UK-POLOS.NET - THE VW Polo Forum

I am the happy owner of a Polo GTI (manual) purchased new in May 2015. My VW garage just rang me to arrange the annual service for next month and I enquired in my naievety if a Cambelt change was due. The car has not quite done 5,000 miles (from new) but I was aware that belts degrade with time as well as mileage. As I still have just over a year left on the factory 5 year warranty (which I took out at the time of purchase) I want to stick to all the servicing recommendations.

Anyway I was pleasantly surprised to be told that the GTI engine has a chain rather than a belt and no servicing is necessary.

It's more than possible that this car will see my motoring days out as I'm not likely to be increasing my very low annual mileage. So is the timing chain something I can forget about? If I had needed a belt change I'd have probably had the water pump and thermostat changed at the same time but now I would be inclined to leave well alone.

I'd be grateful for any advice. Plus confirmation that it really does have a chain rather than a belt although I'm sure the garage was absolutely correct.

The 6c Polo GTI with the 1.8 EA888 engine does have a timing chain.

Timing chains are non serviceable items, but can stretch after many years of use, and the tensioner can fail (not unknown on the 2.0 previous generation EA888 engine that was fitted to the mk6 Golf GTI). I’ve not heard of any issues of timing chain tensioner failure on the 1.8 EA888 engine in the Polo GTI or the current 2.0 version fitted to the mk7 / mk7.5 Golf GTI, and at your car’s mileage and limited use, it’s likely to be very many years before you’d need to consider changing the chain.

So, if I were you, I’d just get on with enjoying the car and driving it.

Thanks that is really helpful and reassuring!

Yes, mine is the 1.8 engine. It has a relatively easy life in what is a fairly small car and I find the torque is so strong over a wide band that it is almost never necessary to take it to very high revs. So hopefully with regular servicing it will go on as long as I need it to.