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Hiya, recently my girlfriends J'reg 1.0L polo head gasket went. The dealer wants silly money and I feel fairly competent (I do my own work on my land rover defender).

However without a haynes handy, can anyone give me a rough run down of whats involved to fix it, and which parts I will need.

Cheers.

Hope you all can help.

Jon.

"The polo will live on..."

BigJ wrote:However without a haynes handy, can anyone give me a rough run down of whats involved to fix it, and which parts I will need.

Haynes would be handy

Parts

Headgasket
Rocker cover gasket
Inlet manifold gasket
Exhaust Manifold gasket
Stem seals
Head bolts
Timing belt
Water pump?

Tools

Torx Driver
Torque wrench
Various sockets and spanners

Task

Remove all parts attached to the head - remove head, strip down take for a skim and crack test plus valve seat recut

Lap in valves - 5 mins for all 8 using fine paste only - seat cutting is sooo handy (did 24 tonight in 20 mins )

Clean up block face

Refit refurbished head using new gasket and bolts

Time it up

Replace all other parts removed to get head off

Start and drive away

Or have I missed the plot here

Ok, i think i'll leave it to them. I could do all that apart from the:

take for a skim and crack test plus valve seat recut

Dunno who could do that for me round here.

Thanks anyway.

Unless the car's been allowed to overheat badly since the headgasket went, you can safely skip that bit.. just check that the surface of the head is not warped by running a feeler guage between a steel ruler and the face of the head - haynes will tell you which feeler guage to use.
Most metal workers will be able to skim it for you.. all the stuff about rebuilding the head is recommended while it's all apart, but not strictly necessary. I managed to do mine in about 2 1/2 hours by cheating and dismantling only what was absolutely necessary to remove the head, as follows:

Unplug HT leads and any electro-trickery on the manifold / throttle body (in my case I had to unplug an inlet manifold heater and two wires from the carburettor, but yours will be slightly different being a mk3)
Remove fuel lines and similar from throttle body - anything connecting it to the rest of the car.
Remove the exhaust clamp that attaches the exhaust manifold to the downpipe
Loosen the camshaft sprocket bolt - easiest way to do this is stick it in gear and use a breaker bar against it, but I'd definately advise replacing the cambelt if you do this, you have to put a lot of strain on it.
Loosen the water pump bolts and turn it anticlockwise as viewed from the timing belt end of the engine. Easiest way to do this is take a breaker bar or similar and a mallet and tap the pump downwards to get it moving. You'll need to give it a fairly solid tap to get it loose, but after that it'll start turning easier.
Remove the cambelt and the cambelt sproket from the head.
Loosen and remove the head bolts in the sequence that haynes manual gives - keep to that sequence or you'll risk warping the head.
The head can now be lifted off along with both manifolds, distributer etc that haynes tells you to remove. It's a good idea to take them off anyway and replace the gaskets, but that's pretty much optional.

Replace everything with new head gasket and head bolts. Do a timing belt and water pump change if you can, it's not worth risking a siezure or a snap and now it's all apart anyway it's a good time to do it

Let me know if there's anything I've missed there.. probably is, but can't think of it.
I really would say that it's not worth spending fortunes having a garage replace it for you, it'll cost you a few quid and a couple of hours to do it yourself, it's not a hard operation

Groovy - that was a spot on description from someone who has done the job - congratulations on a first class write up........

Mine was a guess based on knowing how to do it on a number of cars but not having done it on a Polo

Skim and crack test - any motor engineers - look in yellow pages under engine remanufacturers