Breezy_Pete

The only way to know 100% what these relays do is to know the VIN and the position it is/was fitted in the relay panel.

Can't you just write the number on a piece of paper, instead of attempting to photograph it?

Yes, can see it through the windscreen. Low down. TMB....

Can you supply the VIN for your car, so that I can find good wiring info, including relay positions, please.

30 is permanent power in, 87 is power out to load, 85 and 86 are the coil which needs to get 12V across it before you will hear any clicks. 85 is low end of coil, 86 high end (but might be the other way round, see specific circuit). Google is your friend.

That's a left hand drive car. I would expect everything to be mirrored for right hand drive.

This may be the same info, shows relays at position 3 in diagram.

Did you tell me VIN info already? If I have that I can find fuse info for you.

I'm not sure. Someone reading this who owns a mk2 Fabia can surely tell us where the relays are?? I've tried searching the web with no success, surprisingly.

When you say you opened that side, what did you open, exactly? Relay panel is probably somewhere under steering wheel, behind fusebox.

I think relays will be on same side of car as steering wheel.

Thanks for the info @Tilt. Yep it's going very well so far, ta. No repetition of the horrible rattle. Things I've done recently: Cleaned out intake manifold. Wasn't as bad as I expected. Fitted a new genuine engine air filter and gave the MAF a clean, initially just squirting some isoprop across the film, then with an aerosol of 'proper' MAF cleaner lent by a colleague a couple of days later. I could convince myself that it goes better and chucks less smoke out of the back as a result of these things. Filter wasn't at all grubby though TBH. Attempted to get one of the pinch bolts moving, and briefly succeeded, but then it jammed up again half a mm to the left. Took a lot of getting back to 'done up'. So I ran away and left it for another day/month/year. Latest game is to see what journey average mpgs I can get on my commute. It's probably near ideal, in flowing, but slowish traffic at 7am, maybe 45mph most of the way. I've finished the journey with an indicated average for the journey of 60mpg a couple times in the last week or two, which I suspect isn't quite real, but it's pretty good. For as long as I have to do twenty-odd miles twice a day, it might as well be as efficient as I can get it. Always seems to be slightly worse on the way home. Prevailing wind effects, and/or possibly a steep hill I go up very early in the outbound journey, bringing temps up much quicker than on the flat start of the return journey??

How would you have gone about meeting the ever tightening requirements? It is a shame that diesel engines have been so compromised recently, but legislation forced it, not the manufacturers.

The workshop manual suggests applying grease. Doubt it does much harm, but in many cases these bits of plastic are probably 20 + years old, so may have worn to nearly nothing.

Yep 6N0609589 , you shouldn't really need to change the backplate, unless the holes have rotted out.

There are 3 little plastic 'buttons' that push fit through the backplate under each shoe, to provide a low-friction contact. These tend to be near invisible unless you're looking for them, but you may well see the retaining clips of each poking out the back of the backplate. They start life white/cream coloured, as seen if you look here. Scroll through the images to see them installed. 6N0609589, 6 per backplate. They get carved up over time. https://allegro.pl/oferta/suwak-szczek-hamulcowych-komplet-12-szt-oryginal-12710229048?dd_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F

Not sure, but I think if clutch fluid had leaked from slave cylinder, it would also have leaked from the bell-housing/engine joint. There's a thin metal gasket, but I doubt it would hold fluid back. When you move gear lever around with engine off, does it feel like it's actually going into gears?

If the 6 bolts that attach the inner CV to the drive flange are still there, the only way it could come out is if the bolt holding the drive flange in has broken. Pretty sure if that happened, your gear oil would have fallen out all over the place.

Wire breaks or corroded connector contacts are usually obvious to the naked eye, but yeah, if you have a meter, testing from lock connector to a-pillar connector is worth doing.

The blue/yellow and purple/yellow wires of the white 6-way connector at the A-pillar are the ones that go to the motor in the door lock (from the central convenience unit). Some other pins in the same connector also are lock related. Green or white residues on the loom connector inserts is usually the giveaway that rain has got to them.

The wiring and particularly the connections of the plugs/sockets at the bellows can be vulnerable to water ingress if someone has tried to look at the wiring by peeling back the rubber bellows, and then has failed to refit it perfectly. It's rather awkward to do so in the tight space near the hinges, so often it is left not sealing well against the paintwork, and rain runs down and in, affecting the connectors which are not themselves waterproof.

It's the unit that controls the central locking and alarm (where fitted) functions. Mounted in a rather inaccessible position up above the clutch pedal on RHD cars. Generally rather reliable, and tends not to get any attention unless someone wants to replace it to upgrade from key-in-door to radio remote central locking, which requires a different part number. Yours was built with radio remote C/L, so unlikely to have ever been touched. Looks like this:

The subframe tools allow you to put the thing back exactly where it came from, rather than to some particular fixed position. As each bolt comes out, you replace it with one of the tool 'bolts' which has freedom of movement to 'keep' the relative positions of the holes in the subframe and the chassis. I've got a set somewhere that I bought many years ago, just to see how they worked! Then, when ready to refit, you slip the subframe over them, and replace one by one with the real bolts, restoring the original position, and therefore any alignment.

What specs did you use to tighten them? It's not really possible to check afterwards, if they are torque plus angle tightened (which most suspension and engine bolts are specified as these days, and which does not define them as 'torque to yield' types necessarily, it's just a more accurate way of achieving a given pre-tension level).

Hmm, I have grave doubts about the complete truth of that. Lots of folk including lots of professionals in non-Skoda garages will have done this many times to many different so-called stretch bolts,, and very few bolts will ever snap. And if they do, they're by far most likely to do so whilst being tensioned so the spannerer will find out.