0-60!!!

[ZOMBIE]

What is the fastest youve ever got to 60? the book quotes 14.8 on the 1.3 and 19 on the 1litre- is this correct because it dosn't feel that slow, does it mean when the car is fully laden??
Other thing, i am running an 8p five speed gearbox, are the ratios on 1,2,3 and 4th gear the same as polo 1litres with four speeds because I know if you bolt a gearbox from a 1.2 nova on a 1.6gsi engine its extremely quick.
Any suggestions how to improve the 0-60 time??
Has anyone got it in the 12s??

[Gareth_GT_Hatch]

which book have you got? 14.8 isnt right for the 1.3 mk2 its more like 13.8. perhaps its 14.8 to 62mph? (100km/hr) and these figures are done under certain condiditons; driver and passenger and 1/2 a tank of petrol usually. So if youre on your own then you will be able to do it in less than this.

Ive only ever done one 0-60, and it was in the 1.4 GT. Got something like 12.3 seconds (which is s**t I know )but I totally screwed it up (wheelspin in first) Its not an easy thing to do on your own as I found out...It would also help if I could hit 60 in 2nd.

[GroovyCarrot]

Think that's about right for the quoted figures.. if you measure it yourself it'll appear less, firstly because you won't be carrying a passenger, and secondly because your speedo will be calibrated up to 10% under your actual speed, so it'll say you've hit it before you have. Never tried a 0-60 run myself though, doubt it'd be impressive in the 1043

As for the gearing, yes, the 8p has the same four gears as the standard 1 litre box, plus an economy/overdrive/super-dooper-high/whatever you want to call it fifth gear. Not fantastic for accelleration but excellent when you get there. If you just want accelleration but don't mind doing 4,000-ish rpm at 70mph, you'll want a box like I have which is a close ratio 5 speed from a 1 litre mk2 saloon, or a box from a mk3 GT. Fifth gear is the same as the standard 4th, so no improvement in cruising / economy, but all the ratios are squished up a bit so it's much easier to keep it in the power band.

[ZOMBIE]

Groovy Carrot- do you mean to say that when I am doing 60- i could be doing 54mph? mind you I have put 15s on the car so I am doing a little bit more than the speedo wants to let on anyway. What kind of speed do you get out of each gear of your gearbox?

one otherthing- do the book figures reflect changing at the marks on the speedo or is it redlining the car??

[bstardchild]

Groovy Carrot- do you mean to say that when I am doing 60- i could be doing 54mph? mind you I have put 15s on the car so I am doing a little bit more than the speedo wants to let on anyway. What kind of speed do you get out of each gear of your gearbox?

one otherthing- do the book figures reflect changing at the marks on the speedo or is it redlining the car??

The road testers don't normally give a rats ass about the condition they return the car in - I'll leave it to you to work out how they achieve the times

Best comparison for car v car performance is something that driver ability/lack of mechanical sympathy cannot play any part in like below......

Acceleration in each gear My other car

Mph........6th.....5th.....4th.....3rd.....2nd
10-30......-........-........7.5......5.5....3.5
20-40......-........10.3...6.3......4.3....2.5
30-50......-........9.2.....5.5......3.2....2.0
40-60......-........8.5.....4.1......2.8....2.0
50-70......20.5...7.7.....3.8......2.8....2.2
60-80......20.0...6.8.....3.9......2.9....-
70-90......19.0...6.3.....3.9......3.1....-
80-100....16.4...6.2.....4.2......3.4....-
90-110....15.2...6.5.....4.6......-.......-
100-120...-.......7.1.....5.1......-.......-
110-130...-.......7.7.....6.2......-.......-
120-140...-.......9.1.....-.........-.......-
130-150...-.......11.0...-.........-.......-
140-160...-.......14.2...-.........-.......-

I love the last one - just outrageous

[GroovyCarrot]

Well, could be, probably won't be as drastic as that though. As a rough idea, I compared my speedo reading to a GPS metre at an indicated 30mph, the GPS read 27mph. It'll vary between cars and wheel size makes a big difference, so I'd advise laying your hands on a handheld GPS tracker and testing it yourself - the tracker has no reason to read fast and has a lot of powerful technology behind it, whereas speedo's are set slightly too fast so if anything goes wrong you won't be done for speeding when you think you're doing the limit, and they're based on very crude technology making a number of assumptions, ie that your wheel size is precisely factory spec...

A little anecdote for you, the guy who lent me his GPS tracker to test my car used to have a fun game he played - with the tracker in his car he would overtake people past a speed camera in a 30 limit - the camera was set to flash at 35, so he did 34.5mph, whereas other people slowed down to what they thought was around 28mph so were actually doing more like 25 so he could cruise past with 10mph between him and them Nice trick if you have the balls to do it...

