2 1.6 16v

Worst car ive ever owned

Knowing i was going to be come a dad i needed a reliable car to get me and my family around, the 2007 skoda roomster 2 1.6 petrol 5 speed manual i purchaced is not that car, i had previously done alot of research in what car would best suit my needs in a long term reliable family car to minimize my needs to uograde in the future with decent maintenance and upkeep along with reasonable insurance and fuel consumption as i knew my daughter would have alot of medical needs once born.

This car has not been anywhere near that, i paid £1,000.00 for my skoda roomster with full skoda maintenance history and good previous history with minimal work required during its life before i bought the car and while cheap it had some blemishes and was in need of some tlc on the cosmetics along with the aircon needing regas and a good general clean.

However, 2 days of ownershil lead to a cv joint with no signs of failure locking up with my then pregnant partner in the car at a roundabout causing the finaldrive to rupture and the gearbox litterally blowing into fragments all over the road nearly ending up in us getting hit, this was how ever only the start of the cars issues to come.

Another £1,200.00 later for a new gearbox built for heavier towing, had to be built as aparently its not a skoda stocked part plus i wanted durabilityalong with a set of cv inner and outer joints and a ns drive shaft as it some how twisted the ns one in the process i thought it was over and it was just a fluke.

Oh how was i wrong, 1 month later a oil leak appeared from cylinder 1 end of the head gasket shortly to be followed by constant tempreture warning light on start up, no collant loss and no overheating of the collant so could not source why this occured.

This became a regular but due to my need for the car and other than the oil leak i got a new head gasket and both cylinder head checked and main head checked with no signs of warping or damage how ever this never fixed the issue, the timing cover gasket was also changed as a precaution but never resolved the issue either, another £1,500.00 gone.

In mid may of 2019 the car developed a new issue, air had entered the hydrolic system and since the power steering and brake system share the same hydrolic system even after 4 attemps of bleeding the system it could not be removed and ended up in failure of the power steering rack causing a significant leak from the hydrolic lines supplying the rack, new lines and fittings still never fixed the leak although have minimised the leak so only needs monthly top ups but more money lost.

In june of 2019 i was using the car regularly for motorway miles for my daughter in hospital and would put on in access of 100 miles each day which resulted in the fsr brake getting stuck on nearley causing a fire on the motorway, thankfully another motorist spotted my glowing rear disc and flagged me down, new caliper discs and pads for the rear later and thought this was sorted only to have the nsr do exactly the same how ever outside my work so the same parts again, each time had done both sides as a precaution, all supposedly skoda genuine parts.

Towards the end of july the nsr caliper sprung a leak and caused the nsr and fsf brakes to fail completly due to loss of brake pressure luckly in town so i decided to replace all calipers with those from a golf plus, not a simple swap but have had no issues since, all in all woukd say set me back around £900.00.

To add insult to injury in august while on the motorway it blew the expansion tank clean in half resulting in a almost complete loss of colent on the motorway, this lead to the car rapidly overheating and for a reason the skoda dealer the car was recovered to couldnt work out sezing of the oil pump, another £400.00 later it was back on the road.

Since then i have had the abs system fail and come back on multiple occasions, it consitantly blows coolant out of the expansion tank overflow in use and requires regular top ups on a almost daily basis, this has been found to be due to extreme pressure in the coolant system but has been confirmed not to be from blow by from a head gasket into a coolat jacket, still cant find the culprit despite 3 different skoda specalists try to diagnose the fault, the oil leak still remains a mystery and drinks on average about 2 ltrs a week despite not showing any evidence of burning any, it went through a spell of poping coil packs on average of once a week during the winter again with no diagnosable cause yet since has settled down with the warmer weather, the clutch has started slipping in 1st and 2nd yet has minimal wear to it and has been changed with no affect to clutch slip, it still does it to this day, the eletrical system is almost like the lottery as to what will work and what wont day on day, more frequently the instrument cluster is non functional than it works yet the car still starts and drives just failes to show do anything, the one thing i can commened is the air con which still blows ice cold and always works, even if the heater core has decided it no longer wants to heat up the car, which again is unexplained as this has also been bled and has no air trapped and under pressure testing passes colant fine.

If that isnt enough of a reason not to own one of these cars since febuary the central locking, alarm and imobilizer have all decided to reject both my key phobs and after having skoda reprogram the car twice it still to this day will not unlock or register either key phob meaning i have to use the door override to disable the centeral locking imobiliser and alarm and re enable it every time i use the car, which as you guessed is minimal, this has since lead to the battery failing and even with a new battery the alternator refuses to supply charge to it and even after replacing it the car will no longer charge the battery.

Given how much this car has cost me since ownership and how unreliable the car has been i can personally say it has put me off german engeniering, i might have gotten unlucky with this car but it is at a point where i am not able to afford to keep pouring money into it neither can i afford to replace it, neither could i sell the car due to how unsafe it has become given its history since i have owned the car.

I can safely say once i can afford to replace it, this skoda will see the sc*** yard as while structually it is a solid and very nice car, i do like the styling quirks and do enjoy the interior and what it has to offer, everything mechanically and electically that has failed and continues to cause me grief with this car is beyond what i am willing to tollerate with any make of car especially one from a manafactuar that is supposedly one of the most reliable in the buissness.

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