Hello

I am a newbie here and new to Skoda vehicles too.

I have a chance to buy an Octavia but it has done high mileage.

It is a 55 model and has done over 130000.

What mileage issues has this model got, are they known to be good even at high mileage (the old Peugot vans would go round the clock twice and fall apart with rot before the engine would die if looked after well, just wondered if the same applies to the Skoda)

.. or should I steer away from this car?? Pardon the pun

Thanks for any advice :daisy:

As long its been serviced regularly, and had cam belt/water pump changes, it should be ok. see thread below about mileage.

Plenty of Octy taxi's with 250K + miles on them.

http://briskoda.net/octavia-i/done-over-150k-miles/72320/

One factor that made me change to Skoda about five years ago was I flew to Glasgow to visit a customer & the Taxi at the airport was an Octavia MkI 1.9 SDI. Chatting to the driver he told me that he shared the Octy with another driver and in almost two years they had covered just shy of 200k, the gearbox had been recently replaced under warranty (in those days it was 2yrs unlimited mileage) apart from servicing & tyres they hadn't shelled out a penny & they were going to trade it in for a TDI when the two years were up.

Having said that buying cars is a bit of a lottery as there is always going to be a troublesome car out there.

If the car has done a high mileage up & down the motorway without being thrashed and has a good service history it could be a good buy. I traded in my MKI at 75k and the front pads still had 4mm + on them and it drove as well as the day I bought it.

Thank you very much for the replies, very helpful.

If I buy the car it will no longer be doing high mileage, and the only taxi work will be when me and my two little schnauzers go and do the shopping as us girlies do

I bought (about 5 months ago) a 03 reg Octavia Ambiente, with 137k on the clock. Am now at around 141k and the only issue was the air con went almost immediately. If it had not been covered as so new, I understand it would have been 700-1000 to fix!!! This is a known weak spot on these cars as I understand it. (Something comes loose and then wears down something else) - as long as it is kept tight it is fine.

Am delighted with the car, it had full dealer service hsitory every £10k from new, so was not that worried. If I saw a low mileage TDI I might be more concerned that it had spent long periods off the road......

Only issue is my little girl can kick the back of my seat in this one!

Don't be fooled by the very common myth that high mileage is bad and low mileage is good. In fact low mileage is much more damaging to the engine than one that's done higher miles. The worst engines are those that belong to the old lady down the road who drives to the shops once a week.

I'm in no doubt that the best engines are those that have clocked up a lot of miles very quickly, always been driven on the motorway and have been properly and regularly serviced. They seem to perform better and generally suffer fewer problems. You're much less likely to suffer from the dreaded 'sticky vane turbo' problem on a higher mileage car because it would've had proper use.

Modern fuels and lubricants are better and cleaner than those of years ago, and so therefore engines last much longer if they're used in the way that they were intended to be used. An engine would run forever if it was running continuously, but cold stop/starts are the most damaging of all.

I'd have no problem whatsoever with buying the car you describe, and I'm sure that as long as it's in a good general condition the mileage won't be an issue......