Speeds in gears, to be honest I don't much like redlining an 18 year old 1043cc block which is beginning to burn oil, so I rarely test out how far I can go.. I wouldn't try for 60 in second or anything like that, but it's in the power band of 3rd gear. I'll have a bit of a play tomorrow and see if I can give you some actual speeds.

[ZOMBIE]

Yeah that would be great G.C.
Oh and I wouldnt worry about the burning oil as I think all older cars do it if they arent used enough- how much you got on the clock?
Me and krazy polo kris saw a golf up the scrappys with 375,000 on the clock!!, ive only got 89,000 on mine and my mums driven it slowely for 15years, has it still got life in it??

[ZOMBIE]

Yeah that would be great G.C.
Oh and I wouldnt worry about the burning oil as I think all older cars do it if they arent used enough- how much you got on the clock?
Me and krazy polo kris saw a golf up the scrappys with 375,000 on the clock!!, ive only got 89,000 on mine and my mums driven it slowely for 15years, has it still got life in it??

[GroovyCarrot]

Yeah that would be great G.C.
Oh and I wouldnt worry about the burning oil as I think all older cars do it if they arent used enough- how much you got on the clock?
Me and krazy polo kris saw a golf up the scrappys with 375,000 on the clock!!, ive only got 89,000 on mine and my mums driven it slowely for 15years, has it still got life in it??

Yeah, not too worried about it, just don't want to put too much strain on it knowing that the piston rings are getting worn. Mind you, I may try sticking my other set of pistons in it later this year, if I'm feeling foolhardy enough..
The car has 87,000 miles on it, but it has a 125,000 mile engine which I stuck in there as a cheap replacement for the original one which I somehow managed to bugger up in attempting a bottom end rebuild.. I'm tempted to try again though, could take it a piston at a time this time and if anything siezes up I've always got the originals I can stick back in - unfortunately last time I had thrown away the old piston rings and crank bearings before I realised that I'd got a problem, and never could work out where the problem lay...

375,000 miles is blooming impressive Must have been well maintained.. 135,000 miles is the most I've seen on a scrapper.. I believe Optima has something of the order of 180,000 miles on his mk2, if I remember correctly - quite a decent target

[bstardchild]

375,000 miles is blooming impressive Must have been well maintained.. 135,000 miles is the most I've seen on a scrapper.. I believe Optima has something of the order of 180,000 miles on his mk2, if I remember correctly - quite a decent target

My old MKII 1.3 Coupe S had 186,000 miles on the clock when I sold it - damn thing still wouldn't smoke and ran like clockwork

They are very strong engines and at the risk of repeating myself with regular oil changes will run an run!!!!

[Tahrey1043]

those mileages are really encouraging me to sort out engine fix / replacement rather than a straight flog off, as i fear it may end up on the scrap pile within another 10k otherwise, pure waste
(carrot your engine is smoking again already? wonder if it's just something with the 1-litres that they give up early )

8P is same internal ratios as 4-speed (so a fairly wide "economy" setup) plus a 5th gear about 20% higher than 4th (so 70 around 3300 instead)... PLUS a slightly taller gearing on the differential (~5%) to make it more suited to the larger engine. For an all round daily driver the 1.3 plus 8P is supposed to be a pretty sweet setup, but it's not the fastest

GT box might be more the thing you're after, particularly if you look to tune the engine any... top gear somewhere between 4th and 5th on the 8P (though closer to 4th), 1st in the same place, everything else in between rearranged to give a nice even progression through them. Good acceleration, reasonable cruising ability (70 still around 3750).

0-60 time, i think the most accurate / repeatable score i've had in the 1.0 litre is 18.5 seconds or thereabouts... but then i'm not too sure on the speedo (and with that, my top speeds either) --- riding in the astra, my regular 52.5 mile trip to college was reduced by a whole 2 miles on the trip counter.... 'course, i'm gonna have to do some double checking, but that kind of variation really casts doubts on the meter accuracy.
That was with giving it a lot of stick as well, revving to about 6000rpm --- power seems to fall off quite hard after that (it's almost impossible to hit the 6500 limiter in 3rd* - about 80mph - compared to relative ease of getting it in 4th). The red tick marks on the speedo seem to roughly indicate peak power in either car, so you wont get the best performance out of it that way - but neither will it be too sluggish (you'll keep in the torque band if not the power band) nor will you be at too much risk of engine damage...
cleverly, the difference between the power peak points on each engine matches with the different final drives so that it's more or less the same speed in each case
(5200 on 1-litre, 5000 on 1.3)

(for reference, 1.6 astra also did the 0-100kmh in about 13 secs - beat that and you've got a pretty nice 1.3CL on the go .... mind you the vaux has damn high gearing - 19/1000 in 4th, 24/1000 in top, vs 17 and 21 for a 1-litre economy 5 speed, or about 18.5 / 22.5 for the 1.3)

* this also means you shouldnt try to hit the limiter in 4th/5th, as you'll never manage it without some serious engine work and a mountain.

