Fabia rally car build.NOW TDI POWER PAGE 4.

[felicia16v]

Hi guys I thought I would start this as I am building a Fabia for stage rallying, I'll sort some pics out soon.
basics
take 1 fabia 1.4MPI in white with blown headgasket.
add 1 sparco rollcage.

and a polo gti AVY 1.6 16 vvt engine and mate it with the MPI gearbox (which is by far the best box to use out of the petrol fabia box's btw)
mix in some decent suspension and vrs brakes and see what we have.
so far the cage is done and I'm at the stage of chopping the dash to fit around it, I have an engine along with the ecu and polo loom,immo box and key so its just a matter of comparing the polo ecu pin outs with the skoda ones (thanks here to Techi who sent me the whole fabia wiring schematics ) so it should run as standard for now until I have sorted a the rest of the car and they engine is 125 bhp standard so a good start.
I already have front suspension legs from my felicia rally car so they will be adapted to suit and have some spax from a mk2 golf that look ok for the rear with a bit of messing with.
I have vrs front calipers and disks BUT can't find any front hubs anywhere, bought a pair that were supposed to be fabia but are actually octavia ones .
that will do for now as pics tell a thousand words..

Edited 30 October, 2013 by felicia16v

[Trev.]

Subscribed?

That engine from a lupo gti?

[felicia16v]

mine is from a polo gti as the lupo block is different and wouldn't mate with the fabia gearbox's

[BossFox]

Sounds interesting, I'll keep an eye on this.

[softscoop]

This is interesting.

Definitely going to watch this one

[connor-smith]

Good luck!

[felicia16v]

There won't be much progress on this for a week as my missus is in hospital till 30th so im having to get home to let my dogs out etc in the evening, but all the bits are coming together nicely, I have a steel sump to replace the alloy one on the avy and have got a paddle clutch being made this week so once I get my flywheel in a lathe to lighten it and modify it for the uprated pressure plate I can get the engine in the car. 1st event for is planned to be brean stages at the end of Jan so plenty of time yet ;-)

[joe_vrs_tdi]

nice to see something different. very interested to see the end results. i follow the rallys around south wales but might cross the water to brean to see this in action. good luck with it all and i will be following closley like many others i bet.

[felicia16v]

Back on it now, cage is going in for final fitting then its a case of getting the dash back in which looks to be a good challenge with the cutting out for the cage legs :S .

Fitted a powerflex bush to the gearbox lower mount (and using a TDI mount too as they are much thicker) and I have the paddle clutch hopefully being made this week, I have to get the flywheel on a lathe and remove some excess weight from it and machine it for the competition pressure plate to fit properly then the engine can go in. pics tomorrow as long as I remember lol its going to be a busy day.

[felicia16v]

Actually got done what I needed to today, my partner is back home from hospital so I'm allowed out to play again

started with removing the cage again and removing the sound deadening tar stuff from the front foot wells.

thats from both footwells and is around 3KG but more importantly its not going to cause any more hassle down the line when it rubs thru from feet etc and the floor is nice and smooth now.

that took around 3 hours with 2 of us, 1 heating it up with a hot air gun and one scraping with a paint scraper not a nice job to do and there is a bit of cleaning with thinners left to do in places.

view from the rear with cage loose fitted.

finally got the cage fully bolted in along with the dashboard which was a bit of a mare to cut to shape where the cage passes thru it and I have a slightly bigger hole in it than I hoped for but there is no other way of doing it .

Also went to the Cobra seats place yesterday for the xmas sale they have and came away with 2 of these http://www.motorsportseats.com/cobra/monaco_pro.html

2 sets of side mounts and 2 sets of belts all for £470 so very happy with that when the same seats in demon tweeks are £205 EACH and the mounts are another £60 per seat and belts £140 I recon I had a bargain and also can't recommend Cobra enough they gave good advice and were well up for a bit of bartering and have some very nice products there at the shop (which is where they actually make the seats too).

this week will hopefully see the engine loom getting connected to the fabia wiring so maybe not many pictures but lots of swearing as I can see it being the biggest challenge so far

[vRS19TD]

Nice to see something like this happening. Will be following with interest.

[NathanBigBoy]

Hi There

This does look interesting and from what I can see you know your way around VAG cars and what fits with what. Many years ago my mate built a Impreza chassis into a Rover 200 shell with a Vauxhall 2.0L Cosworth head engine - different.

I wish you the very best with this one and will follow with interest as the months go by

I used to follow rallies in the group B years and did some assisting on the then RAC rally for Chester Motor club and it's always good to see a privateer cracking on with it. well done that man.

