I want to know why is it that, every year without fail, come holiday time, my Fabia gets sick? I don't care particularly but it drives Swmbo around the bend. She's cursing my car upside down but the weird thing is that this year she's been the only one driving it so, she can't blame me directly, only by association. Due to health issues I've not been able to drive since February and so she's been giving it a run every week to ten days just to keep it turning over.
We went shopping the other day and God it was hot, so, when we got out of the shop and got into the car I rolled down my window, it got to half way down stopped, went sproinggggg!!!! then the window dropped into the door, fortunately without smashing. Bloody marvelous, classic regulator wire breaking, so we start to drive home and she says "why's the battery warning light just come on?" FECK, FECK, FECK!!! what next? There was absolutely no warning at all, no strange noises, nothing. So I tell her just to drive home and "for God's sake don't stall it girl"
We make it home and I get her to drive it straight into the garage where, upon inspection, I discover that the alternator belt has snapped. Bloody thing had only done 34K and was replaced three years ago (at holiday time funnily enough, when the alternator and pulley went on the blink), the belt looked as though it had done 136K, lol, it was all cracks and little tears, weird, 'cos the pulley wheels all appeared to be in good condition and run smoothly when checked, very strange!
I got the bits I needed and did the belt first this morning, a relatively straight forward job, took about an hour all in.
The regulator was not quite as easy sadly, however, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Tech1e for his guide, 'Removing the ancillaries' it helped enormously, the pictures were invalueable.
I had originally decided to get one of the regulator repair kits off of e-bay but thought I'd wait until I'd stripped it just to be on the safe side and boy was I glad I did. I had to totally destroy the old backing plate and the window guides to get the window out, bummer.
When the window fell down it left the release bolts completely unaccessable, I had to drill out every rivet on the support panel and take it too bits piece by piece. The only good bit was at least I managed to rescue the glass and I only broke two of the door card clips which luckily I had some spare, result.
The thing that buggered me up was that the local motor factor didn't have the regulator in stock, even ECP were out out. I had to end up getting an O.E. one from TPS. Thank goodness my mate still works there and he got me it at a good price, whew!!
When I was doing the rebuild if it could go wrong it went wrong, lol. If it was fiddly, I had to f*** about with it. It turned a 2-3 hour job into a 5 hour one and I'm still not finished.
Eventually I had to stop because the rivet gun I had didn't have a big enough nozzle diameter for the special rivets shaft. I've got it all held it place with cable ties and tomorrow I'll fit and check the motor and then put the window in as well as the big speaker before I rivet it up. My mate said as soon as he finds it I can borrow his lazy tong rivet gun, so, all being well I'll have it finished tomorrow. (Hopefully, lol).
Ah, the joys of motoring! 
Does this holiday misadventure happen to anyone else, or is it just me? 