nocomp

Hi

Hope somebody can advise me

I have a 1997 (P reg) 1.3 skoda felica 3 weeks ago an electrical wire chaffed against the bulkhead and caused lots of smoke in the car!!!

After 3 weeks, the local skoda dealer is offering 2 ways to get my car back on the road

1. replace just the 1 wire that melted, and blew the alternator - not a recommernded skoda way of doing things

2. replace the whole wiring lomb (30 wires) cost estinate £1000+!!

so for 1 wire rubbing ( and dont know why after 7 years it suddenly started and did its damage in about 30 seconds) I look like facing an extremekly large bill ( plus an up to 3 week wait for the lomb if i go for that option)

So... views / advice please - which way should I go , are there any other options?

many thanks in advance

cheers

nocomp

Stimps

Welcome to Briskoda, nocomp! Shame your first post is about something so costly!

I'd imagine Big K would be able to fill you in the associated risks, etc of just replacing the one wire vs the whole lot.

Personally, I'd go for the single wire job, but insist that the dealer gives you some kind of assurance that doing so will correctly rectify the problem and stop it happening again. That may or may not give you some form of recourse if the worst happens, but should give you some peace of mind.

Either that or look at trading in the Felicia for a fabia - if you're going to have to stump up a grand or so, you might as well look at getting a slightly newer model.

Just my £0.02 / humble opinion....

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Steve
« Nature Green 1.4 16v Fabia Comfort »

KLB

Welcome to Briskoda, nocomp.

I'm no expert, but I wouldn't be happy with just replacing the single wire.

If the chafed wire got hot enough to smoke badly, it's probably affected the insulation around the other wires in the loom - either by softening it or by degrading it chemically. Either way, you're likely to have another failure in the future.

By all means go for a single-wire replacement as a temporary solution, but I'd recommend getting the whole loom stripped out and replaced in the near future.

How much of the estimated cost is for the new wiring, and how much is labour? If the wiring is a substantial proportion, it might be worth searching around the local breakers' yards, to see if you can get a second-hand wiring loom.

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Mike

nocomp

Hi

thanks for kind words and advice

Dealer has replace wire and says all is OK - will find out on Monday when I collect car!!!

thanks again for help

nocomp

nocomp

Hi

the price for my burnt wire is

1 new altanator
and
1 wire replaced

£600 !!

Hope nothing really serious ever goes wrong with it!!!

nocomp

nocomp

Hi

Well my problem was:

A wire from the brake fluid sensor to the dashboard light chaffed, shorted and melted its entire length (4 metres?)

the alternator overcharged the battery, causing it to boil and spil acid water into the car (battery had extra distilled water put in and now all is OK!!?!!)

There is no fuse anywhere on this wire!. When I asked why - the guy who performed the work says - dont know - there never appears to have been one there at all (from new)

So my message to Felicia owners is - be aware - there are live wires in your engine bay that can cause major costs if anything untoward happens to them

If the car was still being made I would be asking for this to be reported as a design flaw

cheers

nocomp

Stuart_J

Note to anyone who has similar problems, I had a collegue who had a loom burn out on a Renault & managed to get if covered by the FIRE part of his third Party Fire & theft Insurance. He argued that if he hadnt taken action to stop the problem getting worse (disconected the battery) the whole car could possibly have burnt out & after all it was a fire

S

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