UK-POLOS.NET - THE VW Polo Forum

My god this is a thread of long posts.

Tahrey a well looked after polo engine will last a very long time, but yours (by the sounds of it) has had a hard life. My black GT's engine had had a very hard life as well and it gave up the ghost after "just" 93000 miles. Whereas my dark blue GT has 110000 miles on it and had regular oil changes with the right oil and ran as sweet as a nut (metz will tell ya ) In fact I would go as far to say its in better mechanical condition than my 53K 1.4 engine!

My ranger had an easy life as well, 89K in 19 years driven by a woman in her 50s/60s since 1988 and full VWSH, it doesnt start first time (cos the carb is gay) but once its going it too runs perfectly.

Ive found a good measure of how well looked after an engine is is if you remove the rocker cover and the insides are a lovely golden brown colour then its had regular oil changes. Whereas if its not been looked after youll find lots of black sludge/carbon deposits. My 1.4 engine was like this and as was the black GT's original engine.

Oh and back on topic for a second, theres only 2 gearboxes you can reach 60 in in 2nd in when it comes to the mk1/2/3 polo (without a silly rev limit) One is the 4-speed 3F gearbox which was used on 1.3 Formel E's and the ATV box used on G40s 56mph is 7000rpm on my GT with an 8p box (estimated, ive never done 7000rpm in any car in any gear) zombie your speedo sounds way out.

ste mk1lx wrote:

ZOMBIE wrote: 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.

I cant imagine how people get to the rev limit on mk2's it takes AGES! I dont think Ive ever exceeded 5K in mine. (theres no point)

Gareth_GT_Hatch wrote:

ste mk1lx wrote:

ZOMBIE wrote: 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.

I cant imagine how people get to the rev limit on mk2's it takes AGES! I dont think Ive ever exceeded 5K in mine. (theres no point)

Never had a problem wanging my MKII Coupe S 1.3 engine into the red if you weren't paying attention 186,000 miles and it went like a train and reved like a banshee - not all revs and no go - it produced good power up there too you could feel it tugging hard - thats why I was so dissappointed with the MKIV 1.4 - it doesn't like being reved at all and there is 3/5th of naff all poke past 4500 rpm

Gareth_GT_Hatch wrote:I cant imagine how people get to the rev limit on mk2's it takes AGES! I dont think Ive ever exceeded 5K in mine. (theres no point)

Three situations where I've found a rather urgent need for a rev limiter:
* Getting the accellerator pedal stuck under a rubber floor mat with the car in neutral - went for the ignition key straight away, but scared the the crap out of me, thought I'd knackered it..
* Downshifting a gear too far trying to overtake someone and then realising it was a silly thing to do..
* Pulling away in first gear whilst stressed and taking it out on the poor car

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.

I thought that was only an option on the very early mk2's, which had a different form of ignition system (same as the mk1's)? Don't know much about that sort of thing, but I've never heard of a rev limiter on the models with the new type of ignition..

Another gearbox that you can achieve over 60mph in second is the QS box from the 1100 Formel E Polo. Speeds went something like this:

1st...40mph
2nd...81mph
3rd...105mph
4th...126mph

But never hit the redline in top whereas it went through and out the other side in the first two gears I'd built the engine from a worn out HH code block and it went like stink. Cost me about £400 to do myself(the 1st oversize rebore being the most expensive part) The engine I believe still lives on but the Mk.1 it was in is very much dead

Hell.. first gear on that is almost as tall as my second.. would have thought it ate clutches, must have taken some effort to pull away? And as for second gear.. I wouldn't take my fourth gear higher than that That's some seriously tall gearing for a 1.1..

That was the idea of the formel E boxes back in the day. Do all the work in the first 3 gears then drop it in fourth as an overdrive/cruiser gear. It was great for traffic light grand prix's as whilst people were faffing about changing gears, I'd just hang onto the revs and gain extra distance. Never ate clutches whilst I owned it. The speeds achieved in those gears made for painful sounds from the engine(probably something well in excess of 8000rpm, gotta love those old easy revving rocker finger engines!). I only did that once, never to be repeated again, in the name of experimentation of course

"quick"-mode reply (if i find anything more to say tomorrow i'll add it, but i've just woken up in front of the telly, surrounded by aberystywthian skydivers*)
ie im just bashing this out with one eye open without very much referring back

yeah, it's had a hard life, including this last trip i did, where i started off being a good boy and stuck to 70... then after about 100 miles... thought... balls to it! It's getting replaced/fixed/junked so lets have some fun.... and just floored it when not actually in traffic. Think I probably saved at least a half hour on the silly, bloody-minded pennine circuit i made.

