3 minutes ago, nta16 said:

You are doing a better job than possibly that "full multipoint service".

 

When the weather is a bit better it might pay you to consider doing a full inspection of the car and at least service the engine with oil and filter change and check the air filter.

 

On a 13 year old car personally I would look at cleaning the MAF but I wouldn't use carb cleaner but MAF cleaner for the sake of a few quid extra and not risking and old sensor.  If correct OEM parts are cheap enough sometimes they're worth just replacing if old but the quality of the replacement part must be considered otherwise you could be swapping not too bad for bad.  Also cleaning the throttle body (or whatever anyone wants to call it) again with the correct throttle body cleaner, again why worry about a few quid if you're already wasting your life farting about with a car.

 

Because of the technology the basics are often forgotten on cars but without the basics attended to there's not fully success with the technology and much of car servicing, maintenance and repairs often boils down to the very basics of cleaning, lubricating - and when required replacing parts.

 

Awesome sounds good to me, I love the car just haven't had the chance to fix the niggly issues. 

 

Will set aside some time. It may not be a vrs or expensive car but she does what I need her to do

You might as well get your money's worth out of that Halfords Advanced tool set.

 

Forgot to put you cold at least test the brake fluid, and test the coolant, I think they still do the dipping paper tabs(?) or stick things(?) or borrow a reliable tester or risk very cheap testers.

 

Despite the mpg the fact the car's been running shows how much they can put up with (which is also a downside if you get the car from someone who's taken too much advantage of this fact) so it gives plenty of potential perhaps to have it running so much better so easily.

 

Get the car serviced and running well and then give it a good blowout run, not driving conservatively, and see how it is.

 

Just now, nta16 said:

You might as well get your money's worth out of that Halfords Advanced tool set.

 

Forgot to put you cold at least test the brake fluid, and test the coolant, I think they still do the dipping paper tabs(?) or stick things(?) or borrow a reliable tester or risk very cheap testers.

 

Despite the mpg the fact the car's been running shows how much they can put up with (which is also a downside if you get the car from someone who's taken too much advantage of this fact) so it gives plenty of potential perhaps to have it running so much better so easily.

 

Get the car serviced and running well and then give it a good blowout run, not driving conservatively, and see how it is.

 

I got the Halfords advanced set when I had a VW Golf 1.8T that had a FMIC that kept popping tubes amongst other things.

 

Haven't used it in about 8 years so took a few minutes to work out which end of the ratchet did what 😂

 

Will do!

Might just be the image, screen and my wonky eyes but the old plug appears salmon colour to me, have you used a fuel additive or cleaner or some special petrol at some point?

 

I've next to no experience of farting about on cars but I've never seen a spark plug as worn as that but I'm from very old cars and changing the plugs every couple of years, or every year for those that can't be bothered to check, gap and clean as required.

 

 

1 minute ago, nta16 said:

Might just be the image, screen and my wonky eyes but the old plug appears salmon colour to me, have you used a fuel additive or cleaner or some special petrol at some point?

 

I've next to no experience of farting about on cars but I've never seen a spark plug as worn as that but I'm from very old cars and changing the plugs every couple of years, or every year for those that can't be bothered to check, gap and clean as required.

 

 

No fuel additives or anything other than the E10 rubbish from the pumps. 

 

The old ones were definitely a yellow colour, I did Google it but it just pointed to excess engine temps which I've not noticed.

29 minutes ago, sepulchrave said:

No MAF on petrol engines,

Is that just on VAG vehicles because my Honda Jazz had a MAF and it was Euro 4.

30 minutes ago, Jocko said:

Is that just on VAG vehicles because my Honda Jazz had a MAF and it was Euro 4.

 

Yes of course, I'm only actually referring to engines found in the Fabia.

1 hour ago, veelsie said:

just pointed to excess engine temps which I've not noticed

Well you had a lot of fuel going through helping to cool. 😄

 

The others will know but I get the feeling I've read on here the/some(?) Fabia doesn't mind E10.  For the amount you'll be saving in fuel costs you might want to throw in a couple of tankfuls of the (new) V-Power for its cleaning additive package before and after your blow out run.

  

7 hours ago, veelsie said:

No fuel additives or anything other than the E10 rubbish from the pumps. 

 

E10 will noticeably drop fuel economy over e5 or e0.

 

For the sake of testing it may be worth dumping some fuel system cleaner down it and running on some "premium" petrol with less ethanol.

Fuel economy is certainly one measure of performance but does E10 or E5 noticeably effect the driving performance for better or worse?

 

Just came to post a little update.

 

Not sure whether it was the spark plugs in the end or the bottle of redex and e5 I dumped in but I had a few poor MPG runs so dumped the redex in with some e5 and ran it from full to fuel light.

 

Yesterday I filled the car up with e5 and drove to Cardiff and back with about 50 miles of City driving in Bristol Taunton, Bridgewater and Cardiff itself.

 

I was completely shocked when I got past the 180 mile mark and the fuel gauge was still midway.

 

Ended up going 335.4 miles before I decided to fill up, it was in the last notch before the light so still had a little way left. Fill up was 37.57 litres of E5 for a MPG of 40.58.

 

40.58 MPG! Compared to 20.4 MPG before.

 

Excuse the dust/dirt, cleaning her was not a priority until now.

 

Even though thats nearly double I will be having the car go through a full, yes full service (minus plugs) next week.

 

Certainly over the moon with the improved MPG which has nearly doubled, which is also concerning, where did all that fuel used to go haha!

You should clean all that pubic hair off the instruments before it goes for a service!

