UK-POLOS.NET - THE VW Polo Forum

My lovely polo has suffered its first mechanical problem and i have no idea what it is.

When i started the car up this morning it did feel a bit rough but i thought that this was down to it being cold. i let the engine warm up and went off.

i had the radio on so didnt notice anything with the engine until i stopped at a roundabout once i came off the motorway. The engine was chuddering as if it was about to stall. problem is the car is an automatic.

I pulled off and if seemed to have lost power. the car was taking an age to accelerate but i didnt push it incase i damaged the engine.

when i got to work i got out and looked around the car. with the car in neutral it sounded like a 2stroke engine.

the car is a 1.4 8v and has done 40,168 miles. i know the cam belt should need changing about now but would that effect this?

my initial thought was that it was a problem with the exhaust but would that explain the power loss?

Sure it's not a misfire? Could be wanting new spark plugs, leads or distributor cap.

wouldnt a miss fire stop though?

if it were the plug, cap and that, is there anyway of checking first without sending it off to a garage.

If the dizzy or rotor arm is dirty what happens is like a misconnection... the car feels like it's almost going to stop but then the rotor connects and it goes for a little more km.

Do you see the needles in the clock acting like crazy, going up and down?

I would clean the throttle body, check the spark plugs and spray a little wd40 inside the distributor cap. Check the DIY section of this forum. And check the spark leads, especially the one connecting to the ignition coil. I know it sounds much but in one hour you can do all of the above.

I know because this happened to me and i had to get a new distributor from ebay (dirty cheap! and it never failed me again).

I think the changing intervals for the timingbelt is from 90 000 to 90 000 km. Or am I confusing it with something else?

PHG

P.S. - You did had petrol in the tank, right?!

ive just taken it to a garage and he confirmed that its probably the spark plugs.

I've got a place near my house that will sell a set of 4 for £15 which are the correct ones.

im going to do that tonght. when you say change the leads, what exactly do you mean and do they really need doing?

I wrote check the leads for cracks or other signs of wear. But that is usualy the last thing to check on the list. Because they are a bit expensive ( at least here in Portugal).

Change the plugs and see if the problem goes away. If it doesn't you may want to consider doing the above recomendations

The leads, they're the HT leads that connect the distributor to the spark plugs. Checking the condition on the outside insulation is no way to know what they're like inside. When one of mine went, they all looked fine on the outside..... doesn't mean the wiring inside isn't knackered! New set of leads should be fairly cheap, 15 quid for a set of cheapies to about 35 for a decent set made by Beru, Champion or similar.

Find your local GSF (german, swedish and french car parts) or Euro Car Parts to get parts fairly cheaply.