2008 Fabia 2 SE- running journal

[heners54]

Hi all,

 

I've been watching the forum for a while now since owning my Fabia in June 2012, but haven't properly set up a running journal for the Fabia on here. I moved to Skoda from Vauxhall; a brand most of my family have bought repeatedly for many years. Having had a 2002 Corsa 1.0 to bear the brunt of my learning and 2 years overall service, I needed something that wouldn't throw £100-300 bills every few months.

 

That lead to me looking through various models, and long story short I found my Fabia, which ticked the boxes for what I need at the moment. I've copied and pasted my most recent update from Pistonheads as a summary of the first year of ownership starting June 2012, and will add my latest update to bring it up to speed.

 

Just a bit of an update, since I have now has the car over a year and have covered just over 11K miles in it.

It hasn't really needed much maintenance from me, I've added some coolant (literally as smidge) as it seems to settle a little below half way, though now I'm happy it doesn't go any lower I think it will be left alone. It's used about 300ml of oil over 10K miles and averaged 40.2MPG  . (The oil use is accounted for in one particular trip, no fault of the car and hasn't needed topping up since.)

 

It went for it's service and MOT mid June and passed with no advisories, although it requires some age related work to be inline with the skoda health check: brake fluid change and rear drum rebuild, so the service cost was a fair bit more than I had expected! Although it looks like it should be fairly cheap next year all remaining well.

Finally got round to taking some pics with the car properly clean and waxed, with the edition of a large PH smiley:

|http://thumbsnap.com/W5ENVplk
|http://thumbsnap.com/B6dN8kv7
|http://thumbsnap.com/YImGPuyx
|http://thumbsnap.com/PtvZJ74o
|http://thumbsnap.com/PYO1kD52
|http://thumbsnap.com/3r0K0qVH
|http://thumbsnap.com/hrgSHGkQ

 

The only real gripes I've had with the car is that the CD player broke, swallowing my disk; It's currently at skoda being repaired/my disk being recovered, and it has meant I could upgrade the head unit to a Kenwood Bluetooth one;

|http://thumbsnap.com/tukijDj9

Overall it is better and IMO looks pretty OEM+, although the radio signal is not as good. Luckily I'm mainly using CD's and my Ipod so this doesn't bother me. The other issue was mouldy smelling air conditioning, which I used an air con bomb on a few months ago, only for it to return this week. This time I did the job properly; replacing the cabin filter which looked and more importantly smelt like the original :vomit:

|http://thumbsnap.com/2uJnofGB

 

After the new filter was fitted and another air con treatment used all is well! Just in time to cart a shed load of holiday gear and 3 of the family on holiday to the Isle Of Wight. Will try and get some picture of the car in situ this year 

Overall I'm growing more chuffed with the car, it fails to let me down in any aspect of my current requirements; space, refinement, image, reliability and I give it a second look every time I pull up at home, and curse at every mark it picks up. Really like the thing and just hope it keeps going and looking as nice as it is now 

 

thanks for reading!

 

Henry

 

[heners54]

Thought as it's the new year this would be a good time to do a bit of an update:

Overall I'm pleased with how the car is running at the moment; We're now on 35607 or there about, with the car driving as well as ever. The engine feels much more punchy than when I got it on 20k even. Couple of things to note though, the battery died extremely suddenly around October, leaving the thing stranded on the drive and me walking and bussing my way to ECP to pick up a Bosch silver, and 45 mins scraping my knuckles removing the ruddy casing that surrounds the battery and plonking the new one in. Not too bad for 5 years on the original as Fabia's seem to be hard on their batteries when in cold weather with some short journeys. 

I've swapped the tyres front to back to even the wear out (it was frosty today so I'm already dead of course), but this has introduced some wheel wobble that unfortunately I'm pretty sure relates to a wheel that had been knocked and repaired when I got the car (no centre cap and scrape on the related part of the bumper when I first viewed gave the prang away); hadn't been an issue as it was on the back to this point. It's minor and can't be bothered to mess with wheels at the moment; none of them are perfect and may pick up another set if I feel inclined any time in the future. 

Other niggles have been the climatic getting noisy, don't know if it's the compressor clutch (most likely), the cold weather or low fluid but it's on the ignore list, at least till the spring/summer when it's warm and either stops or annoys me more; don't fancy throwing hundreds at it during the depths of winter when it's on for a few minutes to demist only. Also been chasing creaks and rattles round the car with the screwdriver set and it seems quieter as of late, again possibly worse during the weather the same as last year. 

In brighter news I got a karcher and foam lance for Chrimbo as well as my first clay bar set; the bottom half of the car felt textured and had never polished out, but I couldn't justify to myself spending £20 on a bar of clay, turns out the stuff works, and with a bit of touch up and attention the paintwork in general it's the best it's ever looked!

Can see me wanting to spend some money messing with foam, but this is good enough for the time being



And the state of the clay after removing 5 years of gritty crud: 



The finished product










Still love the car, it is reliable and other than tyres, my radio, a battery and a main dealer major service it's cost me nothing, and with my initial aim of keeping it well maintained, but not costing the earth (worked it out ages ago and the cost per mile was pleasing considering the first year of insurance), I think it's doing ok! As long as the little Fabia is reliable then it's here to stay, now accompanied by mums Mk2 Octavia (in the pics above) and the old man picked up his Mk3 Octavia about a month ago now (both impressed with mine enough to leave Vauxhall, previously long term customers). Loving the brand and enjoy milling around on Briskoda, really can't see the car leaving unless there's unexpected issues, so watch this space!

Edited 2 January, 2014 by heners54

[heners54]

So the car had it's 40k service and an MOT last week, still keeping it within the main dealer network for the time being. No major issues, although there was an advisory for slight play in the console bushes, which seems to be very common at this sort of mileage on Fabias; I don't think I'll be paying their prices for replacements though! I planned on doing a suspension refresh at 50k, and might wait and see if it makes it till then and have our local mechanic do a job lot on the bushes. 

 

Had the air con regassed, which vastly improved the noises the system was making; a nice cheap fix compared to what I had expected. No new concerns really, other than when reading through the service notes it states 15w-40 oil, not 5w-30, and this was the same for the service last year! Hopefully just lazy admin, the car seems to be running spot on, but I guess I'll never know if they used the right stuff either time. 

 

Change in circumstances means I might be commuting around the Leicester and Loughborough area to work, meaning a 40-80 mile round trip at least once a week, and possibly that sort of mileage everyday come next year, so my little quips(sp) at doing 100k in the little fabia don't seem as far fetched!