After 12 years and 274'000km of driving I said goodbye to Fabia- car was sold last week.

 

Car proved itself as very reliable and never let me and my family in side of road, asking for help. Never.

It was Mk1 Fabia Ambiente, produced in 01/2007, and purchased it as new- 1.4L 16V BBZ 74kW petrol engine, manual gearbox GRY, w/o AC (had no extra 900 EUR for AC when configurated car :-/

All maintenance and repairs was done by myself.

 

ENGINE- very good. From expensive parts only EGR valve, pre-cat lambda sensor, alternator, battery, both engine mounts and 1 coil pack was replaced. Fuel (98.) consumption still was 5.7-6.0L/100km on highway. Oil consumption last years- 5mm drop from MAX between oil change every 15'000km/9months. Only downside of this engine is quite little torque- need to keep it on high RPM. Oil leakages? This year camshaft seal was replaced and oil cap & filler inlet seals at every 2nd...3rd oil change.- that's all.

GEARBOX- very good. Replaced right driveshaft seal, resetted gear linkage and installed PU bush for dogbone. Have to say that combination of engine and this gearbox is perfect.

ELECTRIC- perfect. Almost no annoying electrical issues through whole of car (engine, lights, wipers, heating etc).

SUSPENSION- very good. Replaced rear shock absorbers, front springs, ARB bushes (every few years) and front control arm's rear/big bushes (only once). All 4 wheel bearings replaced. For front Gen2 bearings made special tool, similar to VAG tool.

STEERING- very good. Would say "perfect" but sometimes (driving under angle against bump) there was feeling about rack play a bit'. All steering and suspension ball pivots still were original.

BRAKES:

Front discs with FSIII calipers- perfect (best construction I've ever seen, zero problems).

Rear drums- all is fine before you touch something. Seized handbrake lever (attached to shoe with rivet), cylinders (which starts to leak when you touch them), uneven handbrake (because wedges are in different depths and "manual" adjustment of wedges doesn't help)... Finally, at every rear brake job tried to replace all stuff involved and then everything was fine for few years. From lot of info from forums & personal experience I decided that that drum system is very sensitive to similar dimensions for all parts in both sides. I had no luck with TRW full drum brake set (all parts were new but handbrake was very uneven & wheel bolts touched push rod). But later installed cheapest ABE full drum brake set- and there dimensions of every part were perfect=similar and brakes- fine.

BODY- 3 of 4 door cards re-sealed, front/left window linkage replaced, rust somewhere on outer panels- but bottom and arches of car were almost without rust. Middle silencer and flexi pipe replaced.

 

I'd like to say big THANK YOU to all forum members which helped me to sort some Fabia's problems.

 

Indars

P.S.

Few months ago purchased Škoda again- but now it's Octavia Mk3 2.0TDI hatch, manual gearbox, 1st reg. 05/2017, 60'000km on clock😉

Lovely Octy! Enjoy it