I have an Octavia VRS in black magic. Dont get me wrong, always been in love with it!!

Six months ago - front offside wing mirror and drivers door central locking went - have lived with it.

2 months ago - drivers side window regulator went and window unusable.

One week later coil pack burnt out - broke down. £50.00 repair + rear pads / discs and 4 new wheels done - total £550.00

Went on hols - got back and another coil pack had burnt out - what the f~~k!!

Had the car booked in for the window / door at Claybank Skoda on the Wednesday and explained it would be coming in on a recovery truck!! They said that the coil packs would be done free of charge as there was a recall on them.

Thought result until i got my bill for the door / window repairs!!

Door loom £50.00

window regulator £70.00

Door controller / motor £130.00!

Foam inserts £10.00

labour £75.00 x 3 hours

plus VAT - total cost £690.00

Not happy about having to pay for items that should just not go like this. i.e., why so many items in one door - corrosion apparently apart from the regulator.

Never had this amount of trouble with years of running Vauxhalls - whats going on?? Have spent approx £1500.00 on repairs on the VRS in two years. Maybe their name hasnt improved so much??

have fallen out of love with this car and looking for a cheaper alternative now - maybe not a Skoda!!

Let me know your views??

One of my local members on here DJM123 had the central locking fail on his VRS a couple of years ago and took the car to a dealer and was charged roughly the same figure as what you quoted. If the problem is nipped in the bud early though and you don't mind buying the parts and doing a bit of soldering yourself you can save yourself £££s over main dealer prices. Even a VAG independent could probably have done it a lot cheaper. My local VAG indy labour rate is £50 an hour!

Unfortunately wiring isn't the strong point of any VAG group car - if you want good wiring buy Jap.

You mean less complicated wiring buy jap

Would say Jap wiring is both less complex and better, had 3 different performance Jap cars and did 120000 miles across all 3 and no electical faults whatsoever mainly due to the quality of the connectors themselves. Now driveshafts on Jap cars - don't start me on that one - spent hundreds!.

All cars have good and bad points and I feel your pain when something stupidly expensive goes wrong, but I have a mate with a 8 month old astra that has blown its gearbox to pieces - having all sorts of problems getting it sorted.

There is a saying about jumping from the fat to the fire, I felt the same as you when I first bought mine, but I now know the wiring connections are extremely weak on these cars and I just use conductive silicon grease and seal every conection as I come to it - seems to work. Chin up bud, find an independant like chicken_eyebrow suggested .

Dam dealers are robbing b######s.

My brother's Lexus is200 starts itself when the keys are not in the ignition. Think I would rather have a door fault.

There does seam to be a lot of door faults posted in the last few months.

taking it to a dealers was your first mistake. Should have fixed it yourself or taken it to an independent. Dealers will always fit new genuine parts, rather than try and repair malfunctioning ones. A good independent would have defo repaired your loom.

Main dealers replace and dont fix !!!

There does seam to be a lot of door faults posted in the last few months.

They've always been a problem - I've been on here maybe 4 years now and every other week theres a new thread with a door lock or window fault. Its the only thing that really puts me off having another Mk1 Octavia as I'm not that confident about soldering circuit boards myself!

You got bummed big time with the window

New regulator is all thats req for about £70 and you can fit yourself or even a local independant could do it for an hours labour!

Vw tried to charge me £370 for a rear wheel bearing on a mk5 golf gti.

I did it myself for £109 for the part and it took me around 20mins from start to finish

Come on guys not everybody has mechanic / Electrical knowledge to do it themselves and dealer or VAG specialist may be only option.

However to the OP. Feel your pain buddy. The door regulater, Door controller, Door locking mechanism are a more common fault to go wrong on VAG group cars. A lot is down to water ingress. Folks fitting aftermarket speakers and not resealing waterproof membrain is a common one. I have taken panel off early in VRS life and wax oiled the inner doors and made membrain water tight.

What you probably should have done is come on this site and asked members of your issues and we could have advised you on how hard job is, where to get used parts, and other opotions to the crazy main dealer prices as this issues is covered lots.

VAG Wiring definitly is not the strong point of the group. Apart from poor soldering/connections, I know that my old Seat's Reverse light stopped working, because the wires in the loom are cut down to the minimum length, it just stretched, corroded and snapped. Found out when i was looking into it on another forum i found out Golf's had the same problem. Stupidly common problem across the whole VAG group. I love VAG group engines, fit and finish, feel when driving, general reliabilty... but my god the Germans dont do wiring...

I brought my Mk1 vrs in February knowing it had some issues. however coming from a Favorit estate that's tappet noise was driving me insane, I was prepared to put up with the issues as long as it drove. The vrs had 43K on the clock when i got it and had a long list of fault codes stored. one fault was the air bag light being on. So I paid £25 out on ebay for a Fault code reader with erase function, came on here made note of the faults and found out as much info as i could and set to task about delving in myself.

the night i brought the car the rear window regulator broke, took me 3 hours to get the door card off and wedge the window up with a old plastic milk bottle and went on ebay to track a repair kit. £25 later and a day or so had the repair kit, sent the kids out with money so they didnt bug the hell out of me and set to task at rebuilding the broken one.

Took me 15mins and had the door back together in 30mins. However had to pay £15 for new handle as i killed mine getting it off.

Since then i have had to fit a new temp sensor, (£23 - dealer)

had the dreaded 17705 fault occurred after fitting K&N filter which cost me a silicon hose kit (that i didn't need), few 2nd hand sensors, at about £24 only to find the fault was the throttle body was in need of a clean! some coding there eh? even suspected the stock DV and got a Forge 007p unnecessary.

Then started getting a creaking noise from the front and was the plastic sleeves on the ARB removed them and fitted the smaller ID units £7 off ebay

brakes were next complete set front and rear with EBC pads £90 off ebay. rear calipers played up.

managed 2340 miles with no faults then until now with 17608 code and out of interest was quoted £70 for a new N249 valve have taken it out and tested it so know i don't need a new one.

I haven't taken the car to a dealership once, however i have taken it to a family friend owned ex dealership but refused to allow them to do any diagnostics for me as my view is if im going to have a vrs then im going to do most of the work myself. As i have done all work on all my cars since probably about 1996.

My heart goes out to h1gg1 though.

if the door/window fault is left it will require all those parts to be replaced - the regulator will get water ingress and pack up, the loom and plug get corrosion damage and the ccu get electrical shorts and causes faults.

moral is get in there quick if there is something untoward to save a load of hassle

You got bummed big time with the window

New regulator is all thats req for about £70 and you can fit yourself or even a local independant could do it for an hours labour!

Not just regulator if you read the thread. Was central locking and wing mirror electrical failures that needed loom and motor control also. If it was just the regulator i could have got one second hand and fitted it with help myself.

Unfortunatelty it seems that all of the door mechanisms had given up the ghost!!

What cars fail on such a level as this.

Skoda is going soon!!

Edited 17 April, 201214 yr by h1gg1

if the door/window fault is left it will require all those parts to be replaced - the regulator will get water ingress and pack up, the loom and plug get corrosion damage and the ccu get electrical shorts and causes faults.

Electrics went first then last month the window regulator which pushed me into having it all fixed in one go, whilst they had the door card off - anyway car is going soon before all the other doors start to fail. No way!!