UK-POLOS.NET - THE VW Polo Forum

First off, Loving the talent on this site guys. Great site, great machines.

Looking for some tips - I run a 1.4 8v - best car i've ever owned but i've got a little money to spend so i'm gonna take the chance to make some improvements.

Not into visual mods as I need to keep maximum versatility- it leads too mad a life (So far amongst other stuff its drag raced a Rolls and won, completed the porshe off-road course and transported a three piece suite 120 miles :p).

As you can prob guess I live for the drive rather than looks so its driving improvements i'm looking for. So far the only significant mod is the Cat-back stainless steel sports exhaust. Ads a bit of power and sounds great. Heres what i'm looking at to do:

Brakes - better response (currently too vague - not enough feeback to feel entirely confident (i have no abs) and can fade on long mountain roads!

Body roll - always a problem with the polo. Was considering the anti-roll bar off the 16v - good option or is there better? Could lower slightly but not so as i can't get up a dirt track.

Engine - not into complex 'showy' mods but extra power would be welcome! Prepared to do a bit of work for it.

Tyres - recommended brands of rubber bearing in mind they see fast mountain roads, motorways and the odd ploughed field. ;D

You can get G60 brakes setup I believe on the 6n, which help the stopping quite good.

Other then that the usual 4-2-1 manifold and de-cat helps with a port and polished head. Thats all I know myself unfortunetly!

cheers Noz

G60 pads, disks or both? front and rear?
Was thinking about a de-cat but won't that risk MOT failure on emissions?

Get a set of braided brake hoses (goodridge, etc). Will give a better initial 'feel', plus make sure you have got a decent brake fluid in there too, when was it changed last? Will be knackeered if you've 'boiled' it too many times on those mountain passes!

An aftermarket set of anti roll bars will help, however lowering it a tad will help too, just got to compromise between the 2.

Hope that helps a bit.

There's not much you can do to make a 1.4 8V much faster to be honest. Best off saving your money for other mods.

In terms of tires, eagle F1's they supa dupa glue you to the road, remember they are 100 per wheel but going to get them as the grips awesome. They are made from soft rubber, with about 6-7mm tread as stock last 5000m max depending on driving styler

The decat is perfomance great (even if its not much as its only a 1.4) but it will fail an MOT due to it I believe.

Increasing fuel pressure, its in the DIY section, will be doing this soon.
Change cam, to something with more degree's
Cold Feed
Induction Kits
Different brakes with grooves etc
Different pads like the green stuff
Uprate exhaust system
Get rear discs (replacing drums)
ARB as suggested
Complete system flush and refill, from brake fluid, to gearbox etc as suggested

Theres loads of other things like using ceramic gaskets on the manifolds to reduce temps, dropping fan kick in temperature etc... But the effects on a 1.4 would be minimum. But if your like me you will want to get everything out of your polo regardless on the financial side then why not, its your choice even if theres not much point.

Also I recently dropped suggestions here

Starts reading car magazines or real modding sites for ideas as well, not like max power, there is a brilliant Australian auto mag/site, can't member the name. It concentrates heavily on performance such as different alloys for nuts and bolts into great detail etc. To what to look out when getting custom exhausts done and how the job should be done. Its extremely nuts and good but it concentrate on more real engines for performance like V6's and v8's.

If you want I'll scavenge out the site for you.