POLO GT OVERFUELLING - ADVICE NEEDED

[Krupa]

Hi folks, this is gonna be a long post, but please read if you know anything about Polo GT fuelling problems.

Right, background. About 2 years ago my car started running peculiarly. Idle was unstable and I was losing power until the car had reached running temperature. I took my car to my regular mechanic, to VW and to another specialist. None of these people had the foggiest idea what was causing the problem.

Since this, a number of attempts have been made to make my car run correctly and the following have been replaced:

- Blue temp sensor (twice)
- Black temp sensor
- Distributor (old one had a bent rotor)
- Lambda probe
- Air Flow Meter (for a Golf item with K&N - which had no adverse effects on running)

None of these solved the problem, however, the car was running considerably better despite a little juddering. About a year ago, the fuel consumption of my car went up dramatically with no change in weather/driving style. A little over 250 miles to a full tank most of the time. So I posted about this on Porka and on here, and an idea came up to improve the earth for the lambda probe. Having done so, fuel consumption returned to normal.

Last August, my head gasket was changed. Since then fuel consumption has steadily returned to the crappy 250 miles to a full tank routine. My bodged earth was still there - so I'm confused as to what's wrong with it. Only change while driving is more of a tendency to heat up especially in heavy traffic. The temp guage was showing a reading close to the top of the scale instead of the usual reading of being halfway between the top and bottom of the scale. Sometimes, also in heavy traffic, the red light on the instrument panel lights up despite a normal coolant level and coolant temperature.

I am assuming that this red light has something to do with the non-vag coolant tank I bought last year which is obviously telling the ECU that there's not enough coolant in the coolant tank when there is plenty. Could this affect fuel consumption? When plugged into an ECU fault reader it also sometimes (not always) reports a fault with the lamda - but I don't want to replace this unless I'm sure it's the problem. £60 is a lot to shell out if it doesn't sort anything.

It's definately overfuelling, I can smell it.

Please, if anyone has any ideas as to what could be wrong could they post them up here. It's running fine 95% of the time at the moment, even when cold, so I don't understand the heavy consumption. I can't afford to spend all this cash on petrol, so my student railcard is gonna be getting lots of use if I can't sort this out.

Alex

[Nelson_Wilbury]

Don't know of any problems myself. Just thought i'd say I hope you get it sorted

I still haven't had a chance to test my fuel consumption yet, but it doesn't seem to be doing 'too' bad.

Just out of interest, do you have the £20 performance chip? Not saying this a problem, but it could be a faulty one, letting too much fuel in perhaps

[Krupa]

I've got a chip, but I've not fitted it yet. Don't really want to till this problem's sorted out.

[retro]

I think the flashing temperature light might be a red herring. I think if the temperature gauge is reading normal then I'd be inclined to believe it.

Both my brother's old mk2 1.05 and my current 1.3 have both had temperature warning light problems. The gauge also went dead on the 1.05, but that turned out to be a bad solder joint. I never did manage to fix the light, but the car has done 30,000 miles since it first started, so it's obviously not too much of a problem.