Hi all,

 

Existing member (Fabia mk3 owner), who lost his previous account. Not sure what angle I want to take here - probably mostly 'cautionary tale'.

 

Last year, my AC stopped working, even after being re-gassed, pointing to a bigger issue. It was finally diagnosed as a failed AC evaporator by a VW specialist who quoted £1600 to get the job done. Shocked, I politely declined but then also got Skoda to quote me over the phone, which actually gave me a very similar price. Against my better judgement, I decided to proceed with Skoda, having the reassurance of main dealer 'workmanship' and warranties, etc. Anyway, that went wrong because they pre-emptively ordered in the wrong part and by the end of the day when they called (it was a Friday), they hadn't even looked at the car. I just asked for it back and decided I'd revisit the repair at a later date.

 

Fast-forward to May this year, I finally plucked up the courage to get the work done. Before agreeing to do so, I asked that if Skoda also found it to be a problem with the evaporator, they would arrange a contribution from Skoda. They agreed and took £600 off the £2600 repair cost (yep, the price went WAY up this year). If you ever wondered, dashboard removal currently costs £700 in labour (and a further £700 to put it back).

 

Anyway, the repair was carried out and we were handed the car back on a Thursday afternoon. Happy days, or so we thought. By Friday afternoon, after feeling that the car had been a little 'hesitant' and to my complete alarm, the low coolant warning light came up on the instrument cluster. Sure enough, the coolant header tank was almost completely empty. I was absolutely gobsmacked and could not understand how the work undertaken could be responsible for this. This stressed me out immensely and I was beginning to wonder whether, by total coincidence, something else had gone wrong at the same time.

 

It would turn out this was a long line of coincidences that turned out to, well, not be...

 

When I returned the car to the dealership on Saturday AM after topping up the tank with water, they took the car straight into the workshop to investigate. 20 minutes later I was told that it looked like air locks hadn't been removed from the coolant system when it was re-filled (or something along those lines), which at least confirmed that the coolant system was indeed drained when the evaporator was replaced (an education for me). The technician went on to say that he would run the car up to temperature and pressure test the system, but that it was probably fine. An hour later, the service assistant took me to her desk and said that, unfortunately, it looked like there was a problem with the heater core and they would need the car back. I was at least given a courtesy car on this occasion (we were literally about to go on holiday, so I had to transfer all of our things from our car to the courtesy car).

 

Another week of testing and it was concluded that it was in fact the replacement evaporator that was to blame and that the entire dashboard would need removing again. During this time, despite asking for assurances, they couldn't tell me that I definitely wouldn't be liable for any further cost, so it was pretty stressful.

 

What I didn't mention before was that for the one day I had the car back, I had noticed that the steering was clunking when turning the wheel left to right quickly. During the time that the garage had the car back for a second time, not only was I worrying about the coolant leak issue, but also what on earth was going on with the steering and again, thinking that another issue had started to rear its head. I raised this with the aftersales manager by email and was told in response that the steering column is lowered when the dashboard is taken out and that this could be the cause (and may go away after a certain distance). That provided some relief, but I was still envisaging issues with tie rod ends, steering racks.., etc.

 

When I finally got the car back, I was relieved to find that after driving the car for an evening, the coolant level was remaining stable and that they had fixed the steering clunk noise. However, when trying the windscreen wipers, they weren't working properly, with the metal arms scraping the windscreen. So badly that they were etching into the (almost new) windscreen. I couldn't face the idea of taking the car back into the dealership the next day, so thought I'd have a go at sorting the issue myself. This was to no avail as it was clear that somehow, the wipers had dropped into their holes by a few CM, making them too close to the windscreen. AGAIN, I could not fathom how this would be anything to do with the work that was carried out and was expecting a battle with the dealership. As you can imagine, I was pretty mad at this point. Fortunately, I was again able to take the car into the garage the following morning  (Saturday) and had the issue sorted. Apparently the wiper linkage / assembly had to be removed to make it easier to access the back of the engine bay and hadn't been reinstalled properly.

 

Another issue I noticed after getting the car back the second time, was that the brake pedal seemed to be making a 'clunk' noise every time letting off it, as if it were contacting metal. When I checked in the footwell, I noticed that the pedal was contacting a metal bar and just couldn't remember this happening before. But again, I questioned myself and thought that surely it must have been happening previously. Again, I took the car back to the dealership and again they looked at it and put the issue right. Apparently, the bar by the pedals is either removed or pushed back during the dashboard removal and again, this particular part hadn't been reinstalled properly.

