Breezy_Pete

Thanks, friend.

^Agree with MicMac, though not necessarily the handbrake cable, could be hydraulic problem.. My car will make that noise if I stop and put the handbrake on not quite enough when reversing out of the driveway, to get out and shut the gate. The car has moved a few mm as the noise happens.

^ That was the experiment as conducted by the owner. I borrowed the car today and had no such luck improving anything by pumping the pedal. Replacement master is on the way, so will get fitted anyway, but not as confident as I was yesterday.

The brake servo vacuum hose. The junctions of the hard plastic sections where they are stretched to breaking point over hose barbs. People will say that the symptoms don't fit that, but well worth checking anyway.

Yep, that was my thought too. You @NathanG could make some cash at the same time as the hoarder making some cash that he'll not otherwise see. Win, win.

Good question. It's very much in their interests to be ambiguous about which they mean. One of my neighbours recently asked me to check out a similar report on his front brakes. Garage said the discs were both (just) below minimum thickness, which they quoted as Xmm. Only thing is, everywhere you looked online for that size disc, the minimum thickness was given as 1mm less than X... So no action required for a year or two, probably, maybe more.

Have you looked at them yourself? Sure they are not actually 85% remaining?

Since your errors both say open or short to plus, I'd think it's most likely a connector pin whose solder joint has cracked, a dirty/corroded connection or a wire break. Measuring Ohms between loom connector pins 31 and 32 should give you a resistance that will depend on fuel level in tank. (Or open circuit/infinite if there's a wire break, or near zero if the thing at the end is shorting). Repeat for pin 15 to pin 32, expecting again a resistance that will depend on outside temperature. If both of those check out OK, I'd be getting to the solder joints of the 32-way connector on the cluster circuit board and giving them an extremely careful eyeballing. This is a pic of a mk1 cluster showing the joints in question (ignore the marked pins, may be different on mk2). I think if the connector is oriented the same on mk2s, pins 31 and 32 are the leftmost of the nearer row; 15 on back row opposite 31.

Sorry, forgot to look at this yesterday. what year is the car? 58-plate, so pre-March 2010. Outside temp seems to be a brown/yellow wire on pin 31 of the 32-way cluster connector. Fuel gauge is lilac/black wire on pin 15. Both earth via a brown/white wire going to pin 32. From march 2010 it looks like outside temp moved to pin 19, and fuel gauge is done differently, using all three connections of the potentiometer (pins 1, 2 and 20 at cluster). Brown/white on pin 20 is the earth for both systems. Checking that earth wire isn't busted, or suffering a cracked solder joint is probably a good starting point.

Agreed, £30 is too much to spend on finding some sort of labyrinth inside a plastic tube. Patch it and carry on.☺️

Googling the part number on it (03G129808C) yields a few results in line with an earlier poster's description as 'pressure damper' or similar. Buy a cheap one on ebay and cut it up for a look inside? Hacksaw is by far the best analytical tool... 😁 Whatever it does, your hose leak won't be stopping it from doing it.

Less to do with lead/unleaded solder, more to do with number of years of vibration, I suspect; and design that doesn't take into account the waggle of the pins that results from the loom flapping. Modern designs tend to have press-fit pins that aren't actually soldered at all, relying on mechanical fit to keep connector in permanent good interference contact with gold-plated through holes.

Pin 16?

Yeah pretty sure the coolant shortage connection is one of the bottom few; hang on, I'll dig out a pic where it's marked.

Could also be wiring damage near or at the expansion tank connector in the engine bay.

Probably a cracked solder joint at the cluster connector then.

Wow, it ought to go a bit better now.

You can buy access to download these direct from erwin skoda for 7 euros plus tax, so that sounds expensive..

So have a look at this diagram. Bolt number 23 (61mm long) holds the lower engine mount (item 22) into the subframe. It goes into a captive nut right below the steering rack hydraulic piston tube. If one of the 65mm long bolts which hold the gearbox to the engine block is accidentally mixed up with this bolt during the clutch change, it can dent the rack, causing this kind of problem. Usually the hard steering is more one way than the other. Is that what's happening? https://skoda.7zap.com/en/cz/fabia/fab/2006-453/1/199-199020/

Is it a RHD car, or LHD? I can't remember which side of the road you drive on in Malta.

Did the steering problem start immediately after the clutch change, or not until recently?

Has the clutch been replaced recently?

Experiment tried today. Pumping the clutch pedal a few times before attempting to select first/reverse seems to improve the situation to normal behaviour. I've got a good feeling about this master cylinder idea.

I need to get back into the driver's side one on ours to give it a spray of contact cleaner, to see if that helps.

Yes, the the top end/car body end as opposed to lower/door end. They are hard to get onto the little white carrier that in turn clips to the connector housing. Once everything's unplugged and off, its much, much easier to get the white bit into the bellows first, then clip the whole lot in.