Skoda Fabia 2017 Problems
Jonathan Garcia
I put my Fabia combi into my normal independent yesterday for the 4 year service. When they phoned to say it was ready they said they had 2 advisories to report. This had never happened before. i have a slight leak from the waterpump and I have a slight rumble from a wheel bearing. The car has done 23600 miles. It was originally on variable servicing and was changed to annual when I bought it. It has been serviced 3 times, April 2019( Skoda garage) April 2020 and yesterday( both at my independent) Yes, I do know those particular items are both wear and tear items but even so, beginning to fail at 23000 miles???
Neither fault will improve of course, they will only get worse. The bearing actually worries me than the pump because I can top up the coolant easily enough, I have the correct coolant concentrate and the level isnt dropping at the moment. Left unattended the bearing will get so bad that it could stop that wheel from revolving and that is an accident in the making. I trust my garage completely and do not believe they would try to pull a fast one on me. I did think of part exchanging it but theres nothing out there that I like and is within my price range so I will get my independent to do both jobs. They will be getting the parts from TPS so the parts will be of decent quality. Theirs is the cheapest price out of 3, Skoda want 710 for both jobs and the local VAG independent want 698 and my indie wants 600. i will run it to the end of the year and replace it then by when, hopefully, the restrictions will have eased and I have more money in the pot. I have emailed Skoda customer services on such poor performance from these parts so they know the situation and will read any response they make with great interest. I have never had a water pump fail before on any car in over 50 years of motoring and only once had a wheel bearing fail and believe me this car is a heck of a lot newer than those I used to run!
Apologies for the rant. What I want to ask is have any other Briskodians had any issues with wheel bearings or water pumps on their not so old vehicles? I seem to remember a thread here on Briskoda about a recall campaign on faulty waterpumps but I cant remember whether Mark 3 Fabias were affected or not. I havent seen anything on the wheel bearing issue but if anyone has please post.
The water pump / overheating thread is pinned at the top of this section. It is relevant to 1.4TDI 3 cylinder Euro 6 engines. First the Service campaign / workshop action but never a Recall was to change the coolant type. Nothing to do with TSI,s 1.0 or 1.2
Wheel bearings seem to have a wide variation of quality these days. One of the guys I work with had to replace a bearing on his Golf GTD last year which was four years old and similar mileage to your Fabia. At least they've made them easier to change, but that's maybe part of the problem?
Most of the Fabias and Octavias here are diesel or newer petrols. I have seen an MPi timing belt being done on an Up and the belt on the other side of the engine was replaced too. Are the four cylinder engines a similar set up?
T his an update on what has happened since. I did contact Skoda customer services and they couldnt help. They essentially said that they couldnt help financially as the car had been serviced outside the Skoda network. I also contacted the Skoda dealership I bought the car from. They did make an offer, the price of the bearing and the water pump was reduced from 710 to 449 BUT they also required me to have the car serviced there only days after having it serviced at my independent. They said they would only get financial support from Skoda if the car was serviced there and the diagnosis of the 2 faults was made by them. The price of the service was reduced by about 8%. There was also talk of a 65 diagnostics fee but that eventually got subsumed in their reduced price. No way was I going to pay again just days later and have parts like Castrol Edge oil plus filter and spark plugs get discarded, that is just crazy to even contemplate. I paid 241 last week and they wanted another 299 so 540 for a service. I would still have been over 100 out of pocket when I totted it all up even after their offer on the two parts. So it wasnt just that it made no sense, it didnt stack up financially. I also asked the garage if they could make a purely goodwill payment, nothing to do with Skoda UK, just a goodwill payment from a garage to a customer. They wouldnt do that either, everything had to be done through Skoda UK.
So I got absolutely nowhere. It was all done without anyone losing their temper( including me!) but I did find the attitude of both Skoda UK and the Skoda garage to be very intransigent, " Rules are rules" and there was no room at all for individuals to do anything other than observe the rules. Thats the update done, the car goes in tomorrow to my independent to get the 2 jobs done. Would I buy another Skoda again? Probably not.
Apologies for not replying sooner. Regarding noise and the tyres, the tyres are not making any more oise than they ever have, nothing untoward there. I asked the mechanic at the independent which pump he saw leaking and it wasnt the mechanical pump. it was the electrically driven one. I could be unlucky and have the mechanical one fail of course after tomorrow but thats out of my control completely and what will happen will happen......
Thats a reasonable point to make. However, it does not address the underlying issues here. The water pump would not have been serviced whether the car was serviced at an independent or at a Skoda dealership. It doesnt get serviced; period. The same applies to the wheel bearing. Both those parts were either substandard when fitted new or were fitted poor;y or both. the car had only done 23600 miles and neither should have failed at such a low mileage as you will agree. That is, of course, why the Skoda garage offered a reduced price on the repairs even though, as I said in my post, they knew the car had not been serviced there. Incidentally, I do know how the motor trade works, i was a used car salesperson at one point in my career.
If you worked in sales then you will have absolutely no idea how 90% of a dealership works. Both items reported at your service were described as a slight leak and slight play. Would be interesting just how slight.
How can you possibly make such a claim? 90% is a figure you have conjured up, its pure fiction. I trust my independent completely, they didnt put me under any pressure, it was my decision alone to have the work done. Yes, "slight" is not quantifiable, they certainly wouldnt get better, we can agree on that much? They might have survived for quite a while or they might not. Neither the indie mechanic or you can honestly say how long such parts will last post diagnosis and it could be that I could have delayed getting the work done and thats just unknowable. I actually do have a good understanding of how a car dealership works, i have friends and family involved in the trade. Some are mechanics, one or two are general managers and some are in sales. You have made no comment at all on the kernel of this , that neither of those parts are service items irrespective of where the car was serviced:' indie or Skoda dealership and even slight leaks or slight play are simply unacceptable in a car less than 4 years old with mileage of under 24000 miles. Why else do you think that the Skoda dealership even offered a reduction on their normal prices when I i had told them upfront that the car had not been serviced by a Skoda dealership?? I have owned immumerable cars and have driven over one million miles and I have never once had even a slight leak on a waterpump reported and just once have i had a failing wg=heel bearing diagnosed.
I wasnt going to demean myself by responding to any more of your posts which are meant only to mock and to belittle. However, I must reply to your latest offering which may give you twisted pleasure but doesnt move the discussion on at all. The underlining was an error, I didnt check it before I posted. All of my points above are valid, you havent addressed any of them. I joined Briskoda because it seemed to be a good idea to get thoughts from other Fabia owners on issues that were new to me and I still think that was a good idea. I should have realised that some people do not want to share let alone help others, they engage in trolling for their own amusement, I originally posted on the unexpected problems because I genuinely thought they should not have happened on a car not 4 years old and under 24000 miles and I still think that.
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