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Felly Fav and Trum. *Wanna see a fupped gearbox?*


Yoss

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Yes, most cars seem to have them in the block not the head. And being so high up the oil was going through the gap in the manifold then spreading out and going in all directions depending on which way it was parked. Sometimes it would leave a pool on the left, sometimes the right, sometimes both making it very hard to trace.

 

I blame Volkswagen entirely. I'm constantly scouring the Felicia marketplace to look for a better one than mine but with a 1300 engine but they're not really out there any more. There are currently only two on ebay, they are becoming as scarse as the Favorit.

 

I want a pre facelift 1300 in GLX trim with low mileage in mint condition in Atlantic Green. It's not too much to ask is it? I'll keep looking.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Well it's finally happened. For a couple of days there were no Felicia's on ebay, though one has appeared today (not including pick ups which seem to be hanging on better than the cars mainly due to them being swept up in the veedub scene because of the Caddy).

 

They've been slowly dwindling but this is the first time I've seen none at all. I keep scouring the ads in case a better one than mine turns up but it never does.

 

Funnily enough there were more Favorits than Felicias (ie one) on ebay yesterday and I've shamelessly pinched these pictures off his advert. He's gone for some arty shots which look good but don't really show the car in detail.

 

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I don't know where this is but I like the way the tunnel is the same shape as the Fav! The listing says London, anyone any idea where this is?

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So, MOT time for the Favorit again and annoyingly my friendly local MOT tester managed to poke a hole in my car in the inner wing.

 

As far as I can tell it is the first welding it has needed (though there is some filler in the wings). It's only a small hole and after I cleaned it up a bit it looked like this.

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My friend does welding but when I popped round his house he'd removed his kitchen. Right back to the brickwork. There was an RSJ sat in the middle of the room and he was in the process of moving the external window as if it was a Lego house. So I could hardly ask him to take a couple of hours out of the day to do this.

 

So the guys at the MOT station recommended this bloke who did their welding. Said he was a really nice guy and mobile too. Mentioned he likes older stuff and had a T25 van. I assumed they meant some sort of camper so I was a little surprised and rather impressed when he turned up in this.

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It looked even tattier in the flesh than it does here but it was great to see a VW van not all scened up and not only in original condition but still earning its keep.

 

He loved my Skoda (who wouldn't) and made short work of the small hole.

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Obviously I had no idea how much this was going to cost, you can't really ask over the phone before they've seen the job. But it needed doing and he came highly recommended so I just let him get on with it. When I asked him how much he said £20! Twenty quid? Then says 'is that alright?' as if I'm going to haggle from that point. I know it didnt take long, and I think he was pleased to arrive and find the car all jacked up with the front strut removed and the hole cleaned up ready to go. But he still had to drive over here.

 

Needless to say I've saved his number.

 

I shall wait for that black paint to set properly then get some underseal and body coloured paint on it.

 

Apart from the welding the only thing it needed was a steering rack gaiter that I already had in my supplies so that twenty quid was all it cost to get through. Can't be bad.

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A big package arrived on Friday.

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But Where's it from?

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Egg will recognise this logo. T'was he who put me on to these people when he had his Favorit. With brexit merely days away and no sign of a deal I thought I'd have a bit of a scour of the Favorit lists on Skoda Dily's website.

 

It takes about a week to arrive by which time I've forgotten what I've ordered myself. So let's have a look shall we?

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Ah yes, black plastic wheelarch covers.

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Just in case you don't think there's enough black plastic on a Fav. Probably won't use them but they were less than a tenner, just an unusual thing to have.

 

Header tank.

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This is for the Fav or Felly. The Felicia one has gone all opaque and resists all attempts at cleaning so you cant see the level from outside. This was about £4.

 

Some random gaskets and an indicator stalk in lovely brown.

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The stalk is a Chinese repro. It's a good website as it lists country of origin of all their parts. Sometimes they offer more than one country so you can choose a cheap Chinese copy or an original and the stuff is so cheap anyway that you may as well go for the original. But in this case there is no original so I thought I'd have a punt on a Chinese one. The fact that they are having things like this remanufactured at all has to be a good thing. It bodes well for the future of the Favorit.

 

This is from their website.

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Shows a Chinese made rear light for about a third of the price that most people seem to be asking for a used one on ebay.

