Looking around for a good first car for grandson , he is 23 so already has some NCB insurance , we have seen some good 1.4 2004 versions in the mid £2.5k range 80k miles and service history , any advice on what to look for ie cambelt or chain service time , is 8v or 16 v best , and what about the 1.2 versions . Was hoping to find a 1.9 diesel but they are rare and high miles . Thanks

Don't be put off by high mileage diesels if service history is present and good. Sold my last car on 132K (engine was like new), current car on 125K (again, feels and pulls incredibly well).

Most problems on these cars are small electrical faults with suspension wearing round 100K (bushes, mounts). In fact the early 16V 1.4 100Bhp engine seems to be problematic with HG failure.

I do know people on this forum who've got 1.2/1.4 and are completely happy. Perhaps look for an SDI (1.9 non turbo), reliable and economical. Saying that my 1.9 100BHP TDI would deliver 65MPG + on a steady cruise.

(Forgot to add: Chains get noisy and rattly around 100-120K so may need changing. Cambelts/Timing Belts are typically 4 years or 60K on these cars)

In fact the early 16V 1.4 100Bhp engine seems to be problematic with HG failure.

Disagree with this part only, the rest is sound advice.

Hi,

Not a bad car, and certainly good quality for things like the seats, the way the car feels to drive etc.

Problems to look for:

Wet rear carpets from leaking doors due to leaking seals on interior door panel.

Central locking not opening or closing doors (quite common) about £300 to fix due to having to take the window out to get at the locks, and then having to seal it all up again to stop leaks.

Heating not turning off

Rear wash wipe leaking fluid into the boot or not working (quite easy to sort out)

Rear reverse lights not working (£10 switch easy to fix)

Heated mirrors burnt out, about £10 each for new one.

Headlamp leveling not working (not sure how to fix probably fairly easy)

Boot lid not opening/locking

Gearboxes wearing out on SDI diesel (check for a chattering noise slowing down in 1st or 2nd that goes away with the clutch down)

Turbos failing on turbo diesels.

The 1.4 8v is a skoda engine, only does about 30mpg but is cheap to fix. 1.4 16v is a VW engine, more modern but more complicated.

1.2 engine is probably fine for a new driver.

I just saw a x reg 1.4 go for £450 in an auction, food for thought.

Grr. I'll post this again in a bit, Tapatalk just wiped out my reply when I went to edit my post :/

Edited 12 April, 201313 yr by Avalon

Right, without knowing how far he drives anyone suggesting he buy a diesel is being foolish.

Petrol's warm up quicker, achieve book mpg figures more easily and are better suited to shorter runs than diesels. A PD at 3c takes 12 miles at 50mph to hit operating temp and returns well below book till it does as they're thermally efficient and need to be up to temp to return book mpg's.

The early 1.2's weren't great (search) you'll find a number of issues involving rebuilds, same with the 16v 1.4's, coils, valves etc. they're also easy to bodge and sell on. The 16v AUB needs 97RON fuel but a lot of owners are tight and that just makes things worse. The 8v on the other hand has 50 years of proven reliability, it averages 41-42mpg in my experience (last 20k) and is easy to work on/maintain, it has a deserved rep for thermostat failure (£42 for genuine) and 15 mins to fit. Early cars had the HG replaced during services as the OE HG was poorly designed, the reputation somehow persisted after this despite it being a decade ago, looking at the recent posts on here the VRS possibly deserves this rep more. The 120k cam chain interval makes the mpi a decent buy used as you don't have a timing belt to worry about like the rest if the petrol's (apart from one of the 1.2's iirc?).

The SDI has a SMF and no turbo and is more economical, early ones were high on the tax though but they're reliable. The PD's give good economy but you have the risk of a clutch/DMF failure or a turbo going and then it becomes expensive. All the diesels have a timing belt (and pump) that is spec'd for 60k or 4 year intervals, whatever comes first.

So if he does mainly short runs a petrol would be where I'd be looking and probably an mpi, if he does more miles (like 1200 a month plus) then consider a diesel, probably an SDI for reliability or a TDI if he has a bit of spare cash just in case. They're good for a few hundred thousand miles so don't let 100k put you off

My advice is to buy a cheap one say for £1,000 or £1,500 and then save £1,000 to get work done as things go wrong, because they will go wrong. You will need a cambelt change for example, as people often sell their car when they are told they need a cambelt and service, £300 or so for the cambelt and £100 for a service and people will say "I'm not paying £400 on an old car" and sell it. You may have other things fail, like door locks, or electric windows, air-con etc.

If you expect things to fail and budget for it, it wont be a dissapointment when it happens.

My advice would be to get one with good bodywork and interior as you can't fix those bits cheaply, then drive it for a while and see if anything is wrong.

The 1.4 8V is a cracking engine, as already said its cheap to maintain and fix with a few issues such as thermostats etc.

Having owned both a 1.4 8V and a 1.4 16V I would say the 8V wins hands down, the 16V has a complicated emissions with an EGR valve that can get blocked over time. Quite often the 16V also suffers from noisy tappets.

I would also like to add the performance figures of both engines arent that far off each other 68BHP and 100BHP. the 8V has almost identical peak torque compared to the 16V.

Bought a 1.2 Fabia last year - really like it.

I think at the time I looked at the 1.4 and 1.2 engines.

From what I can remember the 1.4 engines are from skoda, the 1.2's from VW

The 1.2's come in two different hp's 54 and 64 BHP. I have the more powerful 64BHP due to me doing mostly motorway driving (40 miles) each day to work.

