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Lofty's Sprint Yellow Fabia vRS Mk1 - "Project Daffodil"


Lofty

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About time I started to document the changes that have happened to my Fabia vRS in the last few years..

Back in 2003 I was working for Skoda and had the chance to run the then new Mk1 Fabia vRS as my company car when they were launched. I had a fair few of them with various option on and fondly remember the punchy nature of the car, the frugal nature of the unstressed PD130 power train and the rarity on the roads.

Fast forward 12 years and I'm now in a position to replace a rather crusty Peugeot 206 GTi 180 that I'd been using for high days and holidays with something different that could still see the occasional trackday, and be a willing B road car when required. At this point I'm still in the motor trade so the new toy would be a garage queen most of the time, and be a hobby for me to indulge in.

I was quite specific in what I wanted in the Fabia, it had got to be Yellow, and more importantly it had to be the later (2006 onwards) brighter Sprint Yellow as I preferred that over the earlier more pastel like Lemon yellow. Downside was there were not many sold in the later brighter colour as the SE models were out at the time and they were easily more popular...

Why Yellow? Why not, I drive very nice but very grown up cars every day so wanted something a bit in your face and obvious... odd for a 40 something bloke but hey ho....

I looked at a few utter turds in the process and finally stumbled across a vague badly photographed trade advert for one on the Autotrader "oop north". From the add I could see it had a sunroof, but there were no mentions of the Xenons, or heated seats that I could see in the pictures. One phone call later and myself and my car geek sidekick are heading north to pick it up.

Quite a reasonable if old fashioned used car garage, when I got there I noticed it had in addition to the Electric Sunroof and Xenons, that it also had ESP and side airbags.... on the downside it had a swimming pool in the rear footwells and the rear brakes were about dead. Cue some hard bartering and I drove away, happy with my purchase..

Pics from the Autotrader advert..

 


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The car was originally a company car for Hitachi Capital fleet and still had their rear number plate on, it had done 80k in the first four years of its life down south and had got a full Skoda FSH with it, One private owner and continued history from then until 90k. It was showing 99k when I bought it so was rapidly approaching it's 100k birthday.

First pictures when I got it home..

 






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The more eagle eyed amongst you will notice the rear door cards missing in the last pic, yes, first job on day one was to reseal the rear doors with plumbers gold and dry the rear carpets out.

The car was at this point utterly and totally standard, due a 100k service, needing rear brakes, a couple of tyres and the wheels refurbing.. being a fussy old bugger means if its worth doing it's worth doing right.

The next few weeks saw very little driving but an awful lot of driveway fettling.

I drew up a list of items to replace upgrade in one go, sounds daunting but sometimes getting stuck in is the only way.

The car would be used for trackdays and European holidays so braking and suspension upgrades would be necessary and why replace with standard if QUALITY performance parts could be utilised. No cheap upgrades here.

So, suspension wise the following were purchased (all new.... ouch)

Bilstein B8 Dampers front and rear

Eibach 30mm Pro-Sport lowering Springs

Genuine Drop Links

Gen Top mounts and bearings

Gen Bottom Ball joints

Gen front damper dust bellows

Gen rear top mounts

Gen rear bump stops

I sourced a good used Jabba RARB and sent that off for powdercoating.

Braking wise the 312mm conversion was the most obvious upgrade so I sourced a set of low mileage Octavia mk1 VRS front calipers, got a new pair of genuine VW 312 front discs and a set of OMP road and sport pads which I have used for many years with good results.

The rears were treated to a new pair of Genuine skoda green rear calipers, new VW 232mm rear discs and gen skoda pads.

While the car was living its life on 4 axle stands the wheels were taken to City Powder coaters in Birmingham for a full refurb in Light Gunmetal, and a set of new 205/45/16 Hankook V12 Evo2 tyres fitted.

I had also bought new genuine alloy centre caps and a complete set of wheel nut covers in black from TPS.

End result after a few weekends of skinned knuckles and swearing..

 

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My private number plate had also found its way on by this point.

More to follow... mostly intense detailing and really getting into the car to get it looking its best.

Edited by Lofty
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The car drove ace, handling was tremendously improved, ride quality was spot on and it wasn't too low and chavvy!!

 

A thorough seats out detailing left the interior looking as close to new as I could get.. (running my own detailing business in the past helps occasionally LOL)

 

To liven up the interior and to add some quality to the touch points, I decided to enlist the help of Jack at Royal Steering Wheels down in Aylesbury to retrim the following in Black Alcantara with Black Stitching.

 

Steering Wheel

Handbrake Lever

Gear Knob

Gear lever gaitor.

 

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Awesome feel, fit and finish. The plastic gear lever insert was replaced with new and the whole car feels much nicer than the dated perforated leather that I hated.

 

I also fitted full set of Interior LED bulbs

 

The front and rear Skoda badges were looking past their best..

 

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so removed..

 

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Paintwork was cleaned and machine polished to clean back to as new then...

 

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Much better!

 

The quest for more performance was never going to be far away, so the obligatory Miltek exhaust system and decat was sourced and fitted, but only once I had the twin tailpipes coated in black..

 

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Edited by Lofty
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Before I even attempted any "tuning" the basics have to be right so, I bought an EGR cooler delete pipe from Darkside, and removed the EGR cooler completely, I also stripped of the inlet manifold, acid soaked it in the parts acid bath at work and painted and zinc plated the component parts before refitting with new gaskets etc. The EGR was actually spotless inside, testament to the service history I imagine

 

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The car was then remapped by P-Torque in Wombourne, made a healthy 183bhp on the rollers, was 151bhp out of the box (BLT + Miltek), and drove ace, was so pleased with it!

 

I did a trackday at Donington Park and hit the wall (not literally) of heat soak on the standard side mount intercooler. Would do nor more than 10 mins before dropping into limp mode due to intake temperatures, so next job was a Forge front mount..

 

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No pics of this but I had it all painted satin black with black hard pipes and black silicon hoses, even bought black hose clamps - stealth FTW

 

Ran much better on track with this set up, but like most things is 183bhp ever enough.....

 

Still went on a weeks European trip and did the usual two day trackday with RMA..

 

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Then had the obligatory day at the Nurburgring.. The Golf and Clio are my two mates cars..

 

 

Edited by Lofty
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Not much else to report, this winters project was an engine bay refresh, stripped it all out apart from the major mechanicals, powder coated loads, painted loads, zinc plated loads, new radiator and new air con rad went in for good measure..

 

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Finally a bit of Hidden Power repping as they call it...

 


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Not sure what the next jobs will be... Recaro CS front seats (retaining the side airbags and heating) and rear seat retrim MAY happen....

Edited by Lofty
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Love it! My favourite mk1 on the forum! How much was the ap brake kit if you dont mind me asking? Was it an off the shelf job including the brackets?

 

It's the unwritten rule amongst my mates etc, everything is £25 if the women ask LOL

 

It was £1400, the same kit essentially as for a Mk4 Golf 1.8T or Audi A3 1.8T, nothing is listed officially for the Skoda Fabia so we improvised

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Phenomenal! Loving the stealthy FMIC install especially.

Cheers folks. I'm much happier with the subtle things that it takes fellow geeks a while to spot, hence not having a cavernous hole in the front bumper filled with chicken wire...

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Great work.

Nice to see some other older users having fun in the Fabia. I'm in my 30's and was worried i was getting too old for a modified hatchback

I think you get more adept at doing the subtle things as you get older, you're certainly never too old to drive anything you want to!

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