 

Pair of steering rack gaiters.

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The top one looks fairly generic, the lower on less so. I have a new rack in the garage that I had to borrow a gaiter off for the MOT. It currently has a carrier bag in it's place so one of these will replace that. Also, the neat clips, so much nicer than cable ties. These may well be available in this country but I wouldn't know where and these were undoubtedly cheaper.

 

A mysterious and satisfyingly heavy box.

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I wonder what's in here (I had genuinely forgotten, it really was like Christmas as a kid)

 

A bag of Skoda pick'n'mix.

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Mainly various small plastic clips. The sort of thing you could scour scrapyards for a few years ago but you don't even find Felicias there now. The two bits at the bottom of the last picture were to repair my passenger seat slider mechanism but I couldn't tell the scale in the pictures so ordered both (turns out it's the black one I needed) . Everything in this bag was only a few pence each.

 

These are the little tags that go on the tailgate to hang the parcelshelf off.

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And Darth Vader washer jets.

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And this is only for mk1 Favorits.

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There's one either side of the tailgate. All electrical stuff into the tailgate goes through these spring loaded contacts. No direct wires from body to tailgate.

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This no Chinese copy. Satisfyingly Czechoslovakian.

 

These are the things that hold the door halfway or fully open (they muat have a name but I don't know what it is). My drivers door one broke. I heard it go as something metallic landed inside the door. Now it wont stay open so I'm particularly pleased to get these. EDIT: forgot to insert picture here, it's at the end.

 

There's one more thing left in the box, it still feels quite heavy.

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Ah yes, I remember now.

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Timing chain and sprockets. 'Czech primary production' as the website says (via Google translate)

 

All this.

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For £62.19 delivered. Oddly while the website is in Kc when you order from the UK they convert it into Euros and my bank then converts it into pounds.

 

 

 

They even have front wings.

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For about £24 pounds each! From Slovakia so probably originals. Unfortunately when I selected these they withdrew the postage option. These can only be picked up from their place in Pilzen. They also have sills for a tenner. I'm thinking a road trip is in order.

 

Sorry these are the door strap things that should be further up.

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probably enjoyed reading your post more then I should considering its "just a guy opening a box full of plastic bits"  :mrgreen:

 

very cool to see that parts availability is pretty decent, iv noticed that with a lot of soviet/eastern block cars (like Ladas and even trabants), the West should take a page or 2 from their book there :)

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Love the Favorit. Would really like one of them, definitely has to be an early one like yours too.

 

Really do enjoy the level of design thought that went into it. They could have just produced a car which worked well but had no personality, but they really came up with something which is its own thing.

 

On the subject of Tatras, seeing lots of Favorit bits in the later T613 cars isn't that surprising...the earlier ones had a dash that was similarly made of bits of Estelle. Including all switchgear, gearknob, steering wheel and pedals. I tell you, it feels *really* odd piloting something that size while looking at bits of Estelle.

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Thanks chaps, yes 'man opens box on the Internet' doesn't sound particularly thrilling does it but I knew somebody on here would appreciate it. Because they use a courier with a minimum postage rate, it would cost the same just to send the smallest plastic clip as all this lot so I always do a bit of a haul.

 

Hopefully it won't be the last time.

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Love the Favorit. Would really like one of them, definitely has to be an early one like yours too.

Really do enjoy the level of design thought that went into it. They could have just produced a car which worked well but had no personality, but they really came up with something which is its own thing.

There are some nice touches on it. Like the heated rear window elements that are angled to match the steering wheel and diagonal bits on the door trims (sadly lost on the mk2 with their sturdier VW quality door trims). As mentioned on Dollywobblers thread, this does mean a large section of the lower screen is missed by the HRW elements. DW saw this as a design flaw and whilst I have to admit it is style over substance, it is still stylish and I like that.

 

And the Skoda logos embossed in the wing mirrors, interior door handles and sunroof.

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So I managed a couple of little jobs in the three days of nice weather we had.

 

First one involved this little black plastic jobbie.

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Which goes on the end of this rod.

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This rod joins the two halves of the seat adjuster mechanism. So once I'd put it on the end of the rod it was a simple case of popping them on these balls under the seat.

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Except no matter how hard I tried squeezing them, I couldn't get them to pop on and there was no room to get any pliers under the seat.

