAVE £2375* £199 Deposit £199 Per month 3 Years Free Servicing *Rapid MPi S Hatch - RRP £12,900 - offer price £10,524.87 including a Discount of £1375 + £1000 finance deposit contribution from SKODA It would appear they are still not shifting.... Or when they look at the sales figures, they are shifting...bricks!