So, my poor old Occy needs some love.

She's got her 80k coming (£350 according to the dealer), a cambelt (£300) and new front anchors (£150).

Sounds a bit fecking painful on £1300 of car.

Rather than trading her in, I'm thinking about the low rise jack I bought a while back and the pile of breeze blocks that would make a great platform to park her on.

I'm tempted to shy away from the cam belt, but does anyone know if there's anything seriously scary about a DIY anchors overhaul and 80k service? Should I go hunt the Haynes manual or go sell a kidney...?

you can do it yourself i.e brakes etc and oil filter not hard.....

but cambelt get done at garage that price is good for cambelt and water pump......if you dont it will be alot more when the cambelt fails and blows your engine up...

p.s the cambelt is every 60k or 4 years i thought :confused:

has it had one before ????

Yeah, cambelt is already 20k over due! And if you say the car's worth £1300... then probably overdue on time too!

Sorry - I meant shy away from as in, let someone else do it. My dad has some expensive experiments with cam belt wear back when I was a kid.

I think they've decided it needs doing because it's 8 years old and they can't find any record of it having been done before.

well if your dad is mechanically minded it isnt that hard ....

but yes get it done asap as if its not been done before you are in a mine field as to when it may fail......

its just one of those things you have to buget for when buying a car

Cambelt is 4 years overdue then!

I have all this comming up soon, thankfully though I know a contact from the Skoda garage I used to work at who can do most of the work cheap!

DIY most of that, brakes etc can be sourced for less, just the cambelt which im sure if you shop around you can get ti for less.

Really you should get the cambelt done ASAP. Mine just went and now it is new engine time :( Gonna cost a bucket load now to sort it all out. Valves snapped off in the cylinder and did loadsa damage. Trust me don't risk it, mine was going for the service the next day! It had done 61k miles.

Edit - Posted wrong thread!