Still didn't acheive either goal of making it to Ambleside (thru kendal and windermere off junc 38 m6) and going over Hardknott pass, or hitting 6000 in top, but came close (say... 5900+) and did some equally entertaining/stressing mountainside dicking around the night before to compensate... To it's everlasting credit it's still running smooth as you like and not actually throwing out any smoke or anything more than a slight oily whiff. Even when effectively on the way out these engines are f***ing hardcore.

Carrot, that method sounds good but you forgot to put something on your list there ---
* Piston ring compressor, £??? pounds from GSF, £xxx pounds from mars
* Piston ring compressor instructions..
hehe.. i know i can probably hire it but do you see what i mean? dangerous thing to write a method including the words "just..", "simply..", "all you need to do", "easy" etc
I'll look over your guide, might be a little more adventurous now the car's offroadable (and i can belay insuring it whilst doing engine work - if it burns or gets nicked, then feh.. ) ... hmm.

PS 63 at 6k in 3rd and 70 at 3800 - thats a GT box, then? I havent referred back to any figures but it "feels" right.

Zombie -- that sounds very high geared like, does yours have a reconditioned box in it or something? That sounds like diesel or G40 territory.

And if the marker posts at the side of the road can be assumed to be 100m apart ALWAYS, therefore meaning my speedo is over-reading such to make 55 appear as 59 (having timed 16 of them - ie 9.3m short of a mile - as taking 66 seconds at ~59mph indicated..), I can give a better reading of my own gearing.... unfortunately it's the buzzy end of ~16.8 per 1000 in top, not the more desirable 17.6. Damn it. Which also means the GT is a still-quite-frantic 18.5...!
(Wonder if fitting larger tyres e.g. 155/75, 145/80 would fettle this?)

* No, i'm not taking the wizz, that is 100% truth. The house is full of 'em.

Piston ring compressor: tenner at the most, simple to use, you stick it over the piston and tighten a screw on the side of it
Anywhere that I've put 'simply' etc will either be very simple, very obvious or very well explained for you in Haynes

thats what im afraid of

right now im even having a crap time sorting out the aerial, it went smoothly til i've hit one little snag...
and haynes for mk3 is far less useful than the mk2 one so far as i can tell..

anyway!

so it's like a jubilee clip thing?

Yeah, it's one great big piston sized jubilee clip Sheet of metal that wraps around the piston and the piston rings, then tightens until the rings are flush with the piston so you can actually get them down into the cylinder without cracking them.

What snag have you hit with your arial?

well let me put it this way

i'm well on course to having ripped almost the entire dashboard off!

the centre console's out, the little cubby underneath the glovebox is out, the ashtray's out, the heater controls are about as out as i can get them... the HU as well, of course.. and i still dont know if that's enough, but i'm having trouble seeing what else can be easily removed

all for one little cable. jeeeeeee-zuss.

Hmm. Might I suggest, if you're having that much trouble with it, that you simply chop both cables a few inches below the arials, then solder them together again? Very little loss in sound quality with a standard arial if you do it properly.. if you're worried about losing the screening, solder the cores together, wrap them in insulating tape, then find some multicore wire and solder strands of it to cover over the join. Shouldn't be a problem though, and it does mean you don't have to keep tearing bits of your dashboard out

i'm almost ready to do that, i think. i've got this soldering iron my bro gave me as an inexplicable xmas present after all. only problem is a lack of flux ... and a deep seated, long lasting lack of skill. last time i tried soldering wires (and the times before that) it resulted in unmitigated tragedy.

my fingers are killing me, i'm trying to find something, anything that will cut/stretch/bend/get a god damn grip on a little wire tie that's reachable with my fingers but seemingly nothing else!

Hrm.. almost all modern solder will have a flux core anyway.. don't think I've used flux seperately since I stopped using the stuff I inherited from my grandfather Really nothing to it as long as you do it by the book, bodging it never works.. Just make sure the iron's plenty hot enough, strip the wires, heat up the strands with the iron on one side and use the heat of the strands to melt the solder on the other side - don't try to melt the solder on the iron and then wipe it onto the wire, just doesn't work Tin each wire sparingly, just until the wires turn silver rather than until they've got a great lump dangling off them, then fuse them together and drop a touch more solder on to seal it up. Nothing to it really, and it should hold fine, given some insulating tape to reinforce it a touch. Just take your time over it and don't use too much solder, that's the thing most people tend to get wrong..

Anyway, good luck getting the arial together