6 years and 40,000 miles and both front dampers were leaking - I was expecting a longer life from them.  I know we don't have the best roads but the car isn't ever anywhere near heavily loaded and not used for Rallying.

 

Is this about an average lifespan or was 2015 a poor year for front dampers?

 

It could be average if some last 2 years and some last 12 years.  Averages are just that

But the oldest Mk3's are 7 years old so how can we know yet.

 

?

Have you had the car from new and are the only driver?  or know how the car is driven when you are not in it?

 

Plenty Mk2 Fabia from 2008 will be on original dampers and Mk3's with higher miles.

 

Location, location, locations as in Speed Bumps and are there many and does the driver slow for them.

Yeah I used to know about averages, mean, medium, but I forget now can't even remember the third one there, and you make other good points about drivers and location.  We got the car with 10k-miles on it and no real idea of it's real history and use, since owning it for the last 5 years my wife is just about the only driver and she literally goes out of her way to avoid roads with speed humps and looks out for potholes.

 

But of course living in a second world nation with local multi-millionaires from surface-dressing contracts the roads can be a bit rough round here and some potholes make you wince as you hit them.  My wife doesn't drive over speed humps at speed but I'd go even slower as I'm used to driving a car with a track that is narrower than the speed restrictions humps so I'm used to going very slow over them, I even went up a tyre size (155/80) on my car to to give a bit more tyre 'rubber' to the suspension, despite having robust local sports dampers fitted, to spread the shocks and vibrations from the road surface, or lack of it.

 

With this thread I was more wondering if 2015 was a bad year for Fabia Mk3 front dampers for any reason and more importantly if replacement dampers fitted in 2021 will be as (potentially) short lived, I've no idea how old stock of dampers would be and there production dates.  Coming from the world of very ****-poor and crap classic car parts I wonder how much of this abysmal manufacturing attitude had made it through to modern car parts manufacture.

 

 

   

BRISKODA is a place where it is good to gauge how people are getting on with the cost of Service & Maintenance and the longevity of parts.

 

If it were true that people only go to complain or talk about failures and faults then there are not that many common ones with Mk3 Fabia yet.

They were first at Dealerships as Demonstrators late 2014 to early 2015. Then in the hands of private and fleet owners.

There are discontinued engines since launch with the 1.2 TSI and 1.4TDI and the introduction of 1.0TSI's and 1.0TSI's with GPF's.

 

The Hatch has had a short production run.  It does look like Mk3's are going to do rather well as a keeper for people that got one new or have bought a used one.

 

Battery life / longevity might be a recurring theme. 

Edited 1 October, 20214 yr by e-Roottoot

17 minutes ago, nta16 said:

I used to know about averages, mean, medium, but I forget now can't even remember the third one there

Mode - and then there's the Standard Deviations (sampled and population), quartiles, semi-interquartile mean...

Not having a new car since 2008 (which was a GM Vauxhall disaster but that's another matter) I was rather surprised to find how much the computers had taken over even by 2015 which is my main concern as you can't beat the programmers who normally don't get enough info to do their part of the job fully.

 

I've already panicked changed the car battery (too soon as a friend is still using the previous one) but this car needs to be reliable for my mental-health and blood pressure and my wife's work and social life.

 

Another point - Dealership said front brakes pads are 90% worn (10% remaining), I'm in awe of their eyesight and experience as this was, as far as I can tell, only from the free visual health check, more impressive is the 50% worn on the drum brakes, how do they do it!

 

If I borrow some neighbours callipers are there minimum figures for standard factory pads and discs thicknesses, or even displayed on some of the parts?

 

As usually the only luck we have with cars is bad (to very bad) I wanted to get the car well set for the future now whilst we have some disposable income as it will be diminishing and restricted in the future, I've changed battery, transmission oil, coolant to be done, cambelt (before reading discussions, but with our luck), even had the air-con service, brakes will obviously be looked and fluid is changed every two years - is there anything else I need to do or budget for?

 

30 minutes ago, KenONeill said:

Mode - and then there's the Standard Deviations (sampled and population), quartiles, semi-interquartile mean...

Mode yes, but if you held a gun to my head tomorrow I'd still have forgotten again. 

 

When did all this "-ile" come in, used to be percentage or percent, now it's "our child is in the top 5 percentile of boastful parents".  🙂  Perhaps I was just too lower demographic to be exposed to such words. 😜

 

 

 

In the depths of my memory I think I recall that +/- 1 standard deviation covers 95% of the sample size hence the phrase 95th percentile & that +/- 2 standard deviations is 99 or 99.5%, something like that, its all very hazy.

 

It was not from school but technical college. I used it a couple of times in my career, I can also recall using anthropomorphic (spelling?) data when designing car interiors, it was before CAD and we had these 2D scale model jointed plastic body templates for tracing the outlines of upper & lower 95th percentile man & womans head & feet on the controls or against the headlining with the drivers seat at the limits of its adjustment.

 

When I see Richard Hammond peering over the steering wheel of a supercar I often think of the sight lines that we used to draw across the steering wheel, bonnet, instrument binnacle etc, the closest that he could see the ground ahead of him would be on the horizon! That said from looking at all the same in car cameras of various presenters steering wheel heights have got much much higher in modern vehicles.

