2016 Skoda Fabia
Discussion
So after years of riding bikes and doing things like this;
I ended up crashing at Cadwell on Easter Sunday which in itself wasn't that bad but the ball ache of getting the bike back to Leeds was a pain in the arse due to having no car license so I couldn't just hire a van and get it back. I'd always wanted a car but the cost had always put me off but the crash was enough for me to decide to finally get my test done.
So I started my lessons and started to look at cars. I had planned to get something for under a grand as my first car as I just wanted something cheap however due to points on my license and previous claims anything in that price bracket was at least 4 times the value of the car to insure! I'd once again resigned myself to the fact that it would be too expensive for me to get a car. Then one day I decided to see how much something new would cost to insure to see if it was any better and luckily it was! Rather than looking at 4 grand to insure a car it came down to 1 which was manageable so the hunt was on. I knew I didn't want something tiny as I would have to keep it for a while so I was looking at small hatchbacks like the Suzuki Swift and the usual Fiesta's and Corsa's etc.
A quick look around the dealers at what deals could be done and what spec I wanted and I ended up with this;
A Skoda Fabia SEL 1.2 TSI. This fitted everything I wanted as well as being one of the cheapest cars I could find to insure as well as having a decent engine with 110bhp rather than the usual small car 70-80bhp. I've had it for 3 weeks now and I'm getting on well with it having covered 1500 miles including a weekend in wales which I had a good drive round the evo triangle.
I've been impressed with how it drives, it's nowhere near as fast as the bikes but it's quick enough for day to day driving and handles well apart from there's quite a bit of body roll due to how high it sits. It's not been an issue though and like the ride height especially when driving quick on bumpy roads as it just soaks them up and I don't have to worry about scraping the underside of the car. Inside it's a nice place to be with plenty of toys to play with including apple car play, cruise control, climate control, Auto lights and wipers.
Overall I'm happy with it and it'll be nice not to have to go through another winter freezing on the bike!
I ended up crashing at Cadwell on Easter Sunday which in itself wasn't that bad but the ball ache of getting the bike back to Leeds was a pain in the arse due to having no car license so I couldn't just hire a van and get it back. I'd always wanted a car but the cost had always put me off but the crash was enough for me to decide to finally get my test done.
So I started my lessons and started to look at cars. I had planned to get something for under a grand as my first car as I just wanted something cheap however due to points on my license and previous claims anything in that price bracket was at least 4 times the value of the car to insure! I'd once again resigned myself to the fact that it would be too expensive for me to get a car. Then one day I decided to see how much something new would cost to insure to see if it was any better and luckily it was! Rather than looking at 4 grand to insure a car it came down to 1 which was manageable so the hunt was on. I knew I didn't want something tiny as I would have to keep it for a while so I was looking at small hatchbacks like the Suzuki Swift and the usual Fiesta's and Corsa's etc.
A quick look around the dealers at what deals could be done and what spec I wanted and I ended up with this;
A Skoda Fabia SEL 1.2 TSI. This fitted everything I wanted as well as being one of the cheapest cars I could find to insure as well as having a decent engine with 110bhp rather than the usual small car 70-80bhp. I've had it for 3 weeks now and I'm getting on well with it having covered 1500 miles including a weekend in wales which I had a good drive round the evo triangle.
I've been impressed with how it drives, it's nowhere near as fast as the bikes but it's quick enough for day to day driving and handles well apart from there's quite a bit of body roll due to how high it sits. It's not been an issue though and like the ride height especially when driving quick on bumpy roads as it just soaks them up and I don't have to worry about scraping the underside of the car. Inside it's a nice place to be with plenty of toys to play with including apple car play, cruise control, climate control, Auto lights and wipers.
Overall I'm happy with it and it'll be nice not to have to go through another winter freezing on the bike!
Thanks for the comments guys. Only change I made was the headlight bulbs as the standard ones are crap. Halfords all weather upgrade bulbs are a favourite of mine as they are brighter and more yellow which I find easier to see at night. I've just been enjoying the car so far including a blast round one of my favourite routes in the dales yesterday. The car was a bit dirty so I gave it a good clean polish and wax.
Quite a bit of brake dust after yesterday's run.
Unfortunately it was getting dark by the time I'd finished
Quite a bit of brake dust after yesterday's run.
Unfortunately it was getting dark by the time I'd finished
Thought I’d update this thread as things have progressed now. For just under 2 years the car stayed standard bar a tuning box. No real stories of any note, it’s just been a good daily driver as you’d expect.
