hi guys, just wondering what you think, my gfs 51 plate fabia is really poor on fuel,

she will put 15 pounds in and it will last about two days/3 tops. she only goes work (3 miles into town) and back.

also the engine doesnt seem to pull strong sometimes then others its quite nippy, cold or warm.

there has also been a fair bit of mayo in the filler cap, been told it needs more long runs and should be fine??

has usual rattling cam chain and was wondering if this could be anything to do with problems ive mentioned in here?

any help would be great, shaun.

hi guys, just wondering what you think, my gfs 51 plate fabia is really poor on fuel,

she will put 15 pounds in and it will last about two days/3 tops. she only goes work (3 miles into town) and back.

also the engine doesnt seem to pull strong sometimes then others its quite nippy, cold or warm.

there has also been a fair bit of mayo in the filler cap, been told it needs more long runs and should be fine??

has usual rattling cam chain and was wondering if this could be anything to do with problems ive mentioned in here?

any help would be great, shaun.

I have the same problem with my ferbi the bestthing to do is put a additive in with your fuel ( fill your tank DONT USE SUPERMARKET FUEL and put half a bottel of redex on give it a good long run)Dont do it all the time once every 5k miles would do. If you are worried about the cream on your filler cap you need to keep an eye on your water if it drops and get oil in the water then you have a head gasket problem. The rattle can be the chain guide, or the water pump

Mayo in filler cap is just a symptom of short short drives, and nothing to worry about. If the coolant level remains constant and still looks like water then its not the HG, it could be something trivial like a temperature sensor or MAF causing the car to think the engine is colder than it really is thus injecting more fuel than needed. That will also lead to poor running and lack of power because the mixture will be all wrong.

If it is only those short trips done I suspect it may be that rather than the headgasket. Is the coolant actually going down or any evidence of oil or mayo in the header tank? Another common problem is the thermostat, if the thermostat is broken, the car will never heat up properly and it will make mayo on the oil cap. There was an improved head gasket released, and if this is fitted you will be able to see a T or Temac mark on top of the cylinder block where the head gasket is visible.

Poor fuel efficiency is part of the engine. The broad engine design is little different to the Skoda engine from the sixties with an 8 port head coming in the eighties. It was deprecated in favour of the newly designed by Skoda 1.2 htp because the 1.4 mpi would fail future euro emissions requirements - to be honest it was such an old engine it was a surprise they used it at all in the Fabia, I guess they did because other than fuel consumption it was a relatively bullet proof engine and cheap to implement. It has been suggested by another member that replacing the MAP sensor can improve fuel efficiency even if there are no error codes or symptoms (part cost approx £50).

Rattling chain I wouldn't worry about for now if it isn't too loud. It is possible to assess the timing of the engine while it is running and see if the timing chain is relatively ok looking at the measuring blocks in VCDS in conjunction with the values shown in the Skoda service manual for the engine.

Edited 13 February, 201115 yr by anewman

What's the Air Filter like, has it been changed, if not, it would be my first point to change ASAP.

DB.

Hi guys , thanks for all the responses i havn't looked on here in a few weeks, the coolant used to go down a fair few times but it does'nt now, had a new water pump on, which is what i suspected was rattling at first, there is no sign of oil in the water etc. i will try to clean out the maf etc before replacing as gf does'nt really want to spend too much money, car was serviced by myself when she first got it about a year and a half ago, will be servicing v.soon she has only put about 3000 miles on it since she has had it. will hopefully be replacing thermostat too if time lets me, temp sensor is very quick to get up to operating temp, within a 5 min period of car being started/driven, and stays there in middle of range consistantly.

thanks again guys.