Picked up a skoda fabia 1.4 mpi a couple of weeks ago. 53000 miles, £400 due to overheating problem.

 

drove it home, stopping every mile to top up the water. water pump was leaking like crazy. Bought a new waterpump for £36 and fitted it over 2 evenings after work.

 

Still wouldnt hold water and the oil was milky. Off came the head, nice crack in it. Over to the scrapyard in my trusty rover and bought a head off a felicia 1.3mpi for £40 and hoped to lucifer it would fit.

 

£17 worth of head gasket, a ghetto head skim and 2 hours later and I had replaced my first head ever

head gasket. Lucky these engines are so easy to work on being pushrod.

 

Only issues to fix now are dodgy central locking on drivers door and that stupid bloody power steering fault making lights flicker (removed fuse and it went away so deffo that)

 

 

Hope I can be of use to you guys on here although this is my first skoda.

Hello H 

 

Sounds like you got a bargain and are making good progress  :clap:

 

I'm curious about what a 'ghetto head skim' is - although wonder if I perhaps shouldn't ask!

 

Gaz

Nice hammerong! And welcome!

Grats on getting one at that price. I'm currently getting my coolant light on, need to top up coolant regular. It's going for MOT on Tuesday, I already have the thermostat & housing, so hopefully if I replace that, the water pump, and get the radiator checked, my coolant problems will be over. HG is fine so far, touch wood.

Good job my good friend is the MOT tester

I also bought a new timing chain £37 as the car has done almost 100,000 miles and I don't think it has been changed EVER.

So I might get him to throw that in while he MOT'S

A car with 2 previous owners, both women, sounds like a car that has been drove till it broke down, recovered to their local garage, and then charged the owners £600 for changing a fuse.

Welcome.

Hi and welcome aboard.

Hi & welcome

 

I'm curious about what a 'ghetto head skim' is - although wonder if I perhaps shouldn't ask!

 

Gaz

 

Basically the second hand head had no warpage but to get a good gasket seal I had to smooth everything down so with a black and decker mouse and some superfine paper I lightly tickled the whole surface into a shine.

 

Ive done it in the past with no issues but I would always recommend a proper skim, i just didnt have the time to get that done.

Basically the second hand head had no warpage but to get a good gasket seal I had to smooth everything down so with a black and decker mouse and some superfine paper I lightly tickled the whole surface into a shine.

 

Ive done it in the past (on single cylinder motorbikes) with no issues but I would always recommend a proper skim, i just didnt have the time to get that done.

Aha - I've done similar with my Dad about 30 years ago when I popped the HG on a FIAT. Dad looked at it and told me it was 'bent as a banana' (looked fine to me!) and we set about it with a mix of abrasive papers and compounds, his feeler gauges and engineer's block.  Dad was an engineer for Packard in the 1950's so was quite hands-on with low tech solutions.  Engine was fab afterwards, if only FIAT didn't build chassis' out of battleships they'd dragged out of the Med!  :think:

 

Gaz

Welcome  :beer: