Hello, we have an issue we can't seem to get on top of. We own a Fabia Combi Mk2 from late 2008 with a 1.4l petrol engine with a Tatarini LNG unit that's functional but we don't drive on LNG anymore.

It's been ours for about 4.5 years now, an incredible car, drives silent and muuuch smoother than much newer cars like our companies' 2020 Dusters for example. We've gotten it close to 180k km on the clock, but I'd say even compared to less driven Skoda's from the 2000s it seems to be significantly quieter and smoother.

Anyways, for the past half a year we have a very particular issue - mid-drive the current to the engine turns off. We know it's the current since the engine stops non-violently and everything else continues working fully - just the red battery dashboard light and otherwise a car you would not know has turned itself off. The fix is each time just to turn the key off and then on again. The car just turns on normally and that's it.

No errors codes on the OBDII.

This started happening after an incident we had, where while driving we heard a tunk and the car wouldn't go anymore, you could rev the engine but there was no transmission to the wheels. The mechanic said the clutch disk broke, and replaced the clutch with a new set from LUK. The car since then functions but has this problem with turning off.

One of the first times that this happened the car wouldn't start immediately after. It turned out that the timing belt fell off and the engine stalled. Nothing inside the engine was affected though, no broken valves, so the mechanic just changed the belt and the car kept going great. This didn't really affect our problem, but we do have to wonder if it was related.

Since than we've concluded a few things:

- It always happens in low revs, city driving, almost exclusively when trying to move from a standstill, like a traffic light, the car moves and before you get to release the clutch fully it turns off

- Much more frequent during the second drive of the day but sometimes happens during the first

- We changed the crankshaft sensor - no change

- We changed the wiring set for the battery - no change

- The Tatarini CPU was turned off - no change

Multiple electricians at this point looked at the car and within 4 days concluded it has to be driven until some kind of a magic symptom shows itself, otherwise it's impossible to detect anything. One of them mentioned the frond door handles, idk if that can actually be related though, he didn't change anything.

Any help is appreciated. We are at a complete loss and wouldn't want to go looking for a new car when a perfectly good one has what to us seems a localised problem that must be solvable but everyone refuses to put in the time. Thank you in advance

Welcome to the forum.

That engine stalling sounds a lot like a clutch 'bite point' issue - have you noticed there to be a significant difference from the original clutch in the point where the engine revs starts to drop when you start to lift the clutch pedal?

Have you tried 'slipping' the clutch a little more when moving off from standstill?