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Wed 6 Sep 2006 20:35

Electrical problems Skoda Fabia tdi - malteser

I have a Fabia 1.9tdi, first registered in early 2001. Always main dealer (VW) serviced with 100.000KM on the clock.

I am currently suffering from electrical problems, the most annoying of which is loss of power steering! When this happens, several symptons may occur. If at night, with headlights on, they dim for a moment and the PAS fails. At other times the PAS just fails, only accompanied by the warning light and alert buzzer. Immediate cure is to stop & re-start the engine, when all is OK until the next time. This next time could be from three hours to three weeks via three days!

Other symptoms are the ABS and ASR lights illuminating momentarliy, central locking not working properly - not always with PAS failure!

In early May this year my VW dealer diagnosed the PAS problem as a faulty steering angle sensor which was duly replaced. 5 kilometers down the road, the PAS failed again. Driving back to the dealer with no PAS I expostulated (!) leaving the engine running as I knew the problem would go away if I stopped it.
After head scratching they decided that the fault lay in a damaged electrical lead from the battery to somewhere?, replaced it and all seemed well.
We drove to the UK & back, 6000 km inc. running around there and happily tootled around locally here for a total of about 10,000km since the "fix" until the problem re-surfaced a week or so ago.
Fault codes do not seem to help as they only record the event, not its basic cause (as far as I can make out)

Any ideas?

Roger. (Costa del Sol, España)

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Thu 7 Sep 2006 11:38

Electrical problems Skoda Fabia tdi - Deryck Tintagel

There have been several threads on PAS / electrical problems on the Fabia. Searching the Technical Forum with Fabia as a keyword will throw up a lot of information.

My father's car had a simliar problem with PAS failing and included lights flickering. He was told that it was the alternator over-charging. Other possible causes appear to be steering sensors or possibly grounding problems - check that the main battery and PAS earth connections are secure.

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