Ask the expert: My Skoda Fabia won't start properly

Sep 23, 2023

As the Telegraph's motoring expert, I weigh in on your car dilemmas to save you money and make your driving life easier

A week ago my Skoda Fabia wouldn't start and displayed an error message. Each time I pressed the starter button a different error message came up, going through the whole range. Finally, after about 20 attempts, the engine started, with no warning signs, and was fine for the rest of the day.

The next morning the same thing happened. A Skoda dealer's diagnostic test found nothing. Luckily they kept it overnight and in the morning the problem recurred, so they could carry out more tests, which proved inconclusive. Now they want to do a "main relay check", whatever that means. Can you explain, or offer different advice?

– YW

My first instinct is that your battery might be getting old. In modern cars, with so many interconnected electrical systems, a battery that's on its last legs but still has enough juice to start the car can trigger all sorts of bizarre, random error messages. What happens is that the battery gives its all to the starter motor, which causes a drop in the voltage of the electrical system. The car detects multiple voltage drops in various sensors and interprets these as either broken sensors or other failures in their related systems.

I would have thought that the battery would have been one of the first things a good mechanic would check. Given that your dealer has already had the car overnight and run a series of tests, you’d imagine that that would have been one of them. Might be worth an ask, either way.

I did a bit of digging, though, and I found that a few owners of Volkswagen Group cars have reported issues similar to yours that stemmed from problems with the anti-lock braking (ABS) system.

Some owners said that the problem was solved relatively simply with the replacement of an ABS sensor; others found that the entire ABS module needed replacing.

Fingers crossed it's the former, as it's much cheaper to fix. Either way, though, if your Skoda dealer is stuck for places to look, that might be a good direction in which to point them.