I decided the plastic wheel covers on the alloy wheels had to go, I didn’t want to be faffing with them if I had a puncture.

i bought the wheel nut covers on eBay from a company called Parts Dealers, there was 16 nut covers & 4 locking bolt covers in the kit £13.99

i also bought the wheel centres on eBay from a seller called Roger.c 581 £7.98 but I wouldn’t use them again as delivery took 3 weeks, I’ll put the covers in the garage & they can go in the boot when I trade the car in in 2028. 

 

Not bad for £21.97 all in😀even after only 800 miles the alloys were covered in brake dust, another reason for removing the cover. 

I did the same with the aero wheel covers on my Karoq.  I picked the car up in January 2024 when it  was a year old with around 6,000 miles on the clock.  The alloys were filthy and needed a good clean off the car.  Luckily they were unmarked.  Whoever in Skoda designed these wheel covers has never had to clean his own wheels and needs shooting.  They are anything but practical and cover what is a nice alloy although there are far too many nooks and crannies on the alloys to clean and keep them looking good.  A bit of common sense at the design stage and the needs of the user would go down well.

5 hours ago, nbramwel said:

Whoever in Skoda designed these wheel covers has never had to clean his own wheels and needs shooting.  They are anything but practical and cover what is a nice alloy although there are far too many nooks and crannies on the alloys to clean and keep them looking good.  A bit of common sense at the design stage and the needs of the user would go down well.

 

I've read similar comments online about those aero covers 😆. I agree. Not very practical. Simply...well...not that clever. 

Wise decision to remove the wheel covers. As had been said, the person at Skoda who came up with the idea of these has never ever cleaned a car!  My Fabia was only 6 months old with 250 miles on the clock when I bought it and there was shed loads of mucky brake dust around the rims when I took the covers off. Took about 4 buckets of water/car shampoo to get them clean.   Bought the nut covers and wheel centres off eBay.   

I was intending cleaning the wheels today, but the weather intervened😀😀

The biggest problem with the covers is that it isn't clear how to remove them quickly and easily.  My personal conclusion is that there's no need to buy wheel nut and hub covers apart from for cosmetic purposes.  it's the first encounter with them may lead you to doing so.  I lack the strength to shift the aero covers without a second pull tool. If you have paid extra for disks on the rear and want everybody to see them then go for it. Otherwise, hold off and see if you really need to do this.  I seem to be in a minority of one because I like the aero covers.  Skoda just failed to think them through as with much else on the Fabia 4.

 

 

I used a motorcycle exhaust spring puller which I already had to remove them, purely because I didn’t like the look of them.

My Fabia had a special tool that was part of the kit supplied with it.  You have to use a fair bit of force to pull them off. They came off OK - I wasn't bothered about damaging them in the process as I had no intention of ever putting them back on again. 

I know this post is late, and that there are other threads on this subject, but I felt that I had to add my comments to this thread.
 

I’m not a fan of the aero covers either, and yesterday I took the plunge and removed them. My car is less than two months old, and has covered about 800 miles; even so, the wheel rims were filthy with brake dust. Anyway, I cleaned them, and have fitted a set of centre caps and bolt covers. The wheels look much better now! The aero covers will be buried somewhere in the garage ….

 

For what it’s worth, I bought the above parts from an EU supplier - skoda-parts.com. They were more expensive than some of the offerings on eBay, but I wanted to be sure that they were genuine Skoda/OEM parts. Part numbers were:

Wheel hub centre caps (set of 4): 5E0 601 151  FOD

Bolt covers in metallic dark grey (16, plus 4 for locking nuts) plus extraction tool: 000 071 215

 

HTH

Whats actually Skodas reasoning behind these covers? Why would anyone buy nice alloy wheels and then put some cheap piece of plastic on them? I fail to see the point

1 hour ago, Mikek said:

Whats actually Skodas reasoning behind these covers? Why would anyone buy nice alloy wheels and then put some cheap piece of plastic on them? I fail to see the point

Skoda claim that it improves aerodynamics.  Frankly I can't see it would make that much difference to your fuel consumption.   

Tesla tests for wheel covers

 

The aero trims on our Fabia mc look smart to me and certainly don't give the impression of being cheap plastic. For a while I thought they were metal. They would be expensive to replace via a dealership. Removing them with a single hooked tool encounters strong resistance because of the way the centre attachment is designed. The wheel covers release very easily if you pull straight back on both sides of the hub with two tools . Maybe £5 additional outlay. Certainly, Skoda should have thought this through.  "Simply clever" they are not.

 

The aero wheel covers on the Mk 4 are a minor matter compared with all the other issues that are being discussed on the forum.

The plastic aero trims are there for a reason not just to look beautiful.They look great anyway,Wise thinking of Skoda as they help with fuel economy I have no issues cleaning the karcher gets all the dust,Would be nice to know how the fuel economy changes.  

31 minutes ago, Questions said:

The plastic aero trims are there for a reason not just to look beautiful.They look great anyway,Wise thinking of Skoda as they help with fuel economy I have no issues cleaning the karcher gets all the dust,Would be nice to know how the fuel economy changes.  

I maybe wrong, but I doubt even a Karcher washer would get rid of all the crap inbeween the trims and the spokes, let alone around the wheel rims and behind the trims. Over time the black brake dust crap would ooze through the holes in the trims.   

