Hello all,

As you may have guessed, I'm new to the forum. My name is Max and I am taking part in the Mongol Rally this summer. I'm driving a 1995 Favorit GLXIE estate to Ulan Bator, Mongolia and back, 20,000 miles via Kazakhstan, Russia and Mongolia itself for a children's charity called the Christina Noble Children's Foundation.

I bought the car a few months back and have been working on it since, but I wont clog up the welcome page with the details, I'll post a full description of the task and my preparations so far elsewhere on the forum but I hope some of you will take an interest and perhaps offer some words of advice to a fellow Skoda owner.

Cheers,

Max

Edited 12 July, 201015 yr by MongolFavorit

Ok, it seems that I can't yet create a big boy's thread so I'll just continue my post here.

I bought the Favorit in April from a private dealership in Warwick for £500, and it drove home without any issues.

Having had a thorough look at it, and considering the journey ahead I've made a few changes and bought a few new parts to replace older, more tired components.

So far the list looks like this:

Alloy wheels swapped for a full set of steel wheels (if anyone is looking for a set of Skoda alloys with plenty of tread, send an email my way). Obviously alloys aren't ideal for hard driving conditions, at least I can knock steels back into shape.

New and spare oil filters and a k&n air filter (nothing to do with performance, it's washable, which should save me some grief).

I've also had the head skimmed and fitted a new gasket, so fingers crossed I wont see too many issues there.

I've replaced the brake pads all round and fitted new handbrake cables.

I had a new core installed in the radiator and also picked up a spare pretty cheaply on eBay.

Other than that, the rear seats have been removed and Christopher Walken has been drawn on the bonnet. If you'd like to read a bit more about what it is that this Skoda will be doing you can check our team website or askany questions/offer some advice here.

Thank you for taking an interest,

Max

Hi Max. I guess you are the guy that's been exchanging emails with Mark Fisher from the Owners' Club about help with spare parts?

One bit of advise that immediately comes to mind is to get rid of the awful immobilizer that late UK spec Favorits came with!.

Hi Max, welcome to the forum

Welcome Max, Good luck with the trip, maybe the dev's etc could send you some Briskoda stickers.

Thank you for the welcome,

It's actually my father who has been exchanging emails with Mark Fisher. As for the immobilizer, with seven days to go before I leave I'm not sure if I'm brave enough to try and remove it, just incase I manage to seriously muck something up. But having the immobilizer has already caused me some grief (something about needing to move the car before a particularly keen traffic warden made it to my end of the street). Does anyone have any solid advice for removing the immobilizer?

As for the Briskoda stickers, I'd love to get hold of some of those, hopefully someone who can make that happen sees this

Edited 16 July, 201015 yr by MongolFavorit

Hello max. Welcome to Briskoda. Sounds like a great fun trip to be had. Enjoy and keep safe!