went to look a skoda fabia today, nice little car very clean body work wise. its a 1.4 8v mpi, over all drove very nice, but a couple of things I noticed was:

brake pedal was very hard and had very little travel, stopped okay just seemed a little odd? sound like a potential problem?

also sounded like there was a misfire on tick over, like a little putt putt type of noise, drove fine and but was hardy ground braking speed (had just got out of a 1.8 20v turbo though) also while the car was idling the engine shaked about a bit, maybe a worn engine mount?

mileage is 50k and the guy showed me the hpi check sheet and service history to prove it.

any advice would be grateful

edit for wrong engine spec

Edited 9 September, 200817 yr by Setone

MPi = 8valve !!

Lumpy tickover on MPi is normal.

yeah after i looked up the reg, now know its a 8v sorry.

16v was the other one i looked at

so is there anything selse which could be a problem on these models?

The 8v engine uses a timing chain as opposed to belt. Anywhere around the 50k mark this can stretch and sound rattly. When this happened to my first Fabia, the (genuine Skoda) parts were very cheap and the problem should become obvious long before anything fails, so it shouldn't be something to worry about too much.

The 8v also has a history of head gasket failures. This also happened to mine, and again the parts were cheap, but the job was altogether more time-consuming to do properly. Having said all that, it is a reasonably straightforward and robust engine. The term 'agricultural' also springs to mind

i've read somewhere that the 8v engine is a wet liner block, this true?

so chains could be on the cards pretty soon then?

Mine is 8.5 years old and is still quiet , only has 39.7K on the clock but is used every day.