[GroovyCarrot]

Well, not much smoke yet, just number 1 and 4 spark plugs are very oily, and it's definately using oil at a good rate. Bear in mind that I never did put new rings in when I had it apart in the summer, just got frustrated and desperate to get some kind of car back again, whatever condition the engine was in.. I'm quite sure that the original engine would have been good for a few tens of thousands of miles before it had started using oil had the last owners actually cared about it

I got you some speeds for the close ratio box this afternoon. Revved to 6,000 rpm rather than the red line, so add a couple of mph as necessary. Also, didn't have very much road to do this on, so only got 2nd and 3rd, and cruising engine speeds in 5th:

2nd: 45mph @ 6,000rpm
3rd: 63mph @ 6,000rpm
5th: 60mph @ 3,300rpm
70mph @ 3,800rpm

Hope that's a help

[ZOMBIE]

Are you sure the ratios are the same on our gearboxes, its just that I can get 55 in second @ 5400rpm but then again it is a 1.3.
Is changing the piston rings an easy job if youve got an engine lift? how much would a garage charge?
The plugs in mine are in good nick-just a bit carbony because the car hasnt been used [only on short journeys when the chokes operational] however there was a little oil on the 4th around the middle bit where the thread meets the head which i think is just from me spilling oil!!
Also do are cars have a limiter because I havent got to mine!?

[GroovyCarrot]

No, they're not the same ratios, mine is a close ratio box whereas yours is the long ratio economy box.

Changing piston rings isn't too hard, I just managed to screw something up last time I did it. My advice is take it a piston at a time, change the rings and big end bearings, refit the piston, make sure the engine still turns, change the next set, check it again etc. Don't need an engine lift to do it, it can be done in situ, although it's nicer to work on an engine if it's out of the car. Basically you need to remove the head (I wrote a guide to changing the head gasket on a mk2 without doing all the pissing about haynes tells you to, it's in the power train forum under 'Head gasket fixing' - should help with this bit.), which will allow you to see the top of the pistons and remove the pistons through the top of the engine. Then you remove the sump (no problem, about 30 10mm bolts, I'd recommend getting a 1/4 drive socket for this as you won't get in to the bolts under the clutch cover otherwise. Make sure you drain the oil first ) and then you can get to the big ends, just a case of unbolting the bearing shells and tapping the pistons upwards with the handle of a mallet or something. Number 1 piston isn't easy to get to past the oil pump, but you just have the turn the engine so the con rod isn't facing straight down, it's not really a problem. Replacing the rings just involves prising the existing rings off (try not to break them in case there's a problem with the new rings), sliding the new rings in using feeler guage blades to slide them into the slots, smearing the piston with oil and tapping back into the cylinder using a piston ring compressor and the handle of a mallet. Change the big end bearings while you've got it apart, and then bolt the shells back together and turn it to make sure it's not siezed for any reason.

Doing it yourself you'll need to buy:
Piston rings (£20 from GSF, £84 from VW)
Big end bearings (£9 from GSF, £53 from VW)
Head gasket set (£25 from GSF, £84 from VW)
And a can of oil and antifreeze.

A garage would charge a good bit for this, for a start they'd use VW genuine parts so that's £220 straight away, plus a few hours' labour you're probably looking at £400+...

One thing to bear in mind once you've done this is that the new components will need running in, so that means a few hundred miles worth of careful driving, no labouring the engine at low revs and no high revving either.

The oil on your 4th plug could easily be a piston ring, or it could be an oil spill / leak. One thing I found was when my fuel pump started leaking oil it all drained straight into number 4 spark plug, thought I had a bit of a crisis when that happened..

Very early mk2 polos have a limiter, and mk3's have a limiter, but the majority of mk2's don't - do /not/ try to find it! I've heard of mk2's being taken to 8,000 rpm because they have no limiter - really not a good thing to do to a little engine of this age!

[ste mk1lx]

Also do are cars have a limiter because I havent got to mine!?

the rev limiter is incorporated into the rotor arm on the mk2 so it is possible to to retro fit one if you don't want to risk killing an engine, most people remove them to save money.