hi all,

just wondered if anyone could possibly give any indications to the cause of the following problem before i end up booking my car in, as i am not all that au fait with electrical circuits.

i have a Fabia 1.2, on an '03' plate. the car is set up so that if you have your windscreen wipers on and you put the car in reverse, the rear windscreen wiper will automatically wipe. however, over the past few days i have noticed that when i have gone into reverse the windscreen wiper has not been operated, and on further examination it also appears that the reversing lights have not come on either.

the trouble is that it is an intermittant problem, where sometimes things will work fine, and other times it will not. could it be a faulty connection somewwhere, or maybe a bad earth? thing is, if i notice the lights not working i revert back to neutral and then engage reverse again and sometimes it will work straight away. other times, it might need 2 - 3 attempts to get the lights on.

anybody any suggestions as to what to check first before booking the car in?

many thanks

My guess would be the switch that operates the lights as you select reverse.

On a good few VAG cars the reverse light wires are tight and break by the switch- this happened on my A3, and it's the same on Octavias and Golf IV.

thanks guys. i guess this switch would be in the vacinity of the gear stick, or am i totally out?

No, it's on the gearbox, near where the shift mechanism connects usually.

i had the same problem with mine, it was the reverse gear switch, cost around 20 quid from my local skoda skoda dealer.