Hi, thought I would join the forum for my Mum-in-Law, as other forums i.e. 406oc have been a great help for me.

I recently advised my Mum-in-Law to buy a Skoda Fabia Tdi, with FSSH, 118k, and recent service, cambelt etc - all good.

After only a week with the car she had a flashing lights attack on the dashboard and she got a bit scared. After reading the manual, it was the orange diagnostic light.

She took the car to my cousins garage ( Mastertech in Poole - he used to be in charge of Poole Audi workshop but now runs his own business ) and he cleared all the fault codes on the ECU. The only one showing on diagnostics after clearing is one that says ' intermittent fault, abs not communicating with ECU or something. Probably backed-up by the fact the speedo clocks stopped working.

This has since cleared up and no more faults ( yet ) but cousin said to look over the ABS unit and try to find a corroded wire or something, as that's the best place to start.

I had a quick look earlier before it got dark but was just blindly fumbling around as access is a bit poor. I will try again tomorrow but I was wondering if anyone else on the forum had a similar issue and how was it resolved?

I love the Skoda, but I want to get it sorted before Mum-in-Law loses faith in it, I feel bad as it is...!!

Thanks, Kelv.

You can get communications issues for a number of reasons, two that readily come to mind are:

1. The ABS control unit is not powering up, either a supply or earth fault

2. The communications wires are broken. The system uses two wires to communicate which are twisted together to combat any signal interference and transmit opposite signals to each other. The system only really needs one wire and will work quite happily off one wire, if a wire breaks it will throw a single wire mode fault.

One forum member I know has encountered a communications loss problem with the ABS unit and it turned out to be that both communications wires had broken within the wiring loom. If it's a Mark 1 Fabia, problems with the wiring loom where it runs from the bulkhead to the control units in the engine bay are not uncommon.

If you let us know what Fabia model it is, I can move this to the relevant forum where more people will see it.

Brilliant, thanks.

The Fabia is a 54 plate, maybe the PD engine.

If you could let me know where the wires start and finish then I stand a chance of finding the break / loose connection - it is an intermittent fault after all.

Kelv.