56 minutes ago, J.R. said:

In the depths of my memory I think I recall that +/- 1 standard deviation covers 95% of the sample size hence the phrase 95th percentile & that +/- 2 standard deviations is 99 or 99.5%, something like that, its all very hazy.

I'm not sure that's entirely right, are you prepared to bet your house on it.   😉

 

I'm not one for defending the over-vain, and previous sycophant to I-didn't-know-they-could-stack-it-that-high fellow senior presenter, but I think of the likes of Jackie Stewart, a shorter man than even I, showing James May how to drive a TVR Chim round a track without problems shows your buttocks can brush the kerbstones as you cross the road and still see some of the track or road ahead.  I have difficulty seeing and negotiating in lower cars, seats and longer bonnets but I'm not a good driver. 

 

At 5' 5" I have short legs and longer body so I need the Fabia's driver's seat near the pedals but on low(est) height setting and the steering wheel set high to see the dash. When I get in the driver's side I often hit my head even if the seat  is back because my wife at 5" (only) has the seat at its highest setting.

 

My wife has problems driving my car as her thighs, bellies and boobs all catch the 15.5" steering wheel, sometimes all at once, I can get my belly in as long as I don't want to turn my arms with the wheel too much, feeding thro' slows taking tight corners or bends.

 

Edited 1 October, 20214 yr by nta16

38 minutes ago, nta16 said:

I'm not sure that's entirely right, are you prepared to bet your house on it.   😉

No, not when I am already on a losing streak!

38 minutes ago, nta16 said:

 

 

 

 

My wife has problems driving my car as her thighs, bellies and boobs all catch the 15.5" steering wheel, sometimes all at once,

 

You could monetarise that with a Youtube channel or an OnlyFans page

2 hours ago, nta16 said:

how do they do it!

I'm not sure, but I suggest you take a can of bull$h!t repellent the next time you visit the dealership, and spray liberally as soon as anyone mentions "$component N% worn".

I was brained several times getting into the drivers seat of my neighbours Octavia that was identical to mine, he is the same height as me and the seat was not forward so it took me a long time to work out what the deal was, his wife who bullies him terribly is a PORG (Tom Sharpe term) and he has to leave the seat on its highest setting all the time for the rare occasions she does drive, she pushes the seat forward but moans like hell about having to raise it.

 

My Yeti is uncomfortable to rest your arm on the door top, it is too high but probably like most newer vehicles, on a long run I raised the seat to maximum and my arm was comfortable, the driving height and view were also fine but I brained myself when I got back in.

45 minutes ago, nta16 said:

I'm not sure that's entirely right, are you prepared to bet your house on it

If @J.R. is betting his house against mine, when do I get the title deeds? A percentage is the number of $item at that point in the range of values (within +/- half the granularity of measurement. A percentile is an indication of the number of $item that lie between a percentage value and the upper of lower bound of the range.

Your obsessive comportment belies your declaration earlier today that you were going to block me before you got yourself into trouble.

3 hours ago, J.R. said:

You could monetarise that with a Youtube channel or an OnlyFans page

I'd have to do a H&S assessment first as the steering wheel has spokes with reducing slots.

 

3 hours ago, J.R. said:

I was brained several times getting into the drivers seat of my neighbours Octavia that was identical to mine,

So I'm not the only one with a brain that's working against its body.  Perhaps the repeated blows makes it more inevitable each time.

 

C'mon now neither of you have it right.  😂

 

Let it go between yourselves or at least load in a lot more humour to give the rest of us a laugh.

 

I knew that I didn't have it right, I said it was a hazy recollection and something like......................

 

I just retain the important basics, if I want to design something to accomodate the maximum amount of people (or whatever) using +/- 1 standard deviation from the arithmetic mean value will cover 95% of the population/sample group without requiring a lot of adjustment/compromise but to get that to 99% (ish, as I can't recall the exact figure) means a lot more adjustment to cater for very few individuals,

 

Airline seat width & pitch etc are calculated in this manner, over the decades the size & weight of the upper 95th percentile limit has risen significantly.

49 minutes ago, nta16 said:

C'mon now neither of you have it right.  😂

As if I'd know !

 

But the terminology application to current context doesn't seem right to me, but all explanations are beyond my comprehension, possibly due to head injuries with wrongly  negotiating entrance to driver's seat through driver's door aperture - or I might have been a bit maths thick before that but I can't remember, possibly due to  . . . and my memory isn't great either.   

I've just got to say, there's a hell of a lot of mathematics going on here that I'm struggling to get my head around! 

Yes but nothing with regards to millimetre thickness of front brake pads and discs  -  yet.  🙂

 

8 hours ago, nta16 said:

If I borrow some neighbours callipers are there minimum figures for standard factory pads and discs thicknesses, or even displayed on some of the parts?

Though this might have been lost among my ramblings (but surely not(?)).

11 hours ago, nta16 said:

millimetre thickness of front brake pads and discs

Usually about 2mm or 1/8" for front pads; discs are a variable.

3 x 8 = 24 so I'll call it 3mm for pads as I'd struggle to see 2mm.

 

The old rear drums on my car had the figures cast into them which I thought a great idea.