Hi!

I am interested in buying an Octavia (~ year 2000) and at the moment I am choosing between 1.6 or 2.0 engines. The 2.0 is not so common here so i am interested in any experiences of that engine and the car overall.

One option at the moment is 2.0 glx -00 with 180 000 kilometres ( ~100k miles). What do you think of something like that? Are there any major technical issues I should especially check when testing the car?

I appreciate any experiences you can share.

It really seems that this engine is not so common one. I have been unable to find any comments from this forum concerning the 2.0 engine.

hello,

i have a 2000 plate 1.6 and its ok i suppose.

its comfortable enough and when not driven that hard will manage high 30's mpg. performance is by no means startling but its a boring family saloon rather than a performance car.

its been reliable enough and never broken down and in the 18 months i've owned it its required a replacement alternator (£100 easy to fit) and passenger side window regulator (under warrantee).

servicing is simple and it doesn't require anything particuarly special and if you have a flat enough oil drainer you can drain the oil without jacking the car up.

head-lights are acceptable for keeping the car out of the ditch at night but the optional front fogs are like all fog lights everywhere: utterly lousy.

boot space is remarkable - with the seats down you can put massive amounts of junk and tat into it.

the trip computer (if fitted) on my car lies about everything but only a little (2 degrees C or so and about 3mpg over 200 miles)

the brakes (discs front and drums rear) are fairly good although i've not yet got the ABS on. it has a shabby traction control system called EDL which is next to useless. again replacement of the front discs and pads is simple enough. i've read that octavia rear discs can be problematic so maybe rear drums are okay for a non VRS car?

air-con blows out cold air more-or-less on demand but i've no idea if/when it was last replaced. if its never been done its outstanding. otherwise its average. heater is quite good.

the interior doesn't rattle that much but i've found it near impossible to trace rattles anyway.

the stereo (skoda symphony) is awful but is a standard slot so can be changed easily enough with kenwood stereo keys (or a credit card cut suitable i hear).

spare wheel lives in the boot so doesn't get covered in road muck.

granted for the 2.0 engine only some of that might be useful but its an ok car for everyday transport.

Hi!

I am interested in buying an Octavia (~ year 2000) and at the moment I am choosing between 1.6 or 2.0 engines. The 2.0 is not so common here so i am interested in any experiences of that engine and the car overall.

One option at the moment is 2.0 glx -00 with 180 000 kilometres ( ~100k miles). What do you think of something like that? Are there any major technical issues I should especially check when testing the car?

I appreciate any experiences you can share.

It just so happens that I have a 2.0, although it's a Jan 2003 Ambiente rather than the GLX, you'd have to ask someone else what the difference is, but I think I remember reading somewhere that it has a different ECU and potentially ABS, etc. I have read about a couple of people having 2.0l over the past 2 years of perusing the forum, but can't think of anything from that that may be of help to you and I have read quite a bit, although without adding as most of it's about the VRS or diesels and I have only really worked on my own cars as I am not a mechanic.

But as far as my experience goes - my dad bought it at about a year old from an auction at about 12k miles (I can look up the history if you really want, but I think that's close enough) for around 6-6.5k (pretty cheap!). Since than he kept the service history until the warranty expired and since then it has been self-serviced. Under warranty the front ARB bushes were changed, but other than that he didn't have any extra work done to it.

So since the warranty expired (I think it has 4 stamps in the service book) it's had oil and filter every 10k and discs, pads, tyres, etc. as and when and the odd other fluid change. I bought her 2 years ago at the end of this month (on my 21st birthday) when she'd done 97k. She's now done over 116k and is still on the original exhaust, cambelt (should probably get around to sorting that...), waterpump and everything else that isn't a regular service item.

The only problems with her are:

- I've been slowly putting more coolant in over the past few months, been nearly a litre in about a year. If it has the plastic impeller waterpump the VRS has then that's possibly why?

- I can through a fair bit of of oil, outside of the oil change I think it's a couple of litres in a year, but it says in the handbook that it can use up to 1 litre every 1k kilometers! And she's always used a fair bit.

- I used to commute 2 miles to work everyday and that left some emulsified oil under the filler cap, but when I went 220miles home for the weekend it cleared it, and now I commute 50 miles to uni it's not been appearing. I read somewhere on here that if you do short journeys this tends to happen because you don't give it chance to get rid of the condensation or something.

- I keep having the emissions warning light appear on the dash, bring up a catalyst efficiency error across bank 1 fault code (I made another post about it). It has currently disappeared on its own and I used to reset it a bit using a cheap 10 quid cable from ebay. Garage told me the cat is fine and its one of the lambda probes so while it's still passing its MOT it won't be changed (they're 70 quid each and it could be 1 of 2).

