So firstly I'm a seasoned mechanic and have had Skoda and VW diesels for many years.

So a new member to the family of cars was purchased, a 2014 1.2 TDI Fabia (mark 2).

2 owners from new but with no service history from the 2nd owner since 2019 I decided to do the full shebang!

However, the oil filter screw cover was more than reluctant to come out. Now what I mean is that I could unscrew it but the shaft inside which has the 2 small o-rings at the end could not come out past the housing.

A long story short I got it out a little bent and the replacement genuine VW oil filter element was fitted and seemed to be a good 30mm short of them the one that came out. I called TPS gave them my registration and the part number and they confirmed everything was good.

Unfortunately there is absolutely no way I could get the shaft back in the hole with the filter fitted and something just didn't feel right. In my two hours of attempting finally it snapped.

I then went on to find that the shaft with the two small o-rings flaps around the hole at the bottom of the oil housing and clearly the whole length of that component is wrong.

Would anyone by any chance have access to photos or a physical part that I could to see if mine is actually wrong for the car. I suspect that the previous owner snapped theirs and just bought a second-hand part which was not intended for the car.

Looking on eBay I can buy just the cover which appears to be specific to the 1.2.

The image seems to show a shorter shaft and the end part seems to be stubbier if that makes sense?

Judging by this page there are two different cover part numbers suiting two different filter housings:

https://www.lllparts.co.uk/catalogs/skoda/CZ/FAB/697/1/115/115065

Sounds like you have a mismatch?

As breezy pete said you might have a miss match here, the oil filter housing from the petrol engine version is different to the diesel version for this model its down to the engine code as the petrol one is HTP and the diesel one is CFWA, looking at the caps on LLL parts it seems the cap was replaced by a newer version with an "A" added on the end of the part number, looking at Skoda parts there seems to be a cghange in parts from December 2012 onwards so it could be possable the part you checked might be wrong or the housing might be from another year fitted on this car perhaps not from new but by the previous owner or garage that has serviced it, it might be better to buy a complete unit housing to solve this issue in the long run

I actually got to the bottom of this and it may be a little wisdom to others.

So the part (oil cooler/filter housing) that was on the car was not the original OE, it was a Nissens 91158 which if you read all of the compatibility charts it is good to use on the 1.2 CFWA engine - TBH the mounting to the block would be the most important thing.

The Nissens unit whilst fits was the issue, it doesn't allow the next man to change the oil and the filter used (and the cap) are longer than that which VW specifiy - so the warning is dont use the Nissens unit (https://www.autodoc.co.uk/nissens/12833652)

I have now replaced the entire unit with a Blue Point from Parts in Motion (eBay) for £65 and luckily I did as the previous Nissens part was heavily siliconed blocking the water and oil.

Ive added some photos of the obvious mounting difference between the 2 parts - Nissens on the left 😄

on