UK-POLOS.NET - THE VW Polo Forum

Hey look, I removed my rubbing strips. I'ts about 5 billion times better looking.



Also, you can see my "Polo Coupe" re-badging on the back. Ha ha.. no more smelly CL.

A couple of things to ask:

How easy is it to change the timing belt and has anyone got any pointers?

How easy is it to change the gear box oil?

Cheers.

Timing belt.. very simple, but very fiddly when the engine's in the car because it's so close to the wheelarch. Loosen the belt by unscrewing the water pump and turning it anticlockwise, slip belt off from camshaft sprocket, spend hours trying to get it off the crankshaft sprocket, reverse procedure

Gear oil, again very easy but you'll need to either find a mahoosive allen key (17mm I think it is) or cobble one together by locking nuts onto each other, which rarely works for me.. There is a fill and a drain plug, the drain is just a couple of inches below the fill, easiest to see from under the car. Remove drain plug, drain oil, refit drain plug, remove filler plug, fill oil (probably with a funnel and a hosepipe as it's an awkward angle), refit filler plug.

Car's looking good without the rubbing strips

GroovyCarrot wrote: Car's looking good without the rubbing strips

Cheers dude.
Next thing is to get the set of Pirelli p's off my mate's Scirocco and clean them up.

Looks like I'll be changing the timing belt over the weekend then.. I couldn't work out how to loosen the water pump. how many bolts/nuts/screws does it have in it?

When you have replaced the timing belt, make sure you tension it correctly by moving the water pump on its pivot.

You get a nice whine from the new belts when you have fitted them, that sounds a lot like a G with toothed belts !

Dont you have to remove the alternator belt to get the timing belt off?

Best to remove the gearbox oil filler plug before the drain plug. If you empty it then discover the filler plug wont move ........

In that case, you could always remove the gearbox and tilt it on it's side with the plug facing upwards and fill it that way. You'd have to make sure you put the right amount in though.

Actually you will find the timing belt is harder to change compared to a Mk 2. You are best doing the water pump at the same time cause you get a new seal too, which is needed. You need to remove the alternator belt, the undo the bottom pulley bolts which are usually a pain in the arse. Then to get the pulley out you need to drop the engine off the mount where the alternator is, enough to let the pulley come out. Before taking the belt off you need to loosen the cam pulley bolt which means locking it in place. After you slip the belt off its a matter of three water pump bolts, one is a bit awkward, then three other bolts further up, so you can get the inner cover off. Then the lower cover needs to come out, again two bolts there and the belt comes out.

Ah, fair enough.. I was under the impression that the blocks were basically the same, it was just the heads that were reworked a bit on the mk3's.

good lord i'm glad i took it somewhere to have the belt done now that sounds even more complex than i imagined. there's no way you can slip it down and maneuver it so it's looped round the alternator, so you just have to unbolt that? (crazy thought)

glad to hear that about the whining noise off the new one, i was convinced they'd put the damn thing on with the wrong tension, it was howling like mad... though it was pretty cool pretending i had a charger when stopped at lights...

w-hoooooooo wwww-hoooo
'course, the lack of wastegate chuff was a giveaway

the drain plug thingys aren't too hard to get, dunno if you can get em at halfords but i found one (after asking for it... not on shelf) at a local small car spares shop. double-ended hex thingamajig that was 17mm on one end and 14mm on the other, with a central 19mm that a deep breaker bar bit or similar could attach too (no hollow middle for a square drive - put the 19mm on it instead). it actually listed VW gearbox drain plugs as one of the applications. £2.99 - quite a bit for a small piece of brass, but what you gonna do without it?!

seems to fit nicely with the 19mm end for my extensible wheelwrench-cum-breaker. its not a deep socket so it only mates about halfway onto the central piece, but it may be enough........ time will tell.

(that's a good tip about taking off the filler first ... means you can also see exactly what level the existing stuff is before draining it!)

hardhitter wrote:Actually you will find the timing belt is harder to change compared to a Mk 2. You are best doing the water pump at the same time cause you get a new seal too, which is needed. You need to remove the alternato...... (snip).

Betty Swollox!
Sounds a bit of a job and a half.
It needs doing though. I couldn't figure out how to put more tension on the one on already, I'm doing it because at the moment the belt is wobbling so much it's made a scrape on the inside of ther plastic cover...

Ach, that's bad..
There are three bolts on the water pump (at least there are on mine..), loosen all of them and then turn the water pump round, it has an off centre pivot so turning one way will loosen and turning the other way will tighten the belt. It may need a bit of a tap to get it moving though.

it might be stating the bleeding obvious, but then that's what goes wrong 9 times in 10 ----- make sure you "tap" it free in the direction which *loosens* the belt first, then tighten it back up!