Last night on the way back from Birmingham I couldn’t get my fans to come on, they have never been right they where always on the first setting even when they where turned off on the switch and when you turned it up you had to wait maybe 5 minutes before the fans would speed up. But now there are no fans at all

What’s the first thing to look for?

Check fuse number 8 first. If no luck open bonnet and remove the plastic cover on air blower. Visual check then spray WD40 liberally on wiring connectors. That recovered mine.

So you dont reckon the switch inside the car is to fault? Thats what most people seem to think :S

It's worth a try first anyway as it worked for me. For some reason setting 2 is no faster than setting 1 but setting 3 is fast enough and it doesn't concern me enough to investigate further at the moment.

I sprayed everything up with wd40 and no luck, however if I connect the battery straight to the motors the fans kick in and stay on as long as hey are turned on.. But when you turn the fans off they stay off again. What could this be?

Looking at the Haynes manual there is a "dropper resistor" which is attached to the middle of the blower unit. It looks like 2 coiled springs, one with more coils than the other. From what I can tell with the switch in position one, one of the resistors is used to slow the fan, then in position two the other resistor is used to slow it less - and on 3 runs at full speed without use of the resistor.

So it looks like there's only 3 things that can be replaced. Switch, dropper resistor and the motor itself. I wonder if the fault could be the dropper resistor? The part number for it is 115972240 (no idea on cost or availability as Skoda officially no longer support parts for Favorit) - but if you can get the unit from a scrappie you'll have the whole fan motor and the resistor. I think it's just some clips on the back of the big black box thing that you have to get off to let you take the whole assembly out.

yeah, first thing i would point to is the series resistor

Agreed, and the reason people say "switch" is that on most cars these resistors are part of or directly attached to the fan switch.

So are we saying the best bet is to replace the unit as a whole? inc. the "switch" or should I just try the switch then the motor unit?

The resistor referred to is on the motor itself so you'll need to take the motor assembly out.