Fusebox opening on Mk4 Fabia

[jik]

Please can anyone tell me if this is as far as the opening goes to the fuse box. I used to have a MK1 Fabia and the OBD port was roughly in the same place, but it feels like this opening will break if I pull it any further. I am about to wire a dashcam but I can not get to the fuses properly. Thanks in advance for any help.

[Drewmac]

Hi, You are correct it s as far as it goes.If you pull it downward it will come out altogether.Be firm when pullig down.It should and will tight,but percevere and all should be well,mine was.Cheers Andy

[jik]

Just now, Drewmac said:

Hi, You are correct it s as far as it goes.If you pull it downward it will come out altogether.Be firm when pullig down.It should and will tight,but percevere and all should be well,mine was.Cheers Andy

Thanks for your help. I am a bit worried about breaking it but I will go it a go tommorow.

 

[BethRF]

Hey,

 

Sorry for posting the same thing in a couple of places, but I'm a total loss- I've been trying to hardwire in and all the fuses I try seem to be always on! Can anyone tell me what fuse they've used for switched live for their dashcam?

[gumdrop]

On my last 3 Skoda I bought an adapter and plugged into the ODBA socket, this particular model is switched, it saves all that faffing about.

Around £7-£10 on Amazon other retailers should be considered.

Edited 9 February by gumdrop

[Matt116]

On 29/08/2023 at 19:54, jik said:

Thanks for your help. I am a bit worried about breaking it but I will go it a go tommorow.

 

Hey, were you able to reach the fusebox? I'm in the same situation 😅

[Matt116]

Solved it, you just need to pull a bit down and toward yourself, you feel like it's gonna break and then it's gonna pop off

[nta16]

When all else fails, or better still at the very start, you can read and refer to the Owner's Manual.

@Matt116  may have already done so.

 

Despite what some might make out it's not against any law for a man to read instructions). If you read the Owner's Manual and refer to it when need it could save you time, hassle and money (unnecessary visits to Dealership/garage/mechanic).

 

 

 

To save issues and hassles particularly look at your Owner's Manual about 'Functionality – Protection against discharge of the 12 volt vehicle battery' and '12 volt vehicle battery charging' as if the car battery gets too low the computer will punish you for your mistake and can cause all sorts of unexpected issues and this can be before or after you get warning messages or lights to tell you the car battery is too low for them.  Just because the car starts and the lights seems bright enough doesn't mean the battery is in a good state of charge.

 

If you let the battery get too low and/or too often you may not be able to fully recover it and it will need replacing a lot sooner than if given some care, (number one call of breakdown calls outs is battery related, almost always caused by owner/driver use/abuse/neglect).

 

Just driving the car, particularly if many short journeys often is now insufficient on modern cars with all their computers and consumer convenience items so preventative car battery recharges with an appropriate battery charger is needed, a lower amps charger is normally better than a higher amps charger (see VW instructions in Owner's Manual).

 

  

[DerekU]

My car is a UK-specification right-hand-drive October 2023-built Fabia SE L DSG.

 

Should anyone wish to fully lower the glove-box unit on the PASSENGER side (to, say, replace the cabin pollen filter) this is what's involved.

 

This photo shows the glove-box unit fully lowered.

 

 

A and B are 'buttons' that need to be pressed upwards while the top of the glove-box is pulled forwards. The buttons are shown in more detail here

 

 

 

The glove-box will then drop halfway done, but will still be supported by a peculiar turret/strut mechanism identified as C in the first photo above and shown in more detail here.

 

 

 

Pulling the top edge of the glove-box unit further downwards (No need to pull hard!) will cause the strut to release from the turret (as shown in the photo). The turret is rotatable with a small plastic cog inside. When returning the glove-box unit to its original position, the turret must be in the correct position for the top of the strut to enter an aperture in the turret through which the strut slides. Once the top of the strut is in that aperture, gently lifting the top edge of the glove-box unit upwards will allow the strut and cog to mesh and the strut to click in place. Next lift up the top edge of the glove-box unit so that the plastic 'tabs' on each top corner of the unit come in contact with buttons A and B. Depress the buttons to allow the tabs to pass behind them and the glove-box can now be fully closed.

