Hi, I have a Fabia VRS (Oettinger).

Which is a good car, but;

My breaks just failed at speed resulting in damage. I found the vacume hose has split. It is a cheap low quality hose that is the connection from engine mounted pump and servo. With it split and no vacume it is like breaking with the engine off and almost impossible to stop the car at speed.

The hose is so inherently weak, I cant believe this has not happened to anyone else yet I cant find anything on this forum?

Is there an obvious reason why it has failed like has it been rubbing on anything or can you see that the material has perished??

I'll be checking mine later just in case!!

IIRC VAG had a recall out for the 6N Polo for this servo vacuum hose. It's NOT a cheap hose, but worth checking at every service for perishing or chafing, and replacing if any doubt about it's integrity.

Hello,

Whereabouts can I find this offending hose, is it the one directly feeding off vacuum reservoir ??

Thanks. Ian. 20/07/2009

iirc they are about £40 from the stealers, they have a little non return valve built into them which sometimes blows up too

Hello,

Whereabouts can I find this offending hose, is it the one directly feeding off vacuum reservoir ??

Thanks. Ian. 20/07/2009

It runs direct from the tandem fuel/vacuum pump, direct to the servo. Should be clipped to the bulkhead, and is a hard plastic tube with rubber end pieces. The tube from the vacuum reservoir runs to the vacuum control valve block.

The offending part of the hose runs from the fuel/vacuum pump to the non-return valve, about 6in long. Hard plastic. Mine split about 1in from both ends, not rubbing on anything, can only be heat related. No warning, when it drops out one end, no breaks.

As I say cant believe it has not happened to others. Will check for call backs.

So even if you weigh say 90kg can you still not brake hard enough to slow down?

This happened to mine only a week after buying it, though luckily it was on my driveway before gettin onto the open road.

Took mine to Skoda and they replaced free of charge :eek:

Also noticed that the engine went into limp mode too for some reason.

This seems like quite a serious part to fail and with more than one report and a sister car having a recall I think a decent picture would be a welcome post on this thread...

I'd do it, but I dunno which pipe it is!

So even if you weigh say 90kg can you still not brake hard enough to slow down?

I think the problem is that there is such a massive contrast in braking effort between servo-assisted and non-servo-assisted that when it you loose that assistance your not in the mind-set to press as hard as physically possible on the brake pedal as you've never had to do it before.

I think the problem is that there is such a massive contrast in braking effort between servo-assisted and non-servo-assisted that when it you loose that assistance your not in the mind-set to press as hard as physically possible on the brake pedal as you've never had to do it before.

Ever driven a really old tractor?

No but i've driven some really poor kit cars with no servo assitance so i've got a rough idea.

I know what you mean though! Brake failure or unexpected bad brake performance is probably one of the scariest experiences in a car.

I know it's slightly off-topic, but what is the "Oettinger" version of the vRS? Is there any difference between it and the normal vRS?

I think it was a dealer approved remap - just a VRS with around 165bhp from memory.

has anyone got a pic of offending pipe and it's location?

my abs seems rubbish when it's kicked in, to the point where I'd prefer my own cadence braking.

(you hear it pumping under-foot but you aren't slowing down)

I have raced cars, motorbikes and powerboats for 20 years and am used to mishaps and having to take action at short notice, OK, so I’m no body builder but I defy anyone to stop a VRS at 70mph within a sensible distance without the servo.

Oettinger www.oettinger.de/en/ are just chipping, but very good, no massive gains but quite noticeable and usable. I understand the only one that does not affect warrantee. Improves mpg as a bonus. I have an average of 58mpg over the last 20k miles.

Arrows show my duct tape temp repair effort. It split past the male insert both ends and fell off. I wonder if VAG are waiting for a death before a call back?

just had same fault on my Fabia Elegance. Two splits in cheap hard plastic pipe. It was possible to actually hear the vacuum sucking air in here. Why the garage didn't notce this noise or the 2 1" long splits is beyond me - they wanted to charge me £300 for a new tandem pump to 'fix the fault' - LANGHAM Motors Leicester. Won't be goign back to them ever again. So I bodged the splits with duct tape to test and will pick up replacement part when Parts Dept is open