Breezy_Pete

I'd think that something would most likely be the voltage on the cell? It's not that tricky for it to check that every time it's woken up by a button being pressed. If it's below a certain threshold it communicates the fact to the car? All guesswork on my part, but that's how I'd design it, if I designed car stuff.

Seems like a reasonable strategy to me. I'd think it will work enough to prove the point. I can find the pinouts relating to those functions for you, but tomorrow rather than now.

See if this helps: Mk1 Fabia Cabin Fuses.pdf

Check fuse.

Picture of what you've bought? They can be a pain to fit, especially if someone has previously been there and re-used the main front-to-rear bolt through the front bush of the wishbone. This can result in the bolt binding up on its way out of the alloy casting of the console, requiring much more work to rectify. It sounds like the bushes on yours haven't been touched before so you should be OK. Those front bolts (item 4) and the ones at the outboard ends of the wishbones (item 3), should be renewed. The triple-nut plate things, item 2 often need renewing too.

Presumably, with Halfords describing them as console bushes, the arrangement is the earlier one as in the first diagram here, not the second diagram? https://skoda.7zap.com/en/cz/fabia/fab/2008-608/4/ The console bush, as shown, isn't part of the control arm at all, the wishbone has a peg that just pokes through the middle of it. Not a hugely successful design, hence the change to the more traditional horizontal bush design on slightly later cars. The front bushes rarely if ever give any trouble.

I don't think I really understand your first sentence. It's not a car I drive much so don't really know what happens to the pedal, but the original factory clutch kept going from when we acquired the car at roughly 100k, 8 years ago, until about 145k (3.5? years ago) with the current owner/driver so I doubt she does much wrong. I found a new replacement master cylinder on ebay for barely more than £20, so I think I'll just swap that in and see if anything improves.

Thanks for checking Lee, it's a bit of a mystery to me. I may have to get brave and clamp that hose to see what happens with slave cylinder and clutch mechanics isolated from the action. Just to clarify the description of this test in the opening post; the leakage mentioned was reckoned to be past the seal(s?) of the clutch master cylinder, so spoiling it's efficiency, not an external leak.

Over several years of record-keeping for virtually every tank of fuel used, my 1.4 16v Polo averages 42mpg (majority of use 5-mile each way commutes). The 1.2 12v Fabia my partner drives does 41mpg on much more varied work/journeys. Downsizing only works on EU type-testing lab-based emissions cycles, I reckon. No idea about DVLA/insurers, sorry. Except that modified vehicles tend to be expensive to insure compared with unmodified.

I would imagine there's very little difference in economy or emissions. Fundamentally very similar technology. More recent engines have to meet tighter specs for certain pollutants, which tends to reduce efficiency. Don't be fooled by higher claimed mpg/lower CO2 figures. The discrepancy between claimed and real-world has simply increased.

I'd have significant doubts about "more economical, more environmentally friendly" to be honest. What mpg are you getting with the 1.6?

I agree. I'd add the word very in between the words opinion and prematurely. Whatever happened about the PCV fault, was that confirmed/fixed? Just wondering if that may have been a causative factor in the oxygen sensor failure, if it was making the engine run sootier or oilier, coating the sensor's critical surfaces?

We've been having various problems lately with jerkiness taking off from a standstill. I thought it was all about engine unevenness but I'm starting to change my mind, maybe. An observation last weekend, when comparing the Fabia to both Polos, was that the engage/disengage point of the clutch is a looong way further down the pedal travel on the Fabia, like in the last two or three centimetres before the pedal hits the stop. Another, that I've just noticed this morning, is that the first few cm of pedal travel meets almost no resistance at all. There's much less 'no resistance movement' on my comparison cars. Here's a little video I just made of me pushing it down with my little finger. 20200718_120317.mp4 I just had the slave cylinder off briefly to check for fluid leakage, of which there was none. The slave is recent, dating back only to the clutch change that wasn't very many years ago. Last weekend I bled the clutch, and although the fluid that emerged was nasty and dark, there were no air bubbles whatsoever. Is this looking like a master cylinder problem? Saw on youtube a vid where the guy clamped the flexi part of the hose between master and slave, looking for a rock-hard pedal as a result. Didn't get it so concluded fluid leakage at the master. I'm slightly reluctant to try this as I don't have a proper hose clamp tool, and that bit of hose is 15 years old. Your thoughts please people.

Does the car still have its original battery?

This reads very much like a for sale ad. So yes, you want to sell it. Use the correct part of the forum, please.

I've got one of the vac pipes coming from ebay now, so will have a look. To my mind, whatever its function, there ought to be a jet/narrow orifice at some point in that leg to the airbox, or at the airbox, and from a failsafe point of view that would best be at the point it tees into the main servo vac pipe. With luck that'll be what I find, and it will render the business of it being connected/disconnected from a filtered air source at the airbox irrelevant. Have you tested brake servo efficiency with it disconnected from airbox versus connected?

I could only see that being a concern if the OP claimed something that was untrue. If he simply couched it in terms like "it seemed to me that the X was very Y; you may want to look at that carefully if considering purchase", I can't imagine any car dealer doing anything worse than an empty threat of action.

Morning folks, Just passing on a couple of tips relating to part numbers; for those of us without full access to ETKA. Apart from the fairly ubiquitous ETKA-like sites such as 7zap.com and nemigaparts.com, I've come across a couple of other handy sites. The first one; oemwolf.com will tell you about whether (and by what) any given part number has been superseded. You just put the part number - stripped of any/all spaces - in the search box and click on "Find it" (enter/return doesn't work). It'll then tell you about superseding part numbers, sometimes in a seemingly never-ending recursion. The other site, which I just happened upon this morning, can let you go the other way - backwards in time - and tell you previous revisions of a given part number. Here you put your part number in the search box, click "Search" and then click on the "OEM part numbers" tab just above the blue "Contact us" banner. You will be given the anteceding part numbers. https://www.oemvwshop.com/ Both sites can be very useful. For example where ebay has no offerings for a recent part number, but knowing what that part number was before its latest version may open the search net much wider.

@Zebedee2001, did you ever have a look at the oil separator module on your wife's car? I bought a (manual) Polo with a BKY engine this year, and found horrors when I checked this item: It was so bad that I was compelled to also get the sump off to check the oil pick-up pipe and general 'non-oil' contents. There's a thread about that too here. I'm still intrigued by that pipe to the air filter. Surely there must be a narrow restriction at the point that pipe tees into the main servo hose? (As opposed to there being such a jet or valve at the point it connects to at the airbox). I might have to buy a secondhand servo pipe off an auto car via ebay to investigate.

Age of battery? You say the problem isn't new, but for how long has it been happening? Was the car used regularly over the deepest of the lockdown period? Does the battery light come on with the ignition?

I think actually, as well as VW's almighty deceit, it's just monumentally difficult and expensive to really meet the latest emissions specs; because they've been set by politicians not scientists or engineers.

@DaveMiller Particulates were fixed with the advent of the DPF; NOx emissions are only really an issue for urban areas. Lots of people live and drive elsewhere.

I'd be reasonably confident that there isn't a fuse specific to these functions, but from memory of reverse-engineering part of a mk1 Fabia cluster, the same (PCB chip) voltage source is used on both functions (and little if anything else). I would suggest finding and disconnecting the outside temperature sensor just in case that (or its connections) is shorting out the system, bringing both functions down. Usually just near where a nearside foglight would be if fitted, behind front bumper.

Nah, it's 'cos VW tarnished the image of all diesel engines considerably with their duplicity. They are still significantly better for the planet, due to lower CO2 emissions.

For sale privately or through a business?