Just bought a high-mileage 1.9 Tdi, what strategy for looking after it?

[rhauri]

Yep, did that fairly early on to give me peace of mind. Pretty much as soon as the car had proved itself to me!

 

It's got 45k and 3.3 years on it now, so technically it's due again next summer. I'm tempted to play cam belt lottery for a year or two though...

 

Haha, cambelt lottery!!

 

Yeah same, I had it done straight away too. Think I've spent double again on it of what I paid - prob should have just bought a low mileage SE in reflection, but hey ho!

[booke23]

Well I thought I'd better update the forum, as my Fabia has just ticked over 200,000 last week. (My estimate of 6k a year was out by a factor of 2 - partly because the running costs are so much cheaper than my old Saab!)

 

'Strong as an ox' puts it mildly. The car has been absolutely solid. Apart from servicing and consumables, it's barely needed anything. Alternator went last year (I should've followed my own advice above), and that's about it. I even treated it to a new clutch this year.

 

Done a few 'comfort' repairs and replacements. Still haven't cured the Fabia back door leak, despite following all the tips on here, but I just give it a good going-over with a Vax every couple of months. And it the irritating intermittent tailgate won't go away, but I've been very happy with it.

 

Here's to the next 50k!

 

Good to hear.

 

Just last week I parted with my Fabia 1.9 PD Estate. I bought it just over 4 years ago with 50,000 miles on it and sold it with just over 100,000 miles on it.

 

It has been a very cheap and solid car to run. The only faults I had were leaking rear doors, broken alternator signal wire and worn drop links........all of which I repaired/replaced myself for next to no money. My same age/mileage 2.0 PD Octavia has been much more troublesome.

 

I am going to replace my old Fabia with a newer Mk2 model (still based on the same VAG platform as Mk1) which will hopefully be as strong but without the leaking rear doors!