Greetings all,

My missus and I have just bought an 01/51 Fabia 1.4 16v Comfort hatchback (manual gearbox). 24k miles, full Skoda history (although due a service).

This was a private sale and when we test-drove the car last weekend I noticed the 'check engine' light was on, although the car's driveability didn't seem to be affected (revved freely, fuel economy on the trip computer was indicating 42mpg average over an A/B-road route). I stipulated that this should be sorted before we picked up the car.

Upon collecting the car yesterday, the previous owner handed me an invoice from his local Skoda dealer for

Best way to diagnose the check engine light is to find someone on here near you with VAG-COM. That will show you the error message that was logged when the fault occurred and then one of the techies on here should be able to tell you what they'd change to fix it. Always good going into a dealership armed with the right questions

Chris

Chris,

Thanks for the top tip. Rang my local garage (independent) and they had a VAG-COM machine. Hooked the car up this afternoon and no faults raised, so light was reset. Could have been where I was cleaning the engine over the weekend perhaps, and rinsed something I shouldn't have? (at least with 'normal' non-plastic covered engines you can see where all the fragile electrics are...)

Incidentally, I'm well narked with the Skoda dealer (no names mentioned). When my girlfriend rang up to discuss the fault, they said that they wouldn't touch it as she wasn't the person who booked the car in originally - despite the fact it had clearly only been 2 days and 200 miles since the repair - and that 'you shouldn't have the invoice anyway'. WTF??? They won't be getting my business that's for sure, even though their labour rate is really low for a main dealer...

Richard