Hello there!

First of wanna say thanks for this forum, figgured it was time to finaly make an account as this forum have been a good resource iv kept stumbeling uppon as im fixing up this "beater octavia" i got for dirt cheap a month ago.

She might look pretty in the picture, gets up and move pretty well with the 1.8tsi 180hp, 4x4 and dsg - a plessure to drive i must say, plessanly supprised with how nice she is to cruise and thats me comming from a a6 c7 allroad, audi e-tron etc. But she have issues, there are rust, dings, scratches and general signes that she had a though life.

The car was bought on an impulse a friday morning a month ago as both me and my sister needed a backup car for a little while, my audi and sisters subaru (rustbucket!) was due for its bi-yearly "road legal inspection" the same week. both need a fair bit of of work, especially the subaru where i need to reconstruct a good chuck of the rockers and inner structure (takes time for a it guy where the welding skill is "can somehow stick metal together"). And my schedule have been crazy lately so spare time to work on our cars have been more or less non existant.

Back to the project Skoda!

I got here cheap as the guy i bought it from had given up, had "engine noice" and check engine light he could not figgure out. he even did a timing chain kit...

The Skoda jumped the repair queue as it looked like a farly quick doing and the inspection was due on this one aswell.

When i looked at it before buying I had a suspision that it was the vvt solinoid causing the noice and engine light - It was!, there was also a coolant leak from the waterpump and a connecting piece, did new rear breaks, 3d-printet a repair for the handbrake (Thank you forum member here!) - and she passed here inspection ;)

These cars are know to rust a bit in norway, and she have door handel and rear quarter rust. ignored the doors for now but the inner finder, rearquarter and rear sub fram got a full spa treatment and while the body had some rust the octavia is solid and after some treatment should last for a good long time.

Now she is street legal and a absolutly fantastic car to drive! Almost thought of keeping this beater for my self replacing the A6 allroad for daily driving, did not help the A6's case that in the past 3 weeks the air suspension have started to leak and im having transmission trubbles... Its "only" done 285.000km, a bit early for a VAG dsg trans to have its first issues, right? 🤣

While the engine sound and pulls nicely, all is not well. After replacing coolent parts and while bleeding the cooling system i got low oilpressure warning... done some minor stuff to hoping it would solve it, and yesterday i did an oil pump. still have some hot idle pressure issues that needs further investigations but that is for later and a dedicated post.

Well this turned in to a long post.. But again, thanks for the forum!

Edited 6 hours ago6 hr by jungeltelegrafen

Welcome to the forum.

Despite your claimed lack of welding skills (sounds a lot like me in the past 🤣) you sound like you are fully hands on!