All the very best

Ian

[Matty]

You've made a good start, I'll look forward to the future updates!

[felicia16v]

Yea nothing doing tonite but I have all the wiring schematics for both engines now so hopefully its a case of cutting and joining wires and sorting the immob out mainly as the rest of the build should be fairly straightforward with VAG parts bin raiding and bits I already have (suspension for the front is off my old 2.0 felicia and will adapt to fit etc).

Skint now tho and still need to buy vrs front hubs and a few other goodies yet .

[felicia16v]

not much progress this week, I've spent the last 3 evenings making lots of swarf..

I needed to machine the flywheel on the pressure plate mounting face by 8mm to fit the clutch to it as there is not as much room inside a fabia 8v bellhousing compared to the felicia one which sadly means my sachs sporting competition pressure plate won't fit so plan B is to use the fabia 8v one and try to find a heavy duty one for it as there will be nearly twice the power going thru it once its working.

its my milling machine but I bought it as a big toy (2 tons worth lol) I have no engineering training but muddle my way thru it mostly.

[NoSmokeNoPoke]

Awesome DIY work! Keep the pics coming

[Titanium_Man]

I love reading threads/builds like this, love it!

Good luck, hope all pans out and looking forward to the end result

[felicia16v]

Ok no pics today but the flywheel is all done and ready to send off for balancing, we did a dummy run of bolting the fabia gearbox up to the AVY engine and it all fits nicely now, I had to do a bit of grinding on the spacer plate as the drive flange of the os shaft fouled it a bit.

We then got a bit carried away and tried the engine and box in the car and it all fits like it should do, the engine mount will need a slight mod if I keep it as the engine is closer to the chassis rail due to the spacer plate which means the engine mount has a bit of stress on it at the mo but I plan to make my own solid ones anyway.

basically just made it heavier to bloody push in and out of the workshop now lol

[felicia16v]

just a few piccies from over the weekend and tonite,

removed 2.5Kg from the felicia 1.6 flywheel and made the fabia pressure plate fit ok..

the flywheel went for balancing today and I was happy to find it was only slightly out and that was because of some origional drillings for dowels that were there

felicia 1.6 adaptor plate fitted to AVY 16v block with slight modification for crank sensor and to be able to remove the sump without splitting the plate from the engine

..

We got the flywheel fitted tonite and the gearbox back in but the next problem is there is not enough space for the plastic thermostat housing AND the gearchange cables so one of them has to be modified to make it work, :wall: I didn't get any pics of the engine on the car but will do tomorrow while I figure out my next step with the cables etc..

[felicia16v]

Sorted the thermostat/gearchange interface problem by cutting the stat housing in half it all fits now so I started on the loom and cross referencing wiring pins in the ecu multi plug against schematics for both the fabia and the polo gti and after a bit of head scratching worked out that the fabia car to ecu plug has the same pin arrangement as the polo one BUT the wires are different bloody colours so they go to the same pins.

plugged the ecu on and connected VAGCOM to the car to find that it all looks good and all I need to do now is get the pin code from the polo immob box so I can match the fabia dash to it hopefully. it now runs for 2 seconds before the immob kills it so I'm happy as that saved a weeks worth of wiring...

Just incase anyone is interested, the fabia 16v wiring loom pins are completly different to the polo one but the 8v fabia is the same

[felicia16v]

Anyway it LIVES!!!!!!!!! I have temp mounted the polo immob box in the engine bay and wired it roughly into the loom and it now starts and drives B)

but, it won't start if the dash panel is connected due to the immob corrupting the signal which is a pain but something I think I can get round...

celebratory beer time now more tomorrow .

[waool1988]

Congratulations

[felicia16v]

1st road test tonite a nice steady 3 miles just to check clutch operation and all the driveline etc..

she absolutely flies but with the rain we have had there are big puddles everywhere so we went fairly steady, I have finished the engine wiring loom off now and just have the immob box to rewire under the dash, fitted the areocatches into the bonnet which took around 2 hours to do a nice job.

There is a lot of little jobs left to do yet under the bonnet but I was waiting until I have some miles under its belt before doing the final tidying as don't forget this is a £200 ebay engine which I've not even had the sump off of yet ,

suspension and brakes next and an MOT before I start on making the exhaust and engine mounts...

[TeflonTom]

alright jimbo, i've only just seen this thread.. top notch work mate, good engine choice that, means you can run in a super 1600 group??

[felicia16v]

Afternoon Tom, yes I'll be in the 1401 >1600 class now with it so plenty of competition around but mostly with 170 bhp + motors and proper gearboxes so I'm not expecting much lol but it seems quite rapid so should be a laugh. Afh head next maybe ,;-)