This year things changed. I haven’t done that many bike trackdays since crashing and was getting the itch again. I’d managed to convince a mate to take his 1.0 polo on track and we had a right laugh despite going very slowly all day. That got me thinking about doing track days in the Fabia but didn’t do much about it.
In August I won a place on the Hyundai Nth degree experience. This was a great day testing the new i30N. I came away thinking I don’t want a car with that much power but with a few mods I’d enjoy the Fabia on track but still be able to drive it daily and retain the low running costs. I had looked at cheap cars to take on track but again insurance was ridiculous at around 3 times the price of the Skoda for a car worth a tenth of the value.
This all coincided with a new job and some spare cash so I looked at suspension options. As you can see in the first post the ride height on a standard Fabia is stupidly high. This equates to some silly body roll when you start pushing it. I didn’t want cheapo coilovers that just end up being rock hard and ruin the ride and spending £1500 on some KW’s didn’t appeal either. In the end I went for Koni yellow sport dampers and eibach lowering springs. Not a major drop, just 30mm but enough to stop the car looking like it was on stilts. The advantage to the Koni’s is the adjustable rebound damping meaning I can change the set up reasonably easily.
When I got the suspension fitted, it was awful and I thought I’d ruined the car. It was so hard and jiggly even the smoothest of roads was awful. This turned out to be two things, the springs hadn’t settled yet and there was too much damping at standard settings. The springs sorted themselves out over the next few days and I played around with the damping over the next few weeks before I got what I wanted.
I’d booked a trackday at Blyton Park a few days after having the suspension fitted. In preparation for this I changed the standard brake pads to before yellowstuff and changed the brake fluid.
The track day was great. It was a low numbers day and I think about 10 people in total turned up so there was plenty of space on track. I found that the car was very similarly matched to many of the MX5’s that were there in particular a mk1 that we must have been lapping within tenths of each other all day. We had several sessions of chasing each other then swapping positions and doing the same again. Here’s one of the videos of the day; https://youtu.be/B8LpDjWdBJc
One of the nice touches of a low numbers day was everyone talking to each other. I was helping out the guy who I was chasing with suspension set up and another guy there let me take his MX5 out for a few laps which was great fun. I enjoyed just how pointy the MX5 was. This was the video of my session in that car; https://youtu.be/iF2rcjdGCcI
The Skoda was brilliant on the track day to be fair. Not the fastest thing but good fun and reliable. The only issue I had was the brake pedal getting mushy towards the end of the day as I’d been out too long in reality. Otherwise it was solid. There were a couple of things I wanted to improve though. It still understeered through the higher speed corners and the Dunlop Sportmaxx tyres weren’t bad but they weren’t great either.
After that I fitted an H&R rear anti roll bar. This made a massive difference maybe even more so than the suspension. It has cured a lot of the understeer and can provide some good lift off oversteer fun if provoked!
Next was tyres. As you can see from the first post the car came on 16 inch wheels. I’ve always liked them but they are a bit of a funny tyre size and the tyres on offer are all at least a generation behind. I turned to looking at 17 inch wheels for tyre choice, to reduce the amount of sidewall and the fact that tyres are cheaper.
I had initially ordered some ATS Streetrallye wheels.
Unfortunately the place I bought them from only sent me 3 and couldn’t get hold of a 4th. I managed to get a refund and started looking again.
I’ve always liked OZ Superturismo’s having seen them of various race cars over the years and of course putting them on loads of cars on Gran Turismo and Forza. They were nearly twice the price of the ATS wheels but I am happy with them.
I had looked at more track orientated tyres such as AD08R’s but decided in the end I would go for a decent road tyre. I fitted some Goodyear Eagle F1 AS3’s as these would be fine on the road without too much noise and as the car isn’t very fast they will cope on track easily enough. As the wheels are a different offset to standard it has widened the track about 16mm which does appear to help keep the inside wheel from spinning up in sharp corners along with the extra grip from the new tyres.
So the car now looks like this;
Plans are for some small power gains with an exhaust and remap then pretty much just continue to use it. Having seen various project cars over the year I don’t want to turn it into an all out track car. I have considered some proper bucket seats but don’t want to start making he car uncomfortable for when it’s on the road. I had the car aligned at BRAM Racing in Castleford yesterday, there’s not a lot you can adjust alignment wise but the suspension drop has increased the camber nicely to 1 degree and the front wheels have a little bit of toe in.
I’m going to take the car to Blyton Park again next weekend and see how the most recent mods have made a difference.