Edited 26 April by DerekU

[DerekU]

I notice that, on this BRISKODA sub-forum, there were a couple of earlier discussions about fitting a dash-cam to a Fabia Mk IV

 

https://www.briskoda.net/forums/topic/507227-removal-of-tray-to-get-at-fuses/

 

https://www.briskoda.net/forums/topic/514511-fitting-netbase-322gw/

 

I believe the current Skoda Kamiq has the same fuse-box/electrics arrangement as the current Fabia, so this June 2023 thread on the BRISKODA Kamiq forum may also be of interest

 

https://www.briskoda.net/forums/topic/514251-dashcam-electrical-supply-fuses/

 

Access-to-the-fuses instructions are indeed in the Fabia Mk IV manuals (and are as copied into nta16's posting above). Although the guidance seems simple enough to follow, it's clear from on-line comments that the advice "Pull the tray out by pulling it towards you" presents difficulty. Matt116 said above "... you just need to pull a bit down and toward yourself, you feel like it's gonna break and then it's gonna pop off".

 

As it's impossible to see what holds the little storage compartment VERY firmly in place, it's not possible to decide exactly what angle the compartment should be at and what the 'pull angle' should be so that the compartment can be extracted with the minimum of force. As far as I'm aware there are no on-line videos showing the removal procedure, nor any photos to provide a clue as to how the storage compartment is retained.

 

My attempts to removal the storage compartment from my Fabia failed dismally. If I HAD to reach the fuse-box, I'd be prepared to wrench the storage compartment out using whatever brute force proved necessary, but for now I'm not going to experiment further.

Edited 27 April by DerekU

[nta16]

I thought you had succeeded by your previous post.  Did you try removing before fully lowering (as in your changing cabin filter)?

 

These thing do tend to be awkward rather than difficult, I absolutely struggle getting the small plastic wire connectors apart yet others seem to do it so easily, practice and/or confidence I expect.  On my neighbour's 2005 Kia Picanto last time I changed the cabin filter I struggled to get the bits of rubber type plastic back in that stop the glovebox fully opening yet the two times before I managed quite easily, that's how these types of jobs go sometimes a few seconds or minutes other times lots of swearing and mug of tea break required.

 

[DerekU]

My initial post dealt with fully-lowering the large 'glove box' on the Fabia's passenger side, not the small storage department on the driver's side.

 

Soon after I bought my Fabia I checked where the fuse-boxes were. I could see the one in the cab to the rear of the small storage compartment on the driver's side, but I did not bother to confirm how straightforward it would be to access that fuse-box. When it became apparent from this forum thread (and from other UK on-line comments) that there could be difficulty removing the small storage compartment, I thought I had better experiment. 

 

The relevant information in the hard-copy Owner's manual for my 2023-built Fabia differs from the "Access to the fuses" image you provided in your first posting above. This is the image in my cars paper manual and in the relevant on-line Owner's manual.

 

 

You'll see that no mention is made of a 'tray' and the instruction to "Press the locking button and open the fuse box" is potentially confusing.

 

It's perhaps worth observing that the equivalent image in the very latest English-language on-line Owner's manual is unambiguous and more detailed

 

 

but, despite following those instructions to the letter, I was still unable to remove the storage 'box' easily by pulling it towards me.

 

The "Accessing the fuses" images in the Manuals clearly relate to left-hand-drive Fabias and I did wonder if difficulty  removing the small storage compartment was peculiar to right-hand-drive Fabia MkIV cars. A cursory search of French and German Skoda-related forums found no similar complaints, which might be significant or just mean that French/German Skoda owners are less concerned about using brute force.

[nta16]

Well this is how things go when you have a car made for LHD sold to places that need RHD, the design effort to keep things cheap can often over complicate things.  I don't know about the translation to English of the Owner's Manuals but there are as in all sources of information errors and omissions and whilst I always criticize VW where deserved I will say the English Skoda Owner's Manuals do seem a lot better than the couple of Ren-No! Nissan ones I've tried to wade through.  As you've shown some effort at least has been made to improve the latter versions for the Fabia Mk4.  Pity perhaps that Skoda UK couldn't put in more effort to get things better for the cars that come to the UK.

 

On line manuals of course could be improved and improvements shown but that does require the effort and will to do it and I'm sure the cost would eat into what could otherwise be available to company directors' expenses and perks.  😄