Fabia dashboard warning lights

[JulietRomeo]

Hello chaps, chapesses,

So I was all set to sell my mums Skoda Fabia earlier this month but its decided to throw a wobbly the day before I placed an advert. The car is a 2003 1.4 Classic model and done 28k miles.

The first dashboard warning light came on and it was the airbag light , wasn't anything I could do about it , so I continued on the journey, but 20 mins later the Oil, ABS, handbrake/brakes and power steering lights all came on, the rev counter needle dropped to zero rpm,the temp gauge dropped to zero and I lost headlights and indicators. The engine continued to run fine with no apparent loss in power, radio was fine too, steering slightly heavier. I stopped as soon as I could find a safe place to stop about a 60 seconds up the road.
Once stopped I turned the engine off, waited 30 seconds, and restarted. Hey presto all warning lights cleared aside from the airbag light which remains.

The warning lights have appeared again a couple of times, but clear of their own accord sometimes after a engine restart.
Has anybody had a similar experience or can point me in the right direction of whats failed? I've read of a few issues to do with steering angle sensors however those have only been for 1 or 2 of the above warnings… not for all 5 or 6 of them.
Thankyou in advance for any replies, tried posting this on Briskoda Fabia forum but didnt get a reply..

Thanks
Jr

[KevinA4quattro]

If the car is not used often I would try recharging the battery, it could be a bit flat.

[JulietRomeo]

Thanks Kevin. The warning lights came on about 60 minutes into a brisk motorway run, and after stopping to clear the errors , there was another good 90 minutes of motorway running. If the battery is low, should the warning lights not have been on from the very start of the journey and not a decent chunk of time afterwards by which time the alternator should have had a chance to do its thing?

I'll certainly borrow a charger off a friend and report back.

Anyone else experienced this with their VAG motor?

[KevinA4quattro]

Hmm, if it is electrical it could be alternator issues, is the drive belt tensioned correctly.

[TDIfurby]

Dodgy convenience module? I've had it on mine when I've been on a trip, but from the start there's been no mph readout, fuel needle varies quite a bit, and the car beeps at me. It is a very rare occurrence thankfully but when it happens my VCDS always has a fault about couldn't communicate with the convenience module.

[JulietRomeo]

Hmmn, yes the car did beep at me, had totally forgotten that piece of infomration ! The mph and fuel readings remained correct though.
Drove her last night on a 30 min trip and the only light on display was the airbag one. Will check the belt tension / battery output etc on the weekend in glorius daylight hours. Mate of mine reckons the airbag lights is caused by some loose wiring under the drivers seat which happened to him in his Golf. I'll have a looksie to see if anythings viewable to the eye under the seat.

[KevinA4quattro]

Good luck with it, random gremlins are often difficult to pin down.

[Hertz32]

I know this was a while ago, but my wife's car is doing the exact same thing, including lighting the Airbag light. It is a 2007 Fabia 2 1.2 HTP 70 hatchback.

A possible contributory factor might be that the driver's door window regulator appeared to fail at the same time. The mirrors still work, so not the comfort module and the passenger door switch operates the passenger window OK.

I checked the battery terminals and they were fine, but I replaced the battery anyway as it was about 10 years old. So far the weird electrical symptoms have not recurred since I changed the battery, but the symptoms are intermittent so this could be a coincidence.

Does anyone know if a failing window regulator could produce these symptoms? If so I just need to change the part, and use a VCDS to check and cancel the Airbus light.

[FiF]

Good luck, don't wish to depress you but I had years of constantly chasing spurious instrument cluster warning lights in an 02 Fabia. It never failed to run, sometimes I could track it to a failed component, sometimes to a dodgy connector, sometimes nothing at all and a reset would clear it. Occasionally a battery charge seemed to help, though not convinced that was anything other than coincidence. The one I couldn't clear involved some strange combination of temperature / cooling level / fuel gauge inop and just could not cure it. Advice from a decent outfit eventually advised a repair, with no guarantee of course, that was not far off the value of the car. So I ran it another three/ four years with this fault, chasing other faults as and when they cropped up. Fifteen years old, just fixed one fault, and a week later the engine management light came on and on a fit of pique gave it away as just done with it. It sat in the corner of the local indy with the apprentice working on it for weeks, goodness knows what that would have cost me in labour. They now lend it out to customers as a loan car if they're really stuck for transport.

[Hertz32]

That is depressing. It happened again last night, so definitely not the battery or a loose terminal.

I'll let Skoda pour over it.

[Hertz32]

It's been with Skoda now for a couple of weeks. They have tried a replacement dashboard card, but that had no effect.
Could this be an intermittent short in the fuse box?

[FiF]

One of the faults with mine was due to poor drainage from the plenum chamber. Part of the loom goes through there, sits in water and gets saturated, it wicks along the loom and all sorts of issues start. It's a known problem, not just Fabia, either.

Opened up the loom, dried it out and that helped quite a bit, but tbh once that has happened you're into chasing your tail as above. The absolute cure is to replace the loom apparently. You can splice new section(s) in but labour intensive. A new loom is not cheap, used ones from breakers are most likely to suffer from same issues.

Proverbial pain in the arse bit of design frankly.

[Hertz32]

Skoda have replaced the dash card and that seems to have worked. Not cheap!

[FiF]

Hertz32 said:

Skoda have replaced the dash card and that seems to have worked. Not cheap!

Glad it's sorted, imagine if they offered that solution on a 12ish year old car, with no guarantee of fixing it, as in we could try this but...

[Hertz32]

Thanks, now I only need to get the radio back out of SAFE mode without knowing the code.

I checked with VCDS reader, but in the Radio module it was not clear if I could change the code to a new one, or just enter the original. Anyone know?