This year things changed. I haven’t done that many bike trackdays since crashing and was getting the itch again. I’d managed to convince a mate to take his 1.0 polo on track and we had a right laugh despite going very slowly all day. That got me thinking about doing track days in the Fabia but didn’t do much about it.
In August I won a place on the Hyundai Nth degree experience. This was a great day testing the new i30N. I came away thinking I don’t want a car with that much power but with a few mods I’d enjoy the Fabia on track but still be able to drive it daily and retain the low running costs. I had looked at cheap cars to take on track but again insurance was ridiculous at around 3 times the price of the Skoda for a car worth a tenth of the value.
This all coincided with a new job and some spare cash so I looked at suspension options. As you can see in the first post the ride height on a standard Fabia is stupidly high. This equates to some silly body roll when you start pushing it. I didn’t want cheapo coilovers that just end up being rock hard and ruin the ride and spending £1500 on some KW’s didn’t appeal either. In the end I went for Koni yellow sport dampers and eibach lowering springs. Not a major drop, just 30mm but enough to stop the car looking like it was on stilts. The advantage to the Koni’s is the adjustable rebound damping meaning I can change the set up reasonably easily.
When I got the suspension fitted, it was awful and I thought I’d ruined the car. It was so hard and jiggly even the smoothest of roads was awful. This turned out to be two things, the springs hadn’t settled yet and there was too much damping at standard settings. The springs sorted themselves out over the next few days and I played around with the damping over the next few weeks before I got what I wanted.
I’d booked a trackday at Blyton Park a few days after having the suspension fitted. In preparation for this I changed the standard brake pads to before yellowstuff and changed the brake fluid.
The track day was great. It was a low numbers day and I think about 10 people in total turned up so there was plenty of space on track. I found that the car was very similarly matched to many of the MX5’s that were there in particular a mk1 that we must have been lapping within tenths of each other all day. We had several sessions of chasing each other then swapping positions and doing the same again. Here’s one of the videos of the day; https://youtu.be/B8LpDjWdBJc
One of the nice touches of a low numbers day was everyone talking to each other. I was helping out the guy who I was chasing with suspension set up and another guy there let me take his MX5 out for a few laps which was great fun. I enjoyed just how pointy the MX5 was. This was the video of my session in that car; https://youtu.be/iF2rcjdGCcI
The Skoda was brilliant on the track day to be fair. Not the fastest thing but good fun and reliable. The only issue I had was the brake pedal getting mushy towards the end of the day as I’d been out too long in reality. Otherwise it was solid. There were a couple of things I wanted to improve though. It still understeered through the higher speed corners and the Dunlop Sportmaxx tyres weren’t bad but they weren’t great either.
After that I fitted an H&R rear anti roll bar. This made a massive difference maybe even more so than the suspension. It has cured a lot of the understeer and can provide some good lift off oversteer fun if provoked!
Next was tyres. As you can see from the first post the car came on 16 inch wheels. I’ve always liked them but they are a bit of a funny tyre size and the tyres on offer are all at least a generation behind. I turned to looking at 17 inch wheels for tyre choice, to reduce the amount of sidewall and the fact that tyres are cheaper.
I had initially ordered some ATS Streetrallye wheels.
Unfortunately the place I bought them from only sent me 3 and couldn’t get hold of a 4th. I managed to get a refund and started looking again.
I’ve always liked OZ Superturismo’s having seen them of various race cars over the years and of course putting them on loads of cars on Gran Turismo and Forza. They were nearly twice the price of the ATS wheels but I am happy with them.
I had looked at more track orientated tyres such as AD08R’s but decided in the end I would go for a decent road tyre. I fitted some Goodyear Eagle F1 AS3’s as these would be fine on the road without too much noise and as the car isn’t very fast they will cope on track easily enough. As the wheels are a different offset to standard it has widened the track about 16mm which does appear to help keep the inside wheel from spinning up in sharp corners along with the extra grip from the new tyres.
So the car now looks like this;
Plans are for some small power gains with an exhaust and remap then pretty much just continue to use it. Having seen various project cars over the year I don’t want to turn it into an all out track car. I have considered some proper bucket seats but don’t want to start making he car uncomfortable for when it’s on the road. I had the car aligned at BRAM Racing in Castleford yesterday, there’s not a lot you can adjust alignment wise but the suspension drop has increased the camber nicely to 1 degree and the front wheels have a little bit of toe in.
I’m going to take the car to Blyton Park again next weekend and see how the most recent mods have made a difference.
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