 

And that's it. Aside from a small rip on the driver's seat, the car is finally pretty much back to the state we gave it to them in back in early May. If you've got this far, thank you for reading. I don't have any real beef with the dealer as they have put pretty much everything right, but it hasn't been without its stress.

 

I suppose my take-away points, following this major work, are:

 

1. If you have any issues - even seemingly unrelated to the work carried out - your first assumption should be that the repair work has caused it (lots of things are moved / removed - including things that you would never dream of)

2. Always have a quick check under the bonnet before you leave the dealership

3. If you own a 7/8 year old Fabia or maybe even another model Skoda of a similar vintage, your evaporator may be on the way out

4. Some technicians have bad days, or weeks, or months. Including those at main dealers

 

 

Thanks,

JJ

 

 

 

 

1 hour ago, jj_fabia said:

Another week of testing and it was concluded that it was in fact the replacement evaporator that was to blame

Did the A/C work properly again between you getting the car back from initial repair and the engine coolant problem rearing its head?

The evaporator and heater matrix would both have to be disconnected to replace the evaporator, I think, but they're entirely independent devices with respect to fluids and plumbing/hoses.

 

Their story doesn't really add up, but given the number of re-installation errors, you probably wouldn't want to hear the full story!

 

 

I wonder what exactly happened to that original evaporator as it is just a cabin air to chiller circuit heat exchanger, I would expect its only failure mode to be leaking.

 

I know that anyone doing work for any of us, can make a single mistake - whoever handled that job was clearly winging it.

@Breezy_Pete - Strangely, yes it did seem to work for that one day so I had nothing to make me worry until that warning light. I've only just about recovered from the trauma and paranoia caused years ago by my 2005 Ford Focus due the numerous coolant leaks!!

 

This whole experience has made me doubt the limited knowledge I had, but I suspect I was being spun a bit of a lie to be honest. I think their technician was having a 'mare and there was a fair bit of smoke and mirrors and bottom-covering. I did try to get an understanding from them of what had gone wrong but there was a lot of defensiveness. 

 

@rum4mo - no idea! I just read that they can get clogged up with debris and go rusty but I just can't see why it failed so early on. Had cars three times the age with no such problem. Wonder whether it's something that will start to go wrong with more of these mk3 Fabias or other similarly aged VW AG cars as they reach 8-9 years old. 

 

 

That is so odd - responding directly to the notification has made me post via my old account. Need to sort this out!

The air > air side of a car's cabin air evaporator should not end up getting clogged with debris, the internal side of the tubing, where the expanded fridge gas passes, can be clogged up, but should only be due to a failure somewhere else in the system, which would be expensive to fix and include a system flushing through, so what I am saying is, I'd never expect a car's cabin air evaporator to end up clogged without some other serious repairing  needing to be taking place.

De-waxers can be used to clear out any evaporator clogging  and any other areas where wax has gathered due to the system having used "not so expensive" oil, but that should only be required in less than 1% of modern car systems, and it would take a proper clued up fridge person to work out that that was the issue, if this was indeed the root cause of your AC problems, then I'd be suggesting that maybe any or all VW Group or any other marque workshops, are not the best place to go to get AC repairs carried out, well at least when considering the overall cost to you, the time wasted and the damage to your property.

 

Edit:- these older fridge gases are quite good at scrubbing the internal surfaces of fridge systems and so keeping them clean and maybe dumping any accumulated stuff up in the drier.

Edited 20 June, 20232 yr by rum4mo

Leakage from evaporator itself or the o-rings which seal it to the expansion valve are surely the most common evaporator problems. 

I dont think it has been written that the evaporator was clogged and if I missed it then it would most certainly have been more Bravo Sugar from the dealer.

 

A blocked heater matrix, thats a different story!

14 minutes ago, J.R. said:

I dont think it has been written that the evaporator was clogged and if I missed it then it would most certainly have been more Bravo Sugar from the dealer.

 

A blocked heater matrix, thats a different story!

In the absence of good info being passed back to the customer, ie the OP, it was his guess that that was the issue based on info collected elsewhere, I was just responding to that.