14 hours ago, Questions said:

The plastic aero trims are there for a reason not just to look beautiful.They look great anyway...

 

 

They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but the with-or-without photos below of Fabia silver or black alloy wheels make it hard to believe that the aero covers can be classed as a cosmetic enhancement (especially on black wheels).

 

 

 

 

Regarding the aero cover's aerodynamic benefits, in 2021 (when the Fabi Mk 4 was launched) Skoda's press release said

 

No statistical data were provided (or have subsequently become available). It's probable that the covers only provide an insignificantly small aerodynamic improvement and 100% certain that Fabia owners will be unable to check how that improvement might beneficially affect the car in real-world driving.

 

The fact that Skoda have now dropped the aero covers from the Fabia's standard specification must surely indicate that Skoda believes the  (potential) improvement is too small to bother with and that the covers are not an important  selling-point for Fabia buyers.

 

My 2024 Fabia has silver alloy wheels and I'm going to leave the aero covers on. If I needed to change a wheel in an emergency, I could do this more quickly than if the wheel-bolts had caps on them and I don't find any difficulty getting the aero covers off.  I think the wheels look better without the covers, but I'm not a fetishist where car wheels are concerned.

 

 

On 21/01/2025 at 22:54, Questions said:

The plastic aero trims are there for a reason not just to look beautiful.They look great anyway,Wise thinking of Skoda as they help with fuel economy I have no issues cleaning the karcher gets all the dust,Would be nice to know how the fuel economy changes.  

Really! As Derek says, why have they been dropped from some models then? Other factors, mainly driving style have a far greater impact than afterthought wheel trims.

 

Some cars had proper aero wheels, mainly EVs, but fortunately they seem to have mostly disappeared.

7 hours ago, VAGCF said:

"aero wheels"...

... have come and gone, more as a "fashion statement" than any form of engineering, in waves since about 1980CE.

Maybe it's part of a move to reduce costs.  The aero wheel covers have to be made for different sized wheels and are in no way going to be cheap to make.  The streamlining properties are irrelevant when you drive mainly locally and are rarely able to reach let alone exceed 30mph.  The forum is full of negative comments about them.

 

So, given the lack of enthusiasm why not discontinue the aero covers and adopt the cheaper option of making the Fabia 4s with black finish wheel nuts and four uniform sized black hub cover.  Skoda may have thought this and decided to discontinue them - "Simply clever and more profitable."

 

I still reckon the aero covers look better but aesthetics is very much down to individual taste.  Thankfully we are all different.

The look of them does't really bother me.  But I guess I'm more into practicality than the looks🤓😇 so I'd rather not have them.

 

If my open and very simple alloy wheels can collect dirt this fast I can only imagine what gets stuck underneath those wheel covers....

 

People who are into alloy rims often detest the looks of the plastic covers of steel rims and would rather drive without them.  So its a bit funny to pay more for a set of alloys.....and then hide them by putting on plastic covers.....🤪

I'm about to change my habit of taking the car to a hand car wash and will be going DIY.  After getting the relevant bits for my pressure washer I plan to to clean the Fabia maybe once a month.  If that works out I'll know whether there really is an issue with filth behind the aero wheel covers.  At least they can now be swiftly and easily removed/reattached thanks to explanations and advice on this forum.

5 hours ago, bazz2004 said:

I'm about to change my habit of taking the car to a hand car wash and will be going DIY.  After getting the relevant bits for my pressure washer I plan to to clean the Fabia maybe once a month.  If that works out I'll know whether there really is an issue with filth behind the aero wheel covers.  At least they can now be swiftly and easily removed/reattached thanks to explanations and advice on this forum.

There will be an issue with filth behind the wheel covers.  Constantly removing and reattaching  them might damage the wheel rims. 

Now that I can get the trims off easily and quickly without having to use force such damage shouldn't occur.  Cleaning cars isn't one of my main interests and I don't live near country roads so they won't come off each time I clean it.  The car will be washed maybe 12 times per year and the aero trims certainly won't come off anything like that many times.

On 19/01/2025 at 00:24, Gonzo52 said:

I know this post is late, and that there are other threads on this subject, but I felt that I had to add my comments to this thread.
 

I’m not a fan of the aero covers either, and yesterday I took the plunge and removed them. My car is less than two months old, and has covered about 800 miles; even so, the wheel rims were filthy with brake dust. Anyway, I cleaned them, and have fitted a set of centre caps and bolt covers. The wheels look much better now! The aero covers will be buried somewhere in the garage ….

 

For what it’s worth, I bought the above parts from an EU supplier - skoda-parts.com. They were more expensive than some of the offerings on eBay, but I wanted to be sure that they were genuine Skoda/OEM parts. Part numbers were:

Wheel hub centre caps (set of 4): 5E0 601 151  FOD

Bolt covers in metallic dark grey (16, plus 4 for locking nuts) plus extraction tool: 000 071 215

 

HTH

 

Sell them on ebay.  I'd buy a matching 17" aero wheel cover cover for our Fabia mc so long as it's cheap and in as new condition.  I'm not seeing anybody unloading them despite all the forum posts about replacing them with black nuts and hub caps.