Are there any of the new Greenline II Fabias available to view or drive yet?

Can anyone authoritatively state whether the new 1.2 CR 3 pot engine has a cambelt or camchain?

Honest John review states its a camchain drive but also states its supercharged which I know is wrong. HJ often gets things wrong.

I would imagine its a belt as its derived from the 1.6 CR diesel.

But what I really want is a diesel with a camchain and no costly change intervals. :wonder:

Hi Xman,

This is an interesting subject you have raised. I'm pretty sure the 1.2cr is cambelt driven, but I stress I haven't seen one yet. But I've read somewhere it has a belt, pretty sure. There will be many reasons for that. Cambelts are reliable, light in weight, and almost completely noiseless in operation. They don't break if you stick to the rules which are, have it changed at the recommended intervals. Always use a manufacturers genuine part. Always get a qualified techy to fit it (unless you are one yourself!). NEVER REFIT a used belt even if it's only done a few thousand miles. Other than that, they are easy and cheap to maintain. Oh...one other advantage is that your water pump and tensioning gear gets inspected on a regular basis at cambelt change time. This allows the water pump and tensioner gear to be inspected. Waterpumps often have weeps and leaks that are picked up at this time and are changed. This prevents heartache further down the road. On engines with camchains the pump often isn't looked at until it's leaking badly or has failed completely. Camchains are not always as good as you might imagine. We used to see lots of broken and noisy chains on all sorts of vehicles. Failures were common. Look what happened to Ford and some others when they switched to camchains on some of their newer diesel engines in vans and cars. Owners got to see the exploded view of the engines! And Ford said the camchains will last the life of the engine. It will be interesting to see how the TSI engines fair with their camchains and is one of the reasons some people are NOT buying them yet. I'm reserving judgement as Skoda are pretty good at engineering stuff and often don't make the mistakes others make.