Fabia vRS 1.4 TFSI -oil usage

[Garett]

These have grabbed my attention recently and can be had for under £10k. They look like a great all rounder 180 bhp whilst still capable of 40mpg, and most importantly they are petrol.

Having had a bit of a read they tend to drink a lot of oil, and 1 litre every 1000 miles is deemed acceptable by Skoda! Fully synth at around £10 a litre isn't cheap if they really do drink that much.
I'm guessing it's because its quite a highly tuned engine 180bhp from a 1.4 is quite impressive.

Does anyone have experience of these either first hand or the general reputation of them in the trade?

[Dave Hedgehog]

OH has the polo GTi version of it

and yes it eats oil, it was dire to start off (9ltrs in first 8k miles) with but after reading some forum recommendations the car was given 30 minutes of very hard driving which greatly improved the oil consumption, about 200ml per 1000 miles atm with 30k on the clock

VW where not interested so we just live with it (appalling service, wont get another one)


it is a great engine thou, pulls away like a jet the second you breath on the throttle, and we get 42mpg out of it and she does hustle it about

Edited by Dave Hedgehog on Thursday 16th January 11:48

[Garett]

Thanks for the reply, I'm glad to here yours settled down after a good thrash. 42mpg is quite astonishing given the performance, official is 45mpg so I'd have expected closer to 40 at best!

[thatdude]

So is the oil usage due to too gentle running-in?

[lewisf182]

The 1.4T Mito is often overlooked but I think its a cracking car for under £10k, will remap close to 180bhp and doesn't have the oil issues the VAG 1.4T has, plus the Mito looks miiiilesss better than the fabia.

[Dave Hedgehog]

thatdude said:

So is the oil usage due to too gentle running-in?

my understanding is that the scoring on the liners is quite rough/heavy for some reason, this means the bedding the engine in gentle does not form a good seal, driving it hard makes it a lot better

im not a tech and have no way to prove that this is true, but it did improve ours quite a bit

you maybe able to find a polo for around 10k, they are pretty much MK2 golf GTi's in style

[Silvertop_John]

Plenty of discussion on this topic over on Briskoda. Mrs Silvertop has one of these, and adores it. However, it did suffer from excessive oil consumption (certainly more than 1 litre per thousand miles!), but Skoda replaced the engine under warranty. In the 3,000 miles since then I've put in about a litre of oil in total, so quite happy with that.

I have no data to go on, but it wouldn't surprise me if there are a considerable number of cars out there now with replacement engines - certainly there was no long battle with Skoda to get a new engine...

[kambites]

Even if it's as bad as 1 litre per thousand miles, you'd be looking at ~1p/mile. That's not very much compared to other running costs!

Our 2.0TFSI uses around one litre per 5000 miles which seems pretty typical. I don't know if the 1.4 is worse, though.

[mikey k]

thatdude said:

So is the oil usage due to too gentle running-in?

Nope
I have two friends who both bough new Polo GTi's (using the same logic as above) both were thrashed from day one.
One was using 1.5 litres a week on short commutes, the other need a new engine after 2k miles!
The later chopped it in for a Polo GT blue motion which is far better and nearly as quick.

[mikey k]

kambites said:

Even if it's as bad as 1 litre per thousand miles, you'd be looking at ~1p/mile. That's not very much compared to other running costs!

Our 2.0TFSI uses around one litre per 5000 miles which seems pretty typical. I don't know if the 1.4 is worse, though.

The 1.4 is A LOT worse, see my other post
My 2.0TSFI hasn't used a bit in 28k miles

[sjg]

2.5 litres of topups in just under 36000 miles for me. I'm sure some people don't follow the oil level check process in the manual and overfill so they convince themselves it uses more than it does.

Averaging about 36mpg, but I do live in London so spend more time than many people in traffic. http://www.fuelly.com/driver/kiteless/fabia-vrs

Will be getting rid soon, but not because there's anything wrong with it - in fact, most reliable car I've owned by some stretch. Haven't even needed to get dealers to do any little warranty bits when it's in for service.

[daydotz]

The fuel consumption was the one thing I couldn't fault 37-45mpg it managed the estimated range I sort of miss my polo Gti

[Dave Hedgehog]

sjg said:

2.5 litres of topups in just under 36000 miles for me. I'm sure some people don't follow the oil level check process in the manual and overfill so they convince themselves it uses more than it does.

Averaging about 36mpg, but I do live in London so spend more time than many people in traffic. http://www.fuelly.com/driver/kiteless/fabia-vrs

Will be getting rid soon, but not because there's anything wrong with it - in fact, most reliable car I've owned by some stretch. Haven't even needed to get dealers to do any little warranty bits when it's in for service.

to be fair to them, ours is just about to go out of its 3 year warranty and with over 30k on it and the only thing its had done under warranty was a new fuse for the horn

so apart from the oil we have had toyota like reliability out of it

[Garett]

So it seems if it was a problem its probably been fixed under warranty or righted itself once run in. Whats the bork factor potential on these, quite a lot to go wrong but they seem fairly robust so far.

[TonyTony]

I'v got the Ibiza with the detuned engine in it, I do well below average mileage but my oil has never needed topping up.