Hello, I thought I would introduce myself as I bought my Octavia about 4 months ago and have been lucking in the background. I have gained much knowledge from the posters on this forum and thought it would be time to write up some of my mods in case it’s of any use to anybody reading.

 

My Car

 

2013 Silver Octavia, 65,000 miles, 1.6 CR TDI. It wasn't a car I ever thought I would own but when I was in the market for a sub £8k car a few months back I came across this beauty at my local Skoda dealer for £7500 and thought that even though it wasn't my kind of car the price was too good to resist. The car had just arrived at the dealers and was awaiting preparation and wasn’t priced up yet or on the website but I asked about it and the dealer said it would go on sale for £7500. I went to look at a few other cars but none were a patch on the Octavia, it was pretty much mint, with no rattles and drove and felt from the inside like a brand new car. I came back at the end of the day to buy it and the dealer wasn’t over excited as apparently whoever had given it the price had entered it as a late mk2 so the price was wrong but to their credit they honoured the quoted price and I walked away with my new car at an absolute steal. When I got home I searched the internet because I thought it was a sales pitch but autotrader had comparable private sale cars at at least 2k more. So for mine to be a 1 owner approved Skoda car with approved warranty, I could see he was telling the truth about the pricing mix up and I was one happy boy.

 

The loved the car but it had some things that needed doing hence the work done below. The aim with this car is to keep it until it dies but keep it as mint as possible on the lowest budget.

 

Stone chips

 

By the time I picked it up the dealer had done the preparation for it and got rid of most of the road rash but I wasn’t fully happy as I like my cars perfect. I bought some touch-up paint from eBay for about £5 and sorted out the bigger chips. The process was quite time consuming as I filled each chip then wet sanded it flat and finished with a polishing compound to restore the shine. Took a while for each chip but the result was 99% perfect. There were still a few really small chips over the bonnet, when I say a few I mean probably 30. I decided to try the more expensive Dr. Stone chip product as this promised faster and easier results. I wasn’t entirely happy with the results TBH, yeah it was quicker and easier but the results were certainly not as good as the cheap eBay paint and elbow grease method. But I got it done and now from 2 feet away the bonnet looks mint so I considered this job done and moved onto the next task.

 

Paint Prep

 

Now I moved onto the paintwork, to the normal eye the car was mint but to my eye I could see lots of minor scratching and swirl marks with a few deeper scratches in places. Spent the whole weekend on getting it sorted for a protecting coating I had sat in the garage that I bought for my last car. I wet sanded out the deeper scratches and then went over the whole car with a 2 stage machine polish. With it being a silver the car the results were not mirror like but it was 100% better than it was before. I intended now to apply the Gtec coatings but I could see some rain on the forecast so decided against it and just topped it with a coat of spray wax and waited it out until I had the right conditions for the Gtec application.

 

Gtec Crystal serum and Exo v2

 

I have these two sat in my garage unused from my last car. They are dead easy to apply but damn hard to get the right weather conditions if you live in the pennines with no garage cover. The problem is that if you get any water whatsoever on the Crystal Serum while it is curing it will be destroyed and the only way to rectify this would be to wet sand the entire car. I waited it out and after 3 weeks I got the window on weather I needed to take it on. The car had already been prepped but was now very dirty so I took great care to wash it down without causing any marks, I then clay barred the paint and gave it a good wipe down with panel wipe. I then applied the coat of Crystal Serum and 2x coats of Evo v2 without issue and crossed my fingers it wouldn’t rain. Luckily it didn’t and the result is amazing. The car has had a fully waxed type appearance for the last couple of months and the beading, even now is amazing.

 

Lighting

 

My last car had super bright lights and it was a shock to go back to halogen. I felt like I couldn’t see at night. I had a look at upgrading to H.I.Ds. I know that fitting HID bulbs to a reflector housing is a no-no but had seen a set supposedly designed to work in my housings. I thought I would give them a try. The results are pretty good, the light cast is perfect and I can once again see at night. I fully tested the cut off lines and they are pretty good too so shouldn’t be blinding oncoming traffic. They have been on the car for a few months now and not had anybody flash me at night and they seem to do the job. I doubt they will pass the MOT test but it takes me 5 mins to swap back to the old bulbs so I will do that before testing.

 

Sound deadening the doors

 

I had a roll of pretty expensive self-adhesive rubber floor underlay in the garage that I have never been able to bring myself to throw away as I knew I would find a use for it one day. Well I was bored one weekend so decided to put it inside the doors. The product is called instalay and it’s an underlay designed to go under wood flooring to reduce sound. It took me about two hours to do the driver’s door and tbh I just gave up as I had my doubts it would do anything anyway. That was until I drove the car the next day. As I was driving down the road I could really notice the difference. The sound of cars coming the opposite side of the road could be heard in the car but the driver’s door was near silent. It really was remarkable, it sounded like the cars were passing me on the passenger side as that was where the noise was coming from. I then knew I had to finish the job. It took about another 4 hours to do the other 3 doors and the result is well worth it. I have loads left on the roll so will do the boot, under rear seat and maybe floors one day when I can be bothered.

 

Remap + K&N filter panel

 

My last two daily drivers each had over 500bhp so driving this Octavia is a little bit of a different experience to driving those. Overall I was happy with the engine and surprised a little 1.6 tdi could cope so well but it was a little annoying in the fact it seemed to need to be going over 1500rpm to pull smoothly. It lacked the flexibility low down of some of my previous 2.0 tdi vag cars I have owned which could pretty much roll around all day at idle. I wasn’t really looking for more power as this car is never going to be fast but was more interested if I could find a little more smoothness low down. I took the plunge on a Bluefin remap with came with a free filter from Demon Tweaks. Good news! The car now has gained some more low down flexibility and will pull smoothly and cleanly from about 1250 rpm, doesn’t sound much of a change but believe me it has made a world of difference to the way the car drives in daily commuting traffic. It does feel like it has the 2.0 lump in there now. Power wise it should be making about 150bhp. I have only put my foot down in it a few times as this is my rolling to work car but have been pretty surprised when I did floor it. It feels as quick as my old mk6 Golf GTD but this 1.6 Octavia is a light car so now has the same power to weight as the GTD did so that kind of makes sense.

 

Tyres

 

Swapped the continental premium contact tyres for some Michelin Cross Climates. It’s too early to give a decent review but so far it seems like a great tyre.

 

This Weekends jobs (weather permitting)

 

Sort the stereo out - The standard stereo is ok but has no volume to its bass. The plan is to piggyback into the stock audio and run an under seat sub. I’m hoping that by relieving the stock audio of its bass duties it will perform better with the treble and mid. Don’t know if this will improve things. I will report back when done. If it works it will be a nice cheap upgrade.

 

Try fit some new seats – I have some seats in my garage from a 2015 Audi A3 sport I want to try fit. They are the same as the S3 seats but in cloth, 100x better that the base spec seats I have in now. I have wired up the front seat connectors so they will go in but have no idea if the rears will fit. They look like they will so will give it a shot as soon as I can.

 

Sorry for the wall of text but I have gained lots of knowledge from this forum so if I can pass anything that helps others ill be happy.

I can move this to the build section if you wish?

I can move this to the build section if you wish?

 

Its not really going to be a build, once I have the stereo and seats sorted I will have fixed all the shortcomings its has and will try to leave it alone