 

So I decided to whip the seat out.

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From where I could easily squeeze it on with pliers.

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And then:

 

Forward.

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Backward.

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Forward.

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Back.

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Yeah so what, your thinking, but previously I had to pull the lever up on one side whilst jamming the other side open with a screwdriver. Except I could never find the right spot whilst sat in the seat so I'd have to get on my knees outside the car with my head under the seat. So this simple fix has improved my life no end.

 

 

 

 

The other thing was the door check strap. This is new and old together.

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As you can see there was no chance of fixing the old one as it had snapped.

 

It's a simple fit. Two bolts in the door and a roll pin attatching it to the body, which is attatched to this clever pin so it can just be pushed in and out with a set of grips.

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This saves having to tap it in and out with a punch.

 

Trouble is when I fitted it it was in the door closed positon so it wouldn't reach the hole. Being too lazy to take it out again, I put a screwdriver in the hole and some grips to pull on it. They are surprisingly highly sprung, but I guess they do have the weight of door to act on. Unfortunately I pulled too hard in the wrong direction and bent the door!

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So I badly tapped it back into place and hand painted with a mix of these two

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Sprayed into a lid, mixed together and painted on with a small brush.

 

 

Suitably bodged.

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But at least the door stays open now.

 

 

The hand mixed paint is because I don't actually know what the colour is. The paint code is missing and anyway, it's had a blowover at some point and the body is a slightly brighter (and I think better) shade than the door shuts, engine bay etc... It would be nice to have some proper touch up paint and not have to mix it myself every time.

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^^^^^^^^

In true Autoshite fashion fixarating something always leads to having to

 fixarate something else.........

 

Very very true. People at work, when I talk about these things, sometimes ask if I ever thought about becoming a mechanic. The answer is a resounding no for this very reason. Many times I've managed to make something worse before finally bodging it back together. If you break your own car you can stare at it for a few minutes contemplating your own stupidity and cack handedness before giving up for the day and going and putting the kettle on. I wouldn't be in business long with that attitude.

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Mk I Favorit definitely gets an award for being among the cars out there with the coolest dash warning lights out there in my view.

Several people have mentioned my warning lights, both here and on DW's thread. So here's some close up pictures of them.

 

By day.

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By night.

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And deconstructed.

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Thanks for that...I confess to being a bit of a dash geek and love seeing designs that are a bit different. This car really is dripping with little stylistic details that you'd really not expect.

 

The designers were obviously really proud of what they were making, and I reckon rightly so.

 

Really like how that aside from just being quirky and cool, is clearly (to my mind) a nod back to the lights used on the dash of the Estelle where there was a little coloured dot next to the symbol.

 

IMG-20170901-163012.jpg

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  • 1 month later...

So I thought I'd have a go at the handbrake on the Fav. It had an awful lot of sideways play in it. You then have to pull it harder and that little bit further to compensate for the play. And it was just annoying.

 

The reason for the sideways movement and general wobblyness is this big gap between the lever and pivot.

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Looking at the diagram there sould be some sort of bush between the two, it's number 7 on the diagram. No idea if it should be rubber, plastic or metal as I had nothing there at all.

 

So I cut up an old margarine tub, rolled it round the pivot and pushed it into the handbrake.

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It took a few attempts to get as much in as possible whilst still being able to push the pivot through. But refitting it still showed an amount of sideways play so I tried squeezing the mounting together but it just sprung out again.

 

Shown here is me trying to clamp it together.

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This is with the handbrake in place. I tried again with it removed so I could squeeze it further but it still sprung out again.

 

Plan B was to fill the gap with a big washer but as the pivot is rather large (compared to most nuts and bolts) I couldn't find many that would fit and the ones I could were too thick. One can be seen to the right of the handbrake in the above pic.

 

I have a big bucket full of nuts and bolts from cars I've scrapped and much rummaging found this.

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This is a proper bodge but it has done the job. Sort of. It's certainly much improved and I greased everything as I reassembled it.

 

 

 

And talking of margerine tubs the door pockets seem to be made of the same material and were cracked all over the place.

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So I bought some brown vinyl tape and lined the inside.

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This is halfway through.