Think any car will always have some issue's somewhere with it - the worst with the Fabia is the rear door seals. After owning a Citroen - I consider that to be nothing major, at least it doesn't include the word "Fire" lol.

I test drove several engined car's, both diesel and petrol. All depends on the type of driving you use the car for, and what your comfortable with.

Another vote for the 1.4 8v. I managed average 36mpg (calculated over many years). I sold mine well into the 100k miles and apart from standard wear and tear it gave me many years of trouble free motoring. Very cheap to insure and lots of cheap ones about.

I own a 1.4 8v mpi and im 18. Heres my experience.

17 years, new driver, no NCB - premium was £3500

As of today: 18 years, 1 yr NCB - premium is £891

These are cold hard facts, most of what im about to say is based on my own personal opinion and any research ive done combined.)

1.4 Fabias (my best knowledge is here) : 1.4 fabias are easy to pick up for a good price and are amazingly cheap on insurance (Ive never found anything cheaper including a quote on my friends 1.1 peugeot 206)

ive ran my 1.4 MPI for a year now and it has been mechanically sound apart from a cracked radiator which was just unfortunate. Other than that its ran sweet as a nut!

Advantages: The 1.4 8v is in my experience bombproof with it using OHV rather than OHC or DOHC like the 1.4 16v, they have enough power as standard to haul a full car and boot quite happily and are extremely nippy and responsive when your on your own. i can easily get 35mpg from mine and have even pushed it over 45mpg on an extremely economical run, i got roughly 300 miles on a 50l tank once (cant remember the exact figures).

Disadvantages: The road TAX on my MPI is pretty steep at £195 a year and from what ive heard the 1.4 16v has a few more reliability issues (no idea what they are just going by what ive read and heard)

1.2 fabias: 1.2 fabias are slightly rarer and therefor more expensive, decent ones start at around £2000 when i looked into it, i have no idea what the tax or economy are like thats for someone that owns one to preach. what i do know is that the 1.2 is a 3 cylinder and the fabia isnt the lightest of cars, not the best of combinations. another thing that was pointed out to me about them was that because they are 3cyl they arent as smooth as the 4cyl for obvious reasons and i personally wouldnt go for one.

1.9 Fabias: il start with the SDI. I have a friend which is looking into buying one of these so ive been doing a lot of research into them and they are extremely interesting in my opinion.

Advantages: The SDI is extremely simple and reliable because theres next to nothing to go wrong, they are around £30 for road TAX which is nothing compared to the likes of my car and even though they are not the fastest of cars they are powerful and have really good pulling power, i worked out that the average 2.0l diesel is equivalent to a 2.5l petrol in the same car (i worked this out on the new volvo V70). Another thing to take into account is that SDI's will not have been thrashed and even fewer crashed meaning premiums will be much lower for them. also with the SDI its more than likely just been used for motorway miles which Diesels can handle fine.

Disadvantages: The SDI doesnt have a great deal for the likes of performance, but if its not this that you are looking for then i dont think there is a much better engine for it in my opinion. The other thing is that most are high mileage, as said before they shouldnt have been thrashed so if they have a good/full service history then it should be fine, i think if you have FSH and your limit is 100k miles you should find an amazing buy.

the TDI is a good engine however i feel that its a little bit of a gap filler between the vRS and all of the other engines as well as having slight less reliability when whacking a turbo on, the bonus of this is that you get the added power and performance of it, i dont know much about the TDI myself (i believe its a PD100 engine, i could be wrong) but i just feel that if you are going for a diesel you either go for the SDI or the vRS if you want the performance..

In my opinion i think that if your looking for economy, reliability and low running costs, the 1.9 SDI is for you!!!!

Again most of that i have said is based on opinion and research combined so please take it with a pinch of salt!

Thanks!!

Jack

While I generally agree with most of the posts on here a few things should be clarified. The 8v is a Skoda engine and chain driven with a 120k interval, the 1.3 version is in the Felicia and it can be traced back to the 60's in one form or another, this is why it's a pretty safe bet, it's well proven and it's only two weakness' are as above so inexpensive to fix and once fixed unlikely to re-present again for a long time, all the 16v engines are VW as are the 1.2's. The 16v engines can do reasonable mileage but they do have a number of issues that can be expensive to fix and are easily masked on the cheap and passed on. The extra mpg on the 1.2's sounds nice but isn't going to make that much of a difference to your bank balance in terms of cost per mile and again it's not the most reliable of engines, especially the 1st gen.

Now, why do I keep rattling on about cost per mile or pence per mile (ppm)? Well let me explain, I do 95 miles a day on either a bike that averages 67mpg or in my Fabia that averages 41mpg, with numbers like that you'd expect a massive saving as that's a 63% improvement in fuel economy, it comes out at £5.32 saving a day or 5.6ppm, now my old daily commute was circa 3 miles so it would have made bugger all difference (16.8p a day), for less than 17p a day I'd take the car every single time.

So to the op, please can you give us a clue as to how far he drives as without it it's difficult to make a case one way or another. In simple terms the advice is for lower miles and shorter runs buy a cheap mpi, the extra RFL is outweighed by the savings on insurance and purchase price and not having a belt to change. If he's getting on for 15k a year consider an SDI, low insurance, no DMF and it's cheap for RFL after a certain date and ppm is low, no turbo to worry about either. and it can run SVO. If he wants slightly more performance then a TDI but have the cash for a clutch/DMF/Turbo put to one side and you'll pay more insurance.