Yes, the material that VW Group uses to manufacture these rear bumps stops - and they are exactly the same part number has they have been since the Skoda Fabia was first introduced back in maybe late 1999/2000, start off life looking pure white, as soon as they start aging and get exposed to UV light, they start heading towards yellow>orange>brown and by then they start to really harden up - ie going "crispy" and as the rear damper piston sleeve has a sharp edge, and it gets pushed onto and so located over these rear bump stops, they
help to start cutting into/through that bump stop material, they start to crack and flex and just shear off and drop down, so this time my plan is to get in there just before that happens, that gives me a chance to check if the rear dampers are still "dampers", so all good. The solid, not flexi joining sleeve is just another of these VW Group things that rots out/off by 8 or 9 years, well at least up North where salt is used on the roads - as you know!
The front front springs etc I did on one of these small VW Group cars, was my wife's 2002 VW Polo when it was just over 5 years old - one spring broke at half height on New Years Day - charming, that added a bit into the challenge of finding new tools that working on VW Group cars forces you to buy. Before this spring failure, I had only ever worked on Ford and a single VX Cav GSI 4X4, ending up needing to fight all the way taking that Polo to bits shocked me! I needed to do that job maybe 6 years latter when a single top mounting bearing failed - I had replaced both top mounting and bearings the first time, very annoying! Next spring broke when I was looking after my older daughter's 2009
Ibiza SC 1.4, it failed again maybe at the almost 6 year mark, this time in warmer weather BUT while my wife and I were driving to the airport going on holiday, I stopped, turned round to check and pick up the broken off part, was happy enough that the car was still sitting high enough at the front, and continued to the airport. The third spring was on my old 2000 Passat 4Motion, that one snapped just outside Oxford as we were travelling down to near M-K for my sister's funeral - cars can chose the worst time to give trouble! That time, after the funeral had passed, I phoned the AA and they made it clear from the time the guy showed up, that he ws going to sort this out ASAP and on the driveway, that was convenient and worked out okay!
Heat shields, I bought a few of these circular retainers and made up maybe 10 repair discs from maybe steel food tins, drilling a hole in the centre and dishing them as it seemed like that was a good idea.
Which Gen2 bearing tool kit did you buy - a cheap China made one from ebay? The bearing is best lightly greased after cleaning up the hole in the hub right to the back and tends to pull in very easily, so no need to bother freezing it. I'm guessing that you have studied
YouTube videos on this until you have become cross eyed, it all helps I suppose. I played safe and guessed that the kit that I bought was just a copy of a "better" kit, so I looked for the same kit on the Sealey website, and bought a set of forcing pins as I had read that they were possibly the weakest part of these cheap kits, and I used these forcing pins - so I can't comment on how "good" the pins supplied with that kit are - I just didn't fancy ending up with a seized/jammed bearing stuck half in - half out, of the hub.
One other comment that I noticed when I read through my comments about using this tool - just in case I needed to use it in the future, after unbolting the 3 bolts - or maybe nuts to drop the lower arm so that you can remove the drive shaft, reconnect it as having it back in place while you "winding in/up" this Gen2 tool kit, can only be useful - I added in to disconnect the droplink as doing that must make "parking" the driveshaft easier, just things that you learn after doing this job.
