Hi there,

I know from googling this topic that its nothing new, but Ive yet to find an answer to my fabia's issues and neither too have my local skoda mechanics.

I have the engine light on permenent & no temp reading on dash for a long time. We have sent the car to our local garage & skoda dealers 8 times. I'm fed up and wanna deal with this myself or sell. We have had the temp sensor changed many times, thermostat, thermostat casing. Its an 03 skoda fabia 1.4 petrol.

Any ideas more than welcome, but honestly if its a case of selling it cos its gonna cost too much for me to repair then so be it.

Thanks, Huw

No temperature gauge reading on dash is usually 100% proof of coolant temp sensor failure, so if it's not that, I would look at whether the wiring's damaged. It's quite possible that getting no reading from the sensor for so long has put the car in limp mode, causing the engine management light to come on.

Have the garage or the dealers not been able to find any fault codes?

I've got the same engine (Mpi) and very similar symptoms. I also get a coolant warning light when starting from cold - thankfully no engine light.

Another member has given me good advice, but I just want to check which sensor you're referring to. Is it the one in the header tank or the thermostat?

Hopefully someone with more experiance of Skoda electrics can confirm if this will work, but on previous cars I have shorted the connection that goes to the sensor to earth, or shorted across the connector if it is a 2 wire system and this usually causes the gauge to go up into the red. It only wants doing briefly while someone watches the gauge.

Can someone advise if this is possibly, AND MORE IMPORTANTLY, will not damage anything such as the ECU.

As for the coolant warning light, while the level may appear correct from the levels on the header tank, it may be worth adding some more water - as the system heats up there will be expansion of the water which raises the level slightly. I have suffered this on my 1.4 TDI, and a little more water cured it.

Hi,

we had a 2002 Fabia with the same engine and I had to deal quite a bit with of similar problems. From what I remember:

If you have no temp reading it is linked to the temp sensor which is easy to access somewhere on top of the engine. In my case changing the sensor did not cure it, I found out after some search that it was corrosion on the contacts in the electrical connector that goes on the sensor.

My father still has a Fabia also same engine showing same symptoms. I changed the sensor which did not cure it, I checked for corrosion at the connector, all dry and clean. Next was to change the thermostat, Since then all is fine. Here obviously the reading was correct but the actual engine temp was really wrong.

On our Fabia later we had apparently correct temperature readings consistent with engine warm up etc. but (often a few minutes after start) the warning light for engine temperature came on and stayed on until next engine stop. Coolant level was correct. It turned out to be the coolant level sensor in the coolant canister. One needs to change the whole assembly, but its very cheap and an easy DIY task.

Hope this is of any help.

Good luck.

Thanks for the great advice. The thermostat was shot and the new unit comes with a temp sensor. Not a difficult job. Bottom hose clip a bit tricky with 10" mole grip as when it's wide enough to get round the clip, it's too wide to open it up enough to free the hose.

Now installed and everything's fine.