sp1ke

I'm too fed up to recite all the details, but in brief it all began with excessive oil usage, & the experience in trying to work with the dealer since december towards getting the engine replaced has been pity full. I fully accept that things go wrong, mistakes are made etc, but when the service manager repeatedly couldn't even bring himself to offer a simple sincere apology on the numerous occasions they've screwed up, I decided I wasn't going to put up with the crap customer service any longer. In the end I had no faith that even if they eventually replaced the engine I wouldn't face further issues when the warranty expired, so I decided to call it a day & move on before the car depreciated any further. Hope the rest of you with issues have a better experience & those without issues have many more trouble free miles to enjoy your cars

Best wishes with the Monte Carlo I too loved my vrs & like you had originally planned to keep it for a good few years, but I'm sorry to say that after a series of appalling customer service experiences from my local dealer, I lost faith & eventually gave up & px'd the Fabia & have vowed never to buy another VAG product again.

Check the other recent posts here, I think the consensus was black with a black roof was the quickest ;-)

Not all alloys are equal. I think more expensive alloys like the td1.2s would be lighter than either the steelies or the stock gigaros

If you have a search on here there are several threads discussing suspension, so you can gauge other opinions. For me the stock Fabia setup was comfortable but lacked control, felt quite crashy over potholes. The eibachs are an improvement & the handling is now much better so the car feels fun to drive, like a hot hatch should. The ride is a little firmer but not unpleasantly so. I suspect the damping would be a lot better with a set of bilsteins, but its acceptable for now so I'm not planning to replace the stock dampers till they need doing The stock car also has a massive gap between wheel & arch, my wife even commented on how odd this looked. The eibachs provide a modest drop so the car looks like it has a "normal" gap between wheel & arch so if you want a dropped to the floor look then these aren't for you.

Btw You might also want to consider asking your dealer about the eibach spring kit

Welcome aboard & might i add a great colour choice :-)

Mine were from topupauto on eBay too. Great service & a brilliant price. Not sure if they're as good quality as oem but I'm happy with mine

Pics from post 103 look nice but I'm not keen on the one in post 104.<br /><br />Now you just need to save a few more pennies to do the rest of the car in black & that'd be lovely :-)

I did just that (Brodit door pillar mount & hard wired) however this is easily visible & not exactly discreet so I don't leave the tomtom in the car when parked. Not sure if this will meet the OP's requirements but it works for me & i find it much easier to live with than the tomtom windscreen suction mount

I've not bought from them so i can't speak from personal experience but www.milotec.de have a good selection of Skoda bits too. So it may be worth trying them if you don't want to use superskoda again

No boot camp is a full install of windows in another partition allowing you to dual boot between windows or OSX. Virtualisation is an option but you'd need 3rd party tools. Parallels seems to be the most common choice for virtualising a windows installation on OSX but you'd need to pay extra for this & your windows license as well.

Sorry your hypothesis doesn't tue in with my scenario. My commute is approx 30miles each way, mostly motorway. So it gets a thorough warm up most days, with the rare occasional local short drive. There was no oil used till approx 8.5k miles, but oil use has since risen over the .5l per 1km threshold up to 13.5k miles. So a new engine is being ordered Glad to hear yours looks to have been sorted by the mod though.

<br />MacBooks are pretty but overpriced & frankly rubbish for running windows. <br /><br />The boot camp drivers provided by Apple to run windows are crap & dont give you the full performance of the hardware eg CPU throttling is limited which hampers battery life under windows vs OSX, the Nic card drivers don't give you the full gigabit throughput. It simply isn't in Apples interest to provide performance parity for Windows on their own hardware.<br /><br />So my advice would be if your primary requirement is for MS windows then save yourself the money & hassle of apple hardware & buy a premium laptop from someone else. <br /><br />HP, Samsung, Sony Lenovo & others all have some attractive designs now which are equally as good if not better than apples & you'd get more for your money than you would from apple. <br /><br />Obviously if you want OSX & are prepared to pay a premium then go for a MacBook, the new 13" Mbp with retina display is very nice.<br /><br />Fwiw I have a late 2011 MacBook & several pcs. Once you get used to it, windows 8 is much nicer to use than osX & if you have any concerns around apps then wander into your local apple store & see how spartan the OS X App Store still is today, so I'm sure the windows 8 App Store will have no difficulty in surpassing it.<br />

http://www.autoexpress.co.uk/skoda/rapid/59600/skoda-rapid-hatchback<br /><br />some pics of a new hatchback rapid which looks more like a conventional hatchback than the current 3 box design<br />Its certainly a pretty car in this form and a little reminiscent of the old seat Leon from the rear.The article also predicts a 1.4 tsi in 158bhp form so not quite vrs spec.<br /><br />If they could drop in the 2.0tsi from the polo R then I'd be seriously interested

Had an oil & filter change at around 5k, no oil used till around 8k then it started. I didn't track the amount used initially & just topped up as & when needed. At around 12k the warning light came on & was topped up to the correct level, at around 13k the level was below hatched area just on the ball but no warning light yet! so topped up to correct level again. After a few hundred miles its about 3/4 of the hatched level. Levels always checked when warmed up as per handbook. So I'm told a new short engine is on order & they'll be in touch in the new year. Fwiw it's an 11plate car with no engine mods. I was planning on an itg filter & apr map, but when it started using oil decided to wait till I knew if there was an issue or at least till after the next service. Tbh I'm not overly concerned about it just yet, but that will change if the new engine follows the same pattern.

Looks like I will be joining the new engine gang in the new year too.

Fwiw I managed to do my rear ones by just jacking up the rear corners. As the car rises I found there was enough clearance to screw it in with the wheel still in place

After a recomndation from someone else on this firum (sorry forgotten who) I bought some mudflaps from an eBay seller based in Hong Kong (seller name = topupauto). They were about £15 delivered, unfortunately one arrived damaged, but the seller sent me a replacement at no extra cost. So for the price is be happy to recommend them

That's why I asked what the OP didn't like about the ITG :-) if its related to the way the ducting is routed then my thoughts were that the VWR +different battery may be worth considering

I'd be interested to know why you aren't happy with the ITG as I've been thinking about buying one. If you're looking for an alternative then it may be worth looking at http://www.briskoda.net/forums/index.php?/topic/257544-VW-cold-air-intake

The offer implies it only applies to remapped cars. I for one would be interested if you'd be willing to extend the same deal to owners with cars that haven't been remapped

If you are talking about the lightwave RF digital TRV's then I'd suggest looking at the support forums on their site before you buy. When I last looked the support didn't seem that great & there seemed to be some talk of a new version of their heating controls due at some point soon. Fwiw their lighting & remote wifi solution seems pretty good. See forums on lightwaverf.com for more Hth

Ooh I like that, it'd look great on my car

Having owned several I'd have to pull you up on that comment :-) even an older m3 would run rings around a stock or mildly tweaked vrs in capable hands & I don't recall the mpg being that bad either. I think you'd need to go some way (like VRSy has) to be close to the same ballpark & even then I seriously doubt that even a well mod'd FWD car would come anywhere near the thrill of a RWD thorough bred with an LSD. The vrs is certainly nippy & quick enough for the real world, but I think something RWD with around 250bhp would be closer to perfect. The VRS can also be fun with some suspension tweaks but in stock form it's not brutal like an m3 can be & even with tweaks lacks the poise & level of feedback. But at the end of the day both are great cars, just in different ways :-)