[Closed] Are all skoda fabias crap?

The sound of silence.
No one is going to own up to owning a Skoda Fabia, be serious!
Nice try though.

You'll constantly hear about the Toyota brake-woe's.....but you never hear about the countless VW ECU failures....

tdi?
google the same symptoms on leon, golf etc.

dunno about the cars, but the drivers are truly shocking!

They are good. Yours has a problem. Not really astonishing news is it?

nope not astonishing, life rarely is im afraid........

It's a VW Polo underneath. Should be fairly decent.

[i]It's a VW Polo underneath. [s]Should[/s][b]you'd think it would[/b] be fairly decent [b]the way theyr marketed[/b].
[/i]

Fabia VRs is a very good car...

Apprentice @ work has just bought his first car, by all accounts what should have been a "good" car, a Focus. Various warning lights appear and it loses power when driven for longer journeys. Garage where he bought it reckons it is unfixable because they cannot resreate fault and there are no ecu/memory "faults" in the dignostics. He complained to said garage head office who just confirmed their findings. Now in the hands of trading standards and finance company 😥

Another colleague has had problems with his Kia Sportage which is only months old. Similar problems to above but has had to be rescued a couple of times when he has been away with caravan. Much better outcome in that Kia dealer gave him another motor until such times as his was fixed, complete with tow bar and as much diesel as he needed. 😆

Having been in the motor trade years ago there are/will be no car regardless of all the surveys which are faultless, just the way the fault is dealt with or as in Toyotas case how severe the problem may be.

Thing is, who can buy a car with a name like 'FABIA'? It just sounds like Labia to me or some Italian male pron star/come pop singer with long hair?!

In addition, it has a 'face' that only its deceased Grandmother could love 8)

Only the VRS in black gets away with the grill/lights/look IMO.

I find my wife's Fabia a bit too small.

Fabia VRs is a very good car...

Once you sort out the suspension and dampers. And chip it.

I always thought Skodas were ugly, but the new Fabia (the one made out of cake) is quite nice, although it's going down the Mini/Kia route.

See, I have a theory --

Imagine all we'd ever known was cars as we have them now, full of electronics controlling the engine, nothing user serviceable and a pain in the ass when it goes wrong.

Then along comes a bloke who's been tinkering in his garage and plonks an odd shaped bit of alloy on the table and says,
"Remove all those electronics, high pressure lines, injectors and stuff, screw this to the inlet manifold and attach the throttle here, and the fuel here. It's very simple really, it just works on the vacuum of the engine to atomise the fuel, I call it a carburettor"

Imagine the reaction that would get.... 😉

He would get laughed out of the room.

Carburettors are ****.

+1

EFI is the reason we have cars with 10000 mile+ service intervals, 40mpg in stuff that weighs tonnes and astonishing reliability.

As an extra upside, town centres don't reek of petrol.

every car with carbs i'v owned were a total pita, constant fettling or they ran like dogs and cold starting was a joke especialy with an auto choke
fuel injection was a revelation

but the induction roar on a set of dcoe 40's is like music 🙂

the old half inch SU sounded great as well

The electronic stuff is great. Car gets a problem, light comes on, plug in the computer and read what's wrong, replace affected part. Mostly, that's how it goes (but not always).

The alternative is a black art of adjustment and ritual that took years to master.. humming and hahing over what this or that symptom might be, trying stuff, failing and general messing about. And then once you get it sorted having it all drift out of alignment and fail the MOT on emissions.

my wife has a 1.9tdi fabia bought new in 2001, no problems to report, all bits have been standard service parts. No warning lights etc

Pigface, yes, but you would need to find some bearded guru who lived in his shed to set them up correctly using his special method, which would probably involve a tuning fork and a marrow. Maybe even a blood sacrifice.

Then whatever they were attached to would break down 10 miles later.

While computer controlled cars seem more souless, they are often handy - my car "told" me a headlight bulb had gone the other day - yes I would have noticed driving in pitch dark anyway but then it would have been too late - this let me know in broad daylight so I got it sorted pronto.

Cars are soul-less. They merely extend the driver's soul a bit.. 🙂 Just like bikes.

As for computer controlled ones - I love technology. I think that old-skool car people loved technology too but as they get old there comes a point where something new scares and offends them, so that's where they stop.

Carburettored cars probably offended old time steam engineers just as much.

I have a Vrs which a use for teaching in. The engine light could be a sticky EGR valve. Due to the regulations on the emissions, VW hade to use a certain size gasket on the EGR valve and this caused a slight stutter at about 1800 to 2000 revs. Due to the valve being gummed up, my engine light has been on for about 40,000 mls and has done over 131,000 and accoding to the dealer it wont do any harm. Engine runs great too.

Only once have I the temp light come on and just topped up the coolant level and it was sorted. Apparently, they are extremely sensitive to any drop in the level.

Due to the valve being gummed up, my engine light has been on for about 40,000 mls and has done over 131,000 and accoding to the dealer it wont do any harm. Engine runs great too.

This could mask any subsequent failure though...

Carburettors are *.

* =

Simple
Effective
Reliable
Cheap
Easy to fix

EFI is the reason we have cars with 10000 mile+ service intervals, 40mpg in stuff that weighs tonnes and astonishing reliability.