- 3 rubber things that hold some air recirculation thing on have disintegrated - it doesn't move much anyway, but the rubber mounts were 7 quid each to replace.

- I had a brake pad disintegrate (again, another post), but you probably don't have the FSIII front brakes anyway and even if you do, many other variants use them with no complaints so I think it was just me being unlucky.

All in all, I think the engine is pretty bullet proof, it's not that powerful but gets the job done - I can still overtake stuff on A roads safely, the 50-60 time is not bad at all really. I enjoy driving her although I'm looking forward to buying something quicker in the summer when I get a job and can afford to look after it properly.

Other than that I can only offer some economy figures, which are:

- Driving from Bourne, Lincs to Yeovil (220ish miles) - up to 43 mpg on the trip computer using either A34/43 or M5 if i'm careful, typically 39-40 though. Think someone said their trip computer on a vrs is about 2 mpg optimistic. I also did the journey including 10-20 miles in between on one tank (went from full to 0 miles on the trip, so about 55 litres).

- Driving from Bourne to Loughborough on various routes (no dual carriageway or motorway) to spice it up a bit (all about 45 miles) I get from 35 to 41 mpg, 35 being brisk and overtaking a few things and 41 getting stuck at 50-55mph or just being careful. 38's typical on a clear run. Again, all on the trip computer. I also used to do 4 trips each way each week and typically spent £55 per week on petrol, when it was cheaper.

Hope that helps, I can't think of any other experience to add but feel free to ask if you have any more questions .

Edited 12 April, 201016 yr by Powell2.0

From Powell2.0's post above:-

"I've been slowly ... that's possibly why" - They all have the plastic impellor as standard but that's not normally associated with coolant loss; it just breaks, stopping circulation and causing overheating. In fact, many independants change the pump as part of a cambelt change (the cambelt has to come off to replace the water pump, so when it's off anyway...).

"I can through ... used a fair bit" - This is true, but more true of some cars than others.

"I used ...the condensation or something." - Entirely correct; it's called mayonaisse because that's what it looks like (and in fact is; an emulsion made of oil and water. Don't put it on your salad though"

"I had a brake pad ... so I think it was just me being unlucky." - I think all models except the 1.8T turbo petrols and the TDi130 diesels have the FS111 calipers. I'd agree that a disintigrated pad is bad luck rather than a real issue though.

Ref the computer, I think it's about 10% optomistic in trip mpg more, although it seems accurate in available range mode.

Thank you very much for the info! Sounds really good to me. The engine is quite big so I quess you can easily drive up to 180 000 miles if it is serviced properly.

This traction control system apparently works only when accelerating it and doesn't prevent oversteering like modern TCS?

Thank you very much for the info! Sounds really good to me. The engine is quite big so I quess you can easily drive up to 180 000 miles if it is serviced properly.

This traction control system apparently works only when accelerating it and doesn't prevent oversteering like modern TCS?

I don't think I have EDL on mine, if it does then it hasn't ever done anything. According to Parkers they scrapped it on the facelift cars (so post October 2000).

But to quote skoda on what it does:

"Electronic Differentail Lock continually compares the rpm of the drive wheels, and if it identifies a difference between them which could lead to an individual wheel spinning, for example, if the two wheels are on different types of surface or accelerating on wet leaves, the system brakes the wheel affected until uniform rpm of all drive wheels is restored."

So it's not really that sophisticated, but at least it doesn't sound like it kills the power like the ESP on the VRS (which no-one seems to like). If you park half on wet grass and half on tarmac or have one wheel on ice or whatever it's probably quite handy, but I don't think it will do anything to help in corners. The engine's not really powerful to cause much under steer in corners anyway, you'd have to be doing something pretty drastic!

Ok, it's on a diesel (TDi110, so about the same torque as a vRS), not a 2.0 petrol, but I find the ASR tends to work pretty well at reigning in wheelspin coming out of corners (normally lifting the inside front out of a wet corner). It's not so great in a straight line (where it does just kill power a bit), but I've only ever set it off by hitting the torque rise on snow.

Well now I am a Skoda Octavia 2.0 2000 owner. My first impressions of the car are really good.

The engine seems nice: I dont have to rev up the engine in accelerations because I can use the torque. I think it was a good choice to take the 2.0 engine.

It took a 5 hour drive back home from where I bought the car and my bum wasnt too sore after the trip so I guess the seats are also rather good.

It has ran 110 000 miles and it still may have the original cam belt so I probably need to change it asap. It will cost me some money unfortunately. But otherwise the car feels really good and solid.

Edit: The cam belt has been changed once. How long have you driven before changing cam belts? Service book suggests it should be replaced every 56 000 miles.

Edited 27 April, 201016 yr by coctavia