 

It was the plugs that fixed it, not the snake oil.

Well done.  The plugs would have been the very major contributor and Redex was redundant when using the Tesco Momentum.

 

I'm not sure any garages do a full car service any more, engine oil and filter change and visual inspection of some other stuff is about it.  You could yourself change the engine air filter and if required clean anything else engine air or fuel related.  That just the engine of course, which isn't the most important component or system on the car.  The brakes, steering and suspension (all three include tyres) and safety electrics are of more priority, as you've already found the engine can chug along even in a quite poor state and the world doesn't fall apart (only your wallet with all those petrol receipts).

 

I'd not think too much about where all that petrol went for now remain on a positive and see if the service brings any further improvement in MPG but don't expect too much unless your brakes were binding or you're running your tyres under-inflated.

 

Given your plugs gaps I'd not be too surprised at anything the service turns up but also given your current MPG hopefully it won't be too much.

 

Good luck.

 

On 01/04/2023 at 21:39, veelsie said:

Ended up going 335.4 miles before I decided to fill up, it was in the last notch before the light so still had a little way left. Fill up was 37.57 litres of E5 for a MPG of 40.58.

 

40.58 MPG! Compared to 20.4 MPG before.

 

My 1.2tsi does 450 miles on e5 and 320 miles on e10.  Both brimmed from warning light (52-55 litres, in a 45 litres tank, ha).

E5 from tesco is cheap enough that it's only £3-4 more per tank.

I am not a very economic driver, but do about 80% motorway and 20% ragging it on the back roads. 

 

It might help giving it the good old italian tune-up after you get the oil changed. Also, what tires are you on? And at what pressures?

Edited 11 April, 20233 yr by Athrx

@AthrxSounds like you are venting the tank to get anything like 52 litres let alone 55 litres in. 

 

As to the 450 miles E5 and only 320 on E10 there was more going on there than just the ethanol difference. 

 

http://briskoda.net/forums/topic/338617-overfilling-venting-vrs-mk-ii-fuel-tank

http://briskoda.net/forums/topic/352088-vrs-miles-to-a-tank/page/2

 

1 hour ago, toot said:

@AthrxSounds like you are venting the tank to get anything like 52 litres let alone 55 litres in. 

 

As to the 450 miles E5 and only 320 on E10 there was more going on there than just the ethanol difference. 

 

http://briskoda.net/forums/topic/338617-overfilling-venting-vrs-mk-ii-fuel-tank

http://briskoda.net/forums/topic/352088-vrs-miles-to-a-tank/page/2

 

Yep, exactly what i'm doing. It's about 60-70 miles more before the needle even moves. Theoretically i can do london-leeds at 55-60mph and still arrive with a "full" tank like that.

 

About e10, i was forced to fill up twice in a row with texaco ****, and pay £3.25 for a redbull on top of everything during one of the fuel freakouts. Immediately noticeable as it was revving a lot higher up hills in a well established commute. I'm talking from 7'th to 6'th at 55 vs 7'th to 4'th, nearly double the revs and a turbo screaming

@AthrxSo not only does your car have a turbo which the OP has not, you also have a DSG.  Very much apples and pears there then between vehicles.

I'm back.

 

Car has had a service, new tyres, new exhaust system due to corrosion and during the service the brakes were cleaned and deglazed. They were in good condition.

 

All filters changed, Pollen, Air, Oil, Fuel. Oil changed and coolant changed.

 

I drove from Plymouth to Brighton and back again. Got just shy of 300 miles to 40.12 litres (33.6 MPG) using Tesco Momentum up and Esso's equivalent back.

 

Drive was hilly, some a roads and roundabouts etc.

 

What cable do I need for VCDS so I can monitor and log some more details to see what the engine is doing?

 

Also on this forum someone advised another owner of this model they could use VCDS full version to change the fuel trim whilst cold to potentially save some fuel around town/short drives.

 

Any advice on either of these? 

 

Cars running nicely with the service, new tyres and exhaust system, just be nice to get fuel economy a little better!

You should get better MPG, particularly on a long run, although to be fair that's largely a terrible journey on single carriageways, nonetheless I would expect about ten percent more but it might be hard to find on such an ancient engine.

Cheap KKL cable from ebay etc plus VCDS Lite downloaded from ross-tech.com will work on your car.

Changing fuelling map sounds wildly improbable though.

@Breezy_Pete Would this KKL cable do for my 2009 Fabia?

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/304753040391?hash=item46f4b25c07:g:0OgAAOSwy-FjrC1-&amdata=enc%3AAQAIAAAAwBLrizxPfpEl6BUcOe0w9JNQ7NydgspFUfOtULpoBns0u0ZiHLsIGTA9CjQPtf97ZAyizVpqXB0G%2Bm2zDOAS%2FGsVH%2FITfF%2Fv4Flnku%2BVzkMZSzRoYmalCvBI%2Fi%2FSUHFaamXdulCV6HUy8%2BY9EA32ZJNefbJJAMa%2Fu2rFDXpKOgAie8YU48oAftErqcO3dlCn%2F2EF%2BWyf7Bov0p5d2%2BVQgJSNcF7KOFr%2BBzyRY%2FEtcGguGioicTxEIO2kaaeWCH9vRw%3D%3D|tkp%3ABk9SR5Cv8t2JYg

@Jocko yes, I would expect so, but don't use/throw away the software CD (probably spyware-laden) and download the legit freeware from ross-tech.com here: 

Ross-Tech: VCDS-Lite Download

Edited 24 May, 20233 yr by Breezy_Pete