Ebay 1.4 MKIV AEX Engine

[bstardchild]

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll? ... 2487066219

What do people reckon? Poll is there

It seemed to good to miss

* Low miles alledgedly

* Same year as mine

* Same engine code

* Comes with ancillaries

£26 to buy and I reckon a tank of juice should get me there and back so maybe £45 in fuel

Just need to cut a bit of wood out to protect the carpet and a couple of 2 x 4's bolted to it to help lash it down......

BTW I'm happy with the price - now got a spare engine

I could strip clean and rebuild it and drop it in (unlikely unless the checks I'll make when I get it home reveal a higher mileage than claimed or a hard life )

Mothball it for the day the current 90K one starts to get very ratty (can't see that happening) but it's handy to have a spare

Rip the head off and see what improvements can be made to the porting and gas flow it and match all the ports - normally worth a good 5-10% extra on most of the cars I've done it to in the past

Decisions - decisions - decisions

[GroovyCarrot]

Personally I'd strip it down, rebuild the bottom end, drop the lot in to replace the high mileage one you've got in there at the moment, then have some fun with your spare head, always safe in the knowledge that you can screw up completely and you've always got one in the car to replace it

Not that I ever intend to go near the bottom end of an engine again myself if I can help it, given my current track record, but you certainly seem good enough at these things that it shouldn't be a problem

[bstardchild]

Personally I'd strip it down, rebuild the bottom end, drop the lot in to replace the high mileage one you've got in there at the moment, then have some fun with your spare head, always safe in the knowledge that you can screw up completely and you've always got one in the car to replace it

Not that I ever intend to go near the bottom end of an engine again myself if I can help it, given my current track record, but you certainly seem good enough at these things that it shouldn't be a problem

I don't normally trust head gaskets for much more than 100K so the heads gonna come off next year to do that - prevention much better than cure so if I get bored over the winter I'll rip the head of the newer engine and port it - ready for a head swap and running again same morning......

I can understand how you feel about bottom ends!!!!

[bstardchild]

Engine sold by none other than Gareth_GT_Hatch

Any feedback on the condition of the engine when I go and pick it will obviously be moderated

[bstardchild]

Well - picked the engine up on Bank Holiday monday - lot smaller than most of the engines I work on but I suppose thats to be expected (two cylinders and 1.6 litres smaller......
Was a nice round trip of 460 miles (well I went all the way round Manchester on the M60 on the way there so that didn't help)

Getting it loaded in the back of the polo was easy and the car handled quite well all things considered.... Averaged 45mpg over the whole trip so that wasn't too bad either. It had the oil filter on it still so with it resting in a tote bin I use for cleaning engine parts I couldn't get it low enough to get the parcel shelf back on so it wasn't as low as I'd like.... Neither was the ride height come to think of it!!!

I'll post a pic later of my 2.8 L twin engined 8 cylinder (one at each end polo) - I stopped at one of the motorway services and a couple of people walking past the car spotted the engine in the back. - I can't be sure but I think the dialogue went something along the lines of:

Fat lardy git been out in the sun too much - "well if you need to carry a spare engine around with you maybe VW's aren't as reliable as they make out"

Fat lardy gits even fatter mate - "not much room for shopping either"

Anyway here's the photo

[bstardchild]

Rip the head off and see what improvements can be made to the porting and gas flow it and match all the ports - normally worth a good 5-10% extra on most of the cars I've done it to in the past

Had a look at the engine now it's out of the boot -

Blimmey the inlet ports are small on these engines - and plastic inlet manifolds don't seem far off in terms of flow matching. Now I sure where a lot of the bhp potential on 1.4 L is lost - small inlets are a good recipe for good torque but not too handy for bhp at the top end.......

It's had the head off a some stage recently - the gasket goo around an exposed area of the head gasket gives the game away unless VW used Blue Hylomar

The sumps been off too unless VW use white instant gasket

I think I'll be stripping the engine over the winter - just gonna drop a bit of oil down the plug holes and stick it under the bench till winter - then I'll have a good investigation and see what it's like inside