 

When I turned it over I hadn't quite closed it up up enough and the tape is visible

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But it's underneath so nobody's going to see it. The finished article is many times more rigid, I could pick it up with one hand and it kept it's shape. Didn't dare do that before for fear of it just disintegrating. The tape also stops things rattling on the hard plastic surface. Double result.

 

Rock solid.

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Although, annoyingly I did lose this little bit.

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It's annoying because I kept it safe and even tried a test fit to see if the break was clean enough to glue back on (it was). Then I put it down in the garage and that was it. It will turn up when I'm looking for something else. In the meantime I'll have to put up with this.

 

 

So, there you go, sticky back plastic and margarine tubs. Blue Peter would be proud.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Look at my new book!

 

I find it a bit strange that this book even exists. I can see a market for it in CZ but the market for it here must be about seven people. You can tell it has been translated rather than written primarily in English as it goes a bit Google translate in places but that must still have cost more than they're going to get back in sales.

 

 

 

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Commissioned by Skoda themselves it has a brief history of Skoda up to the 1960s then goes into more detail both mechanically and politically as Skoda strive to produce a modern front engined car. The genesis of the car really does go back that far. Then goes into great detail over the development of the Favorit itself and ends with the VW takeover, an event the author puts down to how impressed the Germans were with the Fav.

 

It's full of lots of interesting development cars that I never new about.

 

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This looks like a standard Estelle but it's front engine/rear drive.

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And this one is front engine/front drive. Achieved by literally cutting the whole engine bay out of a Renault 12 and welding it into the Skoda! Note 3 stud wheels.

EDIT: forgot to insert pic here, it's at the end now.

 

Then there's some early design sketches

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An air of BX to some of these (which was also a Bertone design of course).

 

Apparently they fitted all the mechanical bits to a Mazda 323 to test them.

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Some camouflaged mules.

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Complete with test driver in Alan Partridge shorts and a wooly jumper, a particularly good look.

 

 

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Some competition history.

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Saloon and coupe concepts that never made it to production.

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That's Mr Bertone himself on the left.

 

Some odd variants that did make production but not over here.

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All in all 118 pages, hardback, mostly colour. It seems to have been written specifically for me. Very very pleased.

 

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Sorry, editing cock up. This is the Renault 12 based car. post-20743-0-99076800-1556112468_thumb.jpg

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  • 2 weeks later...

This is just an excuse to upload some pics using the new forum. 

This is the exempt half of my fleet, they don't meet that often. Not just tax and MOT but now ULEZ as well. The key word being 'exempt' and not 'compliant' coz they certainly ain't that!  The bus is also congestion charge exempt, I think, it always used to be anyway. It was automatically exempt when the charge was first introduced but then I had to apply every year and as l was too lazy to fill out a simple form every year so I've let it slip, though I assume I could apply if need be. The few times I've been back to London with it have been weekends. 

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Then I took a slightly extended drive home so I could achieve this. 

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That's 150,000 obvs. The car was on 64k when I bought it 23 years ago, so that's 86,000 with me. 

 

 

Then on the way home I came across an old car with it's bonnet up, a bright yellow Jensen. The Vauxhall had already stopped but I had a bootful of tools and Triumph spares so you have to stop. Whilst I'm happy to take pictures of my own car broken down, it's a bit rude to do it to other peoples so I didn't but I have previously posted it in  Lazy Spotters. But here's a couple of mine and the Velox. 

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The Jensen had no spark. A few things were tried here but with no success so the guy in the Vauxhall gave him a lift home where he had more spares and cars. I like the fact that the two tatty cars were running and the mint looking one wasn't. The Vauxhall had a sticker on the bumper along the lines of 'Yes it is cool and no I'm not going to paint it'! 

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Just noticed for the sake of all the Invacar botherers here, which isn't just LBF is it, that my FS880 key is visible in the picture of the speedo. That's for my locking fuel cap but will apparently work on all Invacars. I look forward to finding out. 

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very cool stuff!, imagine the look on their faces if the tools where in the Routemaster, "Oh one second I have some tools in another vehicle of mine" then to return in the Routemaster :) (does the RM only come out for special occasions, or do you sometimes pop to the shops in it for fun or something? thats something id totally do LOL)

you say that about the keys, but you might end up the first person ever to have had fuel syphoned off by a fleeting invacar :mrgreen:

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