Jon Dimond

David, Becky is nice and very helpful, so are the other staff in the service office. I have no problems with them.

The oil temp is just the ambient temp, he didn't plug the sensor in I guess. Car had just done an hour long journey and was well warmed up.

Hi lol-lol. The dyno run was done at PowerStation in Tewkesbury. Here's the result. We've noticed a huge presence of Dacias in France too. We did test drive a Duster a while ago, but I was a bit underwhelmed to be honest. If you want aircon you have to buy the top spec model and it's over 17k. Probably still great value, but I just didn't like it. Maybe a Stepway would be a giggle.

Thanks Dave. I'm just waiting to speak to Skoda UK again, but I doubt they'll have anything too positive to add. I didn't realise that Startin had such a poor reputation, but everyone I've mentioned them too has said the same. Thanks for sending me your number, I just wanted to see how this plays out before troubling you for any of your time. I'll keep you updated.

Unfortunately the dealer don't give a ****. The service manager doesn't seem to know very much about cars and the dealer principal insists that the car is perfect. I've wasted the last week of my life trying to sort this out, on top of the 10 or so visits it has had to the dealership since we've owned the car. We're moving to France in the new year and I have so much stuff to sort before we go that arguing with a crap dealer is very low on my list of priorities. I certainly would never recommend that anyone ever buys a car from Startin Skoda in Worcester and I'd think very hard before buying another 1.6CR VAG Engine. I've got my eye on a BMW 318d Touring. It's such a shame because we really really wanted to like the Fabia. It would have been a 10 year car for us, but all I see in it's future are more very expensive problems. So sorry Skoda, but I'm out.

It's getting sold back to the dealer next week. Had enough, wasted too much time on it now. Cut losses and run.

Well the dyno results are in. It made good power. 112bhp at the flywheel, however only 66.5 at the wheels which seems like quite a lot for transmission loss. The torque came in at 190ft/lbs, but the dyno guy said it doesn't take into account the transmission losses. It didn't make good torque until about 1850rpm though, where Skoda say it should be from 1500. He did say it felt quite flat lower down, but couldn't compare to another so wasn't sure if it was normal for this type of engine.

They're a well established dyno operator who do loads of motorsport work etc. I'm pretty confident that they can give me a very good idea. I'll report back once it's been done.

I'm only taking it to the dyno to see if they can pinpoint a problem. I want to know what it's genuinely producing. I'm not at all interested in getting it chipped or anything of the sort.

We got the car back today after all of it's warrant work. To me it seems to be the same gutless heap of junk it was before it went in. We're going to get it on a dyno early next week to see if it will show anything up.

Skoda UK are seemingly trying to ignore me now. I've been trying to speak to them since yesterday lunchtime. They keep promising to call me back, but despite 4 phone calls to them I still haven't been able to speak to the person dealing with our case. I e-mailed the Managing Director [email protected]. but have not received a response yet.

New cylinder head now. No faults remember .

Still at Skoda, cylinder head now off. Still reluctant to admit a fault. Cross now. Back in contact with Skoda UK. Going to e-mail MD later.

Well apparently the results of whatever they were pressure testing were not good and it lost a bar of pressure overnight. I presume that they're doing a leak down compression test, but not sure. Sounds like its knackered to me.

STILL at Skoda. Still being pressure tested. They've had it over a week now. Getting bored.