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Fabia vRS (MKI) Project


peterkelty

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Morning all,

 

As some of you may have seen on one of the facebook pages recently we recently had the opportunity to purchase a 2004 Fabia vRS with only 91k on the clock, with a view to restoring it back to how it should look as it had been fairly badly neglected by its only previous owner.

 

I will try and keep this up-to-date when work gets done, however we've had the car a good few weeks now and very little has been achieved so far due to work commitments, plenty money spent on parts though, its just trying to find the time to fit them! 

 

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Progress so far is basically much of the interior stripped out for a deep clean (as when we got hold of it, it looked as if it had never been cleaned in its 13 year life) as well as to aid in repairing the drivers seat which hasn't aged too well at all.

 

The main issue with the car is an intermittent overheating issue, which I believe (and hoping) is caused by the dodgy plastic impellers that were apparently fitted to the water pumps on these engines, so hopefully will be sorted by new water pump / timing belt kit, its overdue to be changed anyway so 2 birds with one stone as they say, other than that just lots of little issues like window mechanisms, door locks etc... bodywork needs a bit of attention but nothing major.

 

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Also space in the garage is getting less and less as the pile of parts gets bigger and bigger, theres more in the house too! :D

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Not much else to tell for now, waiting really to get timing belt and water pump done as a priority.

 

Peter.

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  • 11 months later...

Well here we are almost exactly a year on.. I had intended to post regularly on here with progress but, as somewhat of a cliche with project cars, its taken considerably longer than anticipated to get anywhere with it, everytime one problem was sorted it unearthed another but we finally got a clean sheet mot on it yesterday after nearly 2 years since it passed its last one. Its had its timing belt and water pump which has as we thought cured the overheating issue, mechanically its also had an ABS sensor, front caliper, and its had the floor pan welded up round the handbrake mounting point as it would appear someone got a bit trigger happy with it, for which we had to remove the entire interior and carpet. Also had to completely re-build the front doors with new electric window mechanisms and door lock units as they were all shot windows didnt work and doors didnt stay shut, managed to also find a way to bolt the inner aluminium door card back on instead of using the absolutely stupid idea Skoda had of rivets??? What were they thinking? 

 

We still have a long list of jobs to do including changing the horribly misted up front headlights, rear wiper motor, basically the entire interior to go back in, and the rear doors need looking at as the manual window winders still dont work. Followed by some attention to the bodywork where it needs a few areas touching up and a good polish, the list does go on...

 

As for the original seats theyre in a pretty bad way I did semi repair the drivers seat with a couple of patches to get it to the stage it was useable but they really are past their best so we will hopefully be in the market for a full set of mk2 fabia seats soon, preferable out of a vrs but would settle for possibly monte carlo ones if the price was right so if anyone knows of anything going reasonably priced let me know!

 

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  • 2 months later...

So our first drive out didn't go too well, first proper journey out on the road having got it fully legal and about 3 or 4 miles in there was a bang, loss of power and lots and lots of smoke.. turned out to be the lower intercooler pipe had blown off, fortunately, so bodged that with some cable ties to hold it on and its as good as new, or sort of!

 

Now have a lovely new interior fitted from a MK2 vRS, what a difference it has made, its changed the whole feel of the cabin, the old ones are actually scrap they were in such a poor condition, fitted a new carpet off a breaker as well while we were at it as the old one was badly worn through in the drivers footwell, also complete with some lovely green lighting in the interior roof lights and front footwells! :D

 

Also now have our custom made headlights fitted from Modified Lights UK, can't recommend them enough, they are absulutely fantastic and change the whole look of the car, it looks new, clean and fresh.. compared to the horribly misted up old original headlights, that had broken clips on them, and I absolutely love the look of the angel eyes in the dark.

 

When we got the car it had 4 legal tyres, but of cheap budget brands (some of which I couldn't even pronounce) and none of them matched, so its been fitted with Continental Contisport Contact 5's all round which has made a huge difference to the way the car feels on the road, although with its current suspension set up, some cheapo coil overs its still riding far too hard to next thing will be swapping that out for a decent set of lowering springs and shocks.

 

 

 

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Thanks, yeah I'm pretty happy with the interior!

 

The cable ties are just a temporary measure, will probably just replace the pipes at some point, i did think about screws but I don't want to create any air leaks

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