EFI is (Part of) the reason cars cost so much, weigh tons more than they need to, cost a packet to fix out of warranty and have become no more than household white goods.

It just depends on your POV. Me?

EFi is a science

Carburetion is an art

😉

I'm a bit of a luddite at heart. There's precisely 0 modern cars I lust after, and I firmly believe that since the 60s & 70s, cars have been in gradual decline. 🙂

Uh oh, here we go...

I'll have a new 911 Turbo S please.

And maybe a 250GTO for weekends.

EFI is (Part of) the reason cars cost so much, weigh tons more than they need to

Weree cars cheaper in relative terms 20 years ago? An entry level car costs what, £6-7k, I seem to remember that being largely the same for the last decade or so.

And why does fuel injection mean cars weigh more?

Cars weigh more because they are safer - much much safer.

Would any cars fitted with caburettors pass the more stringent emissions tests? Genuine question, as most 'old' cars that I end up sat behind make me stick the climate control on re-circ within about 20 seconds because of the fumes...and that's not just old bangers, but enthusiasts' weekend cars.

The only reason for the continued existence of old cars (i.e. 60s and 70s) is to show just how good cars now are. Yes old cars are simpler and you can fix them without a computer, but that's because you have to. Cars on the whole now are so much more reliable, safer, less polluting and economical that if you were to transport one back in time then no-one would believe it could be done. The whole point of this thread is that when something does go wrong it's the exception rather than the rule.

I have a Skoda (Octavia vRS) and it's amazing.

All these computerised gadgets are fun. If the OP didn't live in kent I'd run diags on it for him.

Modern cars are obviously a massive improvement on the old and the electronics are not scary if you take the time to familiarise yourself, and if you want you can even make your own so you understand every last bit of it. And the parts costs are high but when you consider the increase in fuel efficiency, the decrease in servicing, the improved drivability you get it's worth every penny.

Even 15 years ago. I had a Passat from that age, and when you look at what's protecting you it's a few slim members, as opposed to loads of beefy metal in my new one.

It's also why rear visibility has been decreasing over the years 🙂

EDIT: +1 for CK.

But loads of cars get a bad rep due to the odd owner on the internet and the decreasing ability of people to diagnose and tweak their own car. Take, for example, the peugeot range. It's no class-topping masterpiece, but it does the job nicely and gets a few niggles. Now it goes down in the books as full of bad electronics and poor design etc, but ultimately thats down to the general owner populus not having a clue about how to look after a more modern car and treating it like they can just drive it into the ground, then wonder why the replacement parts are expensive. Pahh, distorted views all over IMO.

What should you have to do to your Peugot then ck? I doubt most people treat their Peugots any different to other cars, and yet the list of people I know with Peugot horror stories is quite long.

What should you have to do to your Peugot then ck? I doubt most people treat their Peugots any different to other cars, and yet the list of people I know with Peugot horror stories is quite long.

Just basic maintenance, but peugeot/citroen/renault corner the market for cheap/low end cars and so get the demographic who will scrimp and save and do everything they can to avoid repair costs [unless it's a new car, where they'll take it back for every last possible tiny issue], whereas a little higher up the price bracket for similar sized cars people tend to accept that their audi/bmw needs regular servicing, or accept that their thirsty car doesn't require servicing quite as much (because it's built to a generally tougher standard). I too hear all the horror stories but having owned them for god knows how many years and worked on them for others, I can honestly say I've had fewer problems and spent less in repairs and had less time out of use than others who've bought BMWs and Toyotas of similar size. But that's just my experience. I just think the demographics of the owners are different, they expect different things and all the complaints go against my experience with the cars and the experience of my MOT tester who is also baffled by their bad rep. But we've had this discussion before!

The people I talked to had 306/7s and 406/7s, so same price range as golf/Passat etc.

Seen this? 2010 JD power survey from [url= http://www.carsuk.net/lexus-tops-uk-j-d-power-survey-2010-again/ ]here[/url].

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Couldn't they just measure breakdowns/part-failures over a 5yr period for once. It'd be interesting to see the difference...

I think someone does, but I didn't see a breakdown of it by manufacturer, just the top 10 cars. I thought it interesting that the two most common hybrids on sale were in the top 10, despite people moaning about how unreliable they'd be.

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No, they are not all crap. Reading the forums (briskoda is a pretty useful site) it seems that way but people only post when they have problems, it would be pretty boring if everybody wrote 'my car didn't break down today' type threads (unless it was an alfa forum).

I quite like mine, it is about as quick as you [i]should[/i] 🙄 need to go on public roads and does around 55mpg no matter how I drive it, I bought it new (bit of an impulse buy) over 3 years ago and have had 27K trouble free mileage out of it. They do need decent front brake pads though to make the brakes feel like they are going to stop you.

I don't think hybrids are unreliable - just mostly hateful.

The new Honda cr-z does look interesting though.

At the moment I think a good diesel is still as good/better than any hybrid in terms of driver enjoyment/mpg/environmental impact.

However buying a new car is pretty bad news "footprint" wise. Getting a new car to save a bit on tax and mpg isn't exactly the greenest (or cheapest) way of living. Take a vast amount of resources to build a new car and costs a lot of money. Better off looking after what you have IMO.