Bought a Fabia 16v Comfort x-reg 94000 miles for £1400. Had the timing belt and bushes done for £360, new front tyres £120. Power steering light now on and have been through battery, earth lead and PAS sensor without a fix. Seatbelt light now appeared, Heater direction cable broken and no idea if the AC works so more money to spend.

Should I throw good money after bad or salvage the bits I can and scrap it?

Lets face it, do you really need all this aggro? scrap it.

Edited 15 February, 201214 yr by hussarman

I have to agree it sounds like it will be more trouble than it is worth. The power steering can be nightmare to fix alone, I had a fault with the PS the fix left me £1000 lighter.

sometimes you just have to call it a day...

If you decide to stick with it there are some good threads on the possible problems, they helped me.

http://briskoda.net/forums/topic/186217-fabia-power-steering-problems/

Edited 15 February, 201214 yr by sullivan

Your post is a bit vague, when did you buy it and what are the costs to repair the faults you mentioned? I suggest you may be able to find competitive quotes for the work as in some areas there is keen competition but at the same time I suggest that the car is generally checked to see if other problems are evident. But buying another car at a similar price is also a risk. My own experiece of a Y reg Fabia over 11 years is that major repairs can be frequent and costly, I couldn't recommend one for reliability but I am crossing my fingers for the time being as well keeping the use to the minimum.

I don't wish to seem unkind but you purchased a 12 year old car with a fair few miles on it, surely you had a reasonably good idea what was coming ? Off the top of my head: springs, shocks, wheel bearings, seals, HG, coolant change/flush, thermostat change, bushes, tyres, timing belts, oil/filters, drive shaft or at least seals, gearbox fluid change, TRE's/drop links, engine mounts, disc/pads, drums/shoes (and possibly adjusters), rear cylinders, HT leads/coil packs, and worn sections of loom are all common in addition to the normal service items, most of it's straight forward and inexpensive to do with only basic tools, a Haynes manual and a sense of humour

If you think you're alone you're not, my 1.4 mpi is on a Y reg with 22k on the clock (no it's not been round once already), in 2 weeks of ownership i've spent a fair bit of time getting on top of the jobs that needed doing, it does 70-100 miles a day now so I am limited in terms of what I can do and when as I work early till late and can only work on it outside. It's had plugs, oil/air/fuel/cabin filters, PAS fluid (check this before you go any further with your PAS fault), stripped/cleaned the old angle sensor and eventually gave up and ordered a new one today, BFC and new nipples all round this w/e and the angle sensor will arrive on Monday, I suspect a new battery and VRM (but please not the alternator) will probably be required before i'm done and if the disc's/pads don't scrub up after the fluid change they're next on the list. I've still got the console bushes to sort and I don't even want to look at the drop links and TRE's but it'll get through an MOT as it is. The point being the faults you've experienced aren't terminal and don't have to cost you the earth to fix if you're prepared to put in a little work (buy a Haynes).

So back to yours, tyres and timing belt you'd have known about when you bought it so that's to be expected, it's time to get the benefit out of the money you've spent taking care of them. The AC? Well seriously ask yourself how many days a year you will need to use it then half that and if you're still in double figures then you're obviously not living in the UK, then decide if it justifies the potential cost to fix? Probably not so leave it well alone. The vent position cable won't be that hard to fix, fiddly and requiring chunks of dash to come apart and take up a few hours? Probably but expensive, no. If it's already in the screen position i'd be tempted to live with it.

That leaves the lights on the dash. First thing you want to do is find out if someone locally has VCDS on here and see if they'd mind reading the codes for you in exchange for a few beer tokens etc. or better yet buy a £5 cable and download the free version of VCDS to read the fault codes yourself if you have a laptop or can get the car close enough to a PC. Check the PAS fluid level and the connections on either end of the cable to/from the sensor, contact cleaner and a careful look to make sure they're not corroded up should suffice but ideally a multimeter and continuity testing would be the best solution. A multimeter is another £5-10 purchase. Check the top fuse on the box (45amp from memory as it's not unheard of for it to develop hairline cracks). The seat light could be a loom problem (I had to fit a repair kit in the Octavia for this) or perhaps a pre-tensioner but the fault code should narrow it down, either way until you know what you're dealing with you don't know how cheap/expensive it is to fix. Bottom line it's worth at least investigating further, at worst you spend £15-20 on finding out what's wrong with it, the solution could be as simple as topping up the PAS fluid and fitting a new cable for the vents/a cheap loom repair on the seat.

Good luck

Might be interested in it.. PM me