Had a real saga with this. Tried to replace the steering rack on the cheap by sourcing a recovered rack and it's gone miserably downhill from there.

The price for the part from Skoda varies enormously from £650 to £800 and you probably need to replace the wiring at the same time and this costs between £60 and £100. Then there are the single use “stretch” bolts; another £50 or so. The quote from Skoda is £1,500 NOT including the wiring, bolts etc and, significantly, wheel alignment is additional too. Another £35 to £70. None of these prices include VAT. (Incidentally, why are car repairers allowed to quote prices without VAT? It’s supposed to be illegal except in business to business transactions.)

At £2,000 or more, replacing a failed steering rack probably means the car should realistically be sold for parts/scrap as the cost of repair is straightforwardly uneconomic.

But, and in spite of these truly horrendous costs, if you go down the repair route, it would, amazingly, be cheaper to let Skoda do it as I have already spent over £1,000 and still have a defective rack.

Some of the things I've found out.

Very few people understand the Octavia steering system. Coding, locating, wiring, these are all puzzles to most repairers. It would appear that having long passed beyond the DiY maintainer’s abilities, modern cars are beginning to exceed the skills in most repair shops and, I have to say, at a lot of main dealers.

There is little appreciation that the rack on my Octavia is all electric. One would-be repairer wanted to charge me for replacement hydraulic fluid. (Didn't get the job!).

It's very, very difficult to find a reliable service exchange supplier and many, again, don't appreciate that the part is electric and those that do, simply don't offer service exchange electric units. They can only supply hydraulic systems.

The major implication of this is that service exchange units, if you can find one at all, are not available “off the shelf”. I have, therefore, to find someone to remove my rack, store my car for the 7 days it takes for “refurbishment” (wipe over with an oily rag?) and then fit it when it comes back.

I would really appreciate comments on this as I am currently at my wits end and fast running out of the ability to pay for any more attempts at replacing the rack.

I don't know the full ins and outs but a new rack on my VRS took 4 days for a dealer to do - 1 day to fit, 3 days to code. God knows how much it would have been for me to pay for as it was 100% good will from SUK but it won't have been cheap. Having said that it's a fixed price regardless of how long it takes so there's no hidden prices or "well it took us a long time, so at £40 per hour that works out to be...." nonsense.

A replacement non genuine part including motor from Andrew Page is about £300 plus VAT though so worth a shot, but you still need someone to fit it.

Thanks for replying. Finding a replacement for an electric rack seems almost impossible.

The only firms I've found that are remotely interested only want to "do" the mechnical side of reconditioing, if it's in the electrics they don't want to know.

I've had no luck with Andrew Page and only SKoda themselves, so far, are able to supply an exchange unti; at a cost of more than £800.

Do you know any other firms I could turn to for a service exchange unit?

Eurocarparts do the rack, its a TRW part, oddly VW on a share of that company....

Edited 20 August, 201213 yr by Grizzle

Tried them; they don't stock electric steering racks. Sadly.

Ahhh... so the VRS rack is different then.

I've heard so many descriptions now I've lost track but it seems unlikely that the racks would vary particularly as the VRS and the 2.0tdi are so similar?

All I know is if it's the same for every other make of car with an electric steering rack there must be a whole lot of service exchange business going begging.

It could be that there's those that can do machining and the like and those that can do electrics and such; maybe the existing remanufacturing firms can't find any technicians with the right skills to uprate the electronics/wiring?

Whatever the reason it's a royal nuisance.