It could be interesting or useful to know if the cam belt had ended up getting contaminated with engine oil - or not, maybe ask to see the removed parts or request that they get returned to you.

 

I think the the best that you will get by complaining officially to Skoda UK who are the importers of these cars into UK, will be a derisory offer which with the conditions it comes with will leave you further out of pocket than you will end up just leaving things to get sorted as you have begun - or most likely a sad letter saying that they are sorry that you have feel hard done to and am sure that you will find your next Skoda car exceeds your expectations, getting that crap would hurt!

 

But officially complaining to Skoda might be therapeutic, at least for a moment or so. 

40 minutes ago, rum4mo said:

maybe ask to see the removed parts or request that they get returned to you.

 

Many garages have a special bin of worn or damaged parts to be produced when their bluff is called, they are also produced when a vehicle is stripped down for a job to inflate the bill saying "when we dismantled it we found this, you will need a new one.............."

 

The only way to be sure is to do your own work or UV mark the parts but by then you would be looking at them anyway.

 

I used a friends ramp to replace the clutch on my DOHC Sierra, it always had a rattle unless you rode the clutch, I thought release bearing but on stripdown we saw that the input shaft alloy spigot that the bearing slid on was worn, I bought a new one & it simply screwed onto the front face of the box with an O ring seal.

 

On putting the old one in my pals scrap bin for alloy parts (to be weighed in when full) he said absolutely not, give that to me, whenever I have a clutch to do with that gearbox presenting that part to the customer that will give me an extra £95 every time.

I wonder just how many VW Independents or even main dealers have the worn parts for a Euro 6 1.2 TSI sitting available.

 

If there are going to be issues with 8 year old cars then this is where we might here about more of them. 

I've just had a phone call re our Fabia and it wasn't good news. The short story is that we need a replacement engine. The garage has diagnosed low oil pressure feeding the variable valve timing so that the camshaft timing goes awry. They have already noted the lower than expected compression so believe that the valves and pistons have met, and to strip the engine completely down to find the cause of the lack of oil pressure - and fix it - will at an educated guess be more expensive than replacing the engine. So we have authorised them to find a decent engine out of a scrap Fabia/Polo etc and fit it. Total bill is estimated to be £3,000+ which includes the time and cost of the work already done. We are now considering whether to keep the car when fixed, as it will have the same design engine. I can hardly believe that our well-maintained Fabia which has covered around 23,000 miles requires this.

 

The garage said that they also have a Fabia in of the same age (2015) with the same 1.2 engine in and the same fault but this has done 91,000 miles.

 

It's more than 50 years of motoring with a variety of cars since any car of mine has required major engine work, and that was on a 10-year-old Morris 1000 which had done over 80,000 and burnt a piston. We've had good service for some 20 years from several Skoda cars but this experience has tested our confidence in their petrol-engined range as the same design of engine is still being used in all VAG cars.

This is 'breaking news' regarding fundamental design, manufacturing or material faults.  Is it not a case of an issue with 'cambelt replacement' being an issued.  Ones having been done failing.   There will be many more than the tale of 2 failures come up if it is a design fault.  Hundreds of thousands of euro 6 1 2TSI,s out on the roads. 

4 hours ago, JohnGarth said:

They have already noted the lower than expected compression so believe that the valves and pistons have met

 

That immediately starts alarm bells ringing with me, valve seating after a piston valve clash is pretty much binary, compression or no compression, lower than expected sounds like service receptionist Bravo Sugar number 101.

 

It makes me equally sceptical of their supposed diagnosis which is an imagined scenario.

 

What happened to the "excessive wear"? Did they fit the £550 of bingo parts only to find that it made no difference?

Edited 7 March, 20233 yr by J.R.

4 hours ago, JohnGarth said:

Total bill is estimated to be £3,000+ which includes the time and cost of the work already done.

 

Looks like I can answer my own question.

It might just be the way that they capture cars for their used cars side line, horrible situation to be in!

We have now had a replacement 1.2 engine fitted and got the Fabia back after parting with £3,400. The replacement is claimed to be from a Polo with 17,000 miles on the clock and comes with a 6 month warranty. The repairers appear to have done a good job and the car looks like new under the bonnet with everything clean and shiny, but so it should for the money. One week on and the engine is very quiet running so perhaps there was an ongoing problem in the old engine which I hadn’t noticed in time. I will be writing to Škoda customer service re this problem although the garage has said that I haven’t a hope of squeezing any money out of them as the car was made in 2015, despite the low mileage.