I've recently picked up an 06 Fabia vRS, can't find any history of having a belt on it so I want to change it or get it changed.

I priced up parts today at our local Skoda dealer and it's about £186 for the timing kit and a recon water pump.  Another £40ish for new.

 

The fixed price, fully fitted option at £399 really doesn't seem bad compared to other cars I've had done before.

I was going to do it myself after reading the guide on here but I don't have a garage so I'm outside on the driveway and I find this seems to induce rain whenever I plan to do such work and spare time is not the greatest commodity I have.  At that sort of money, I'm not sure it's worth it?

 

Or, is it generally even "cheaper" to go to an independent garage?

I know I can get a Contitech kit for £70 and an "OE quality" pump for £36 or a metal impeller Circoli pump for £26 at the moment, so I guess I could do it and save money - I do like to tinker, but again, there's other jobs I could do instead and I generally do my own servicing so that already saves money.

 

 

Just for reference, I'm not saying £399 seems cheap because I'm loaded (I'm not!), but I remember the Renault dealer quote for a scenic belt + pump being £880 and the independent bill coming to just over £500 for the same work.

Its an ok price.

If you have a trustworthy mechanic try buying a kit yourself and get them to fit it off the books so its vat free cash in hand.

Mine fitted pump and belt for 150. 75 for the genuine kit.

When I had my Cam-belt, auxiliary-belt, new water-pump and renewed pink G12 anti-freeze at an independent garage, it all came to about £350 in 2009.

This looks pretty good value and comes with two year Skoda warranty, doesn't include water pump but if you talked nicely to them they'd probably do it for little more than the cost of the pump as the whole thing is apart anyway. Did the £399 fitted you quoted above include the pump?

 

http://www.dmkeith.com/skoda/aftersales-offers/cambelt-offer

I had a mobile mechanic do cambelt aux belt water pump for £250 few weeks ago using gates parts

Interesting... yeah, it really doesn't sound bad at all (for a main dealer).  I have a local garage that I use generally for servicing my wife's car as I don't drive that often enough to notice if something doesn't feel quite right.  They don't do foreigners but I should get a price of them as a comparison at least.

 

I'm swaying back towards getting the Skoda dealer to do it now though as it does include the waterpump (£299 cambelt/£100 extra waterpump) and gets the Skoda 2 year warranty then and should include new coolant, though I will confirm they're not just recycling it.

 

@R1CH360 did that include the parts?  Gates stuff is always good quality, probably my preferred manufacturer.

I recently changed mine including water pump. Simple enough to do but when the car didn't start it got me stumped as everything was right. Turns out I had the tweak the cam sprocket a little. See skudmissile timing belt guide.

Does help to have VCDS to log group 4 to ensure timing is spot on.

Yeah that was all in and he came to me was quoted £315 at local garage and they just said it was motor factor parts guy on the phone couldn't tell me who

I was out at lunchtime today so bobbed in at the Skoda dealers first to see if their price was cheaper than the Skoda national one - I was first quoted £463 + vat!  He then looked a bit embarrassed when I said that was dearer than the price they were advertising, coughed and spluttered a bit and said of course they'd match that price if I'd seen it on the web.  Hmmm!  I'm not that surprised though.

 

Next tried the local garage where we have the MOT's done because they're spot on with those, quite strict and thorough.  £180 + vat using an SKF kit which I know are good quality one.

For that money, it's not even worth me doing it myself for the time it would take me so I booked it in for next week.

Does £180 include water pump?

It does yes, it's the full SKF kit and includes fresh coolant too (I checked!).

And I thought I got a bargain

I was out at lunchtime today so bobbed in at the Skoda dealers first to see if their price was cheaper than the Skoda national one - I was first quoted £463 + vat! He then looked a bit embarrassed when I said that was dearer than the price they were advertising, coughed and spluttered a bit and said of course they'd match that price if I'd seen it on the web. Hmmm! I'm not that surprised though.

Next tried the local garage where we have the MOT's done because they're spot on with those, quite strict and thorough. £180 + vat using an SKF kit which I know are good quality one.

For that money, it's not even worth me doing it myself for the time it would take me so I booked it in for next week.

That's mental. I think the parts alone are about £130.

I think it's just lucky timing, I don't know where they get their parts from but Eurocarparts for instance have the SKF kit on offer at the moment for £76 inc (RRP £177) and the water pump for £36 inc (RRP £81).

 

I guess they're around £80+vat for the parts (assuming no further trade discount) and 2.5 hours @ £40 p/h - no idea what their actual labour rates are but it does seem to stack up.

 

It's £216 in total with the VAT, if they don't break it, I'll be getting a quote for my wife's current scenic next...  I have a feeling that won't be anywhere near as cheap.