UK-POLOS.NET - THE VW Polo Forum

wolfie wrote: Of late VW appear to have forgotten how to build a good reliable engine of any size, yet the motoring press never seem to pick up on it.

I agree completely, what the motoring press does do is applaud their design excellence when they bring new engines to market, the twin charger being the best by far engine brought to market by any car maker - history is not kind to that engine and VAG binned it.

I just wish that engine manufacturers could design a good reliable simple engine that was clean, all we get are engines, now with the "green" 3 cylinders and lots of turbo charging, without having any thing personally to base my knowledge on, I'd still reckon that it will be the turbos that go first.

Surely there is still a place for a 1.6 NA 8V engine giving 120PS that is clean, reliable and can pull well at low revs, tolerate some short journey use and still give good MPG and flexible all through its rev range.

I'm a bit like you, I would like to think that all my cars can be "keepers" - previous 2.8V6 Passat was as was 1.4 16V Polo, prior to that we had 2.0 16V GSI 4X4 Cav and 1.6 16V Fiesta - both these pairs of cars were run for roughly 10 years 100K miles, before that I ran Ford Orion 1.6 Ghia Injection(s) and before that a Ford Escort 1.6 Ghia - all these Ford CVH engines frightened me as they soon sounded like they would run out of life quickly, over that "Ford" period, wife ran a couple or so Fiesta 1.1L which had very reliable but noisy engines - ie simple runabouts.

Edit:- one thing that I am not too clear about is, why did VAG not just modify these 1.2 8V chain driven engines to resolve all the issues, instead they changed it to 16V, reversed the inlet and outlet manifolds and reverted to a belt driven camshaft!!

RUM4MO wrote:

wolfie wrote:
I'm a bit like you, I would like to think that all my cars can be "keepers" - previous 2.8V6 Passat was as was 1.4 16V Polo, prior to that we had 2.0 16V GSI 4X4 Cav and 1.6 16V Fiesta - both these pairs of cars were run for roughly 10 years 100K miles, before that I ran Ford Orion 1.6 Ghia Injection(s) and before that a Ford Escort 1.6 Ghia - all these Ford CVH engines frightened me as they soon sounded like they would run out of life quickly, over that "Ford" period, wife ran a couple or so Fiesta 1.1L which had very reliable but noisy engines - ie simple runabouts.

Edit:- one thing that I am not too clear about is, why did VAG not just modify these 1.2 8V chain driven engines to resolve all the issues, instead they changed it to 16V, reversed the inlet and outlet manifolds and reverted to a belt driven camshaft!!

Very similar to myself there. I ran a 2.0 16V GSI 4X4 Cav, for a while and a 2.0CDi. And likewise a Fiesta 1.6 CVH. Car I liked very much and regret parting with was a MkIII Golf 1.8 Driver, ran it for around 5 years. The MKIII always gets slated but I'd rate it as one of the best Vdubs I've owned. Lazy long stroke 1.8-8V, with simple mono-tronic injection perhaps wouldn't set the roads alight, but was a relaxed drive and never missed a beat. I swapped that for a 2.0-20V MkIV Golf Gti which was just dire car in everyway, Vdub should be ashamed!! to put a Gti badge on it. That too drank oil like it was going out of fashion, so VW producing engines that drink oil isn't something new. It had more trim rattles than a Leyland box van. Following that a 9n Polo 1.9Tdi (PD) Sport, a little unsung hero of a car, while the engine was a little agricultural at start-up once on the move had great urge in all the gears. No so quiet at motorway speeds but still very capable and 100% reliable. I car I ran and enjoyed for just short of 10 years.

Like yourself I wonder why Vdud have made such significant changes to the 1.2 Tsi in it's relatively early life. That said looking back they have always chopped and changed engines relatively quickly. V5,V6, 20V, non-turbo'd, turbo'd. Maybe it's simply down to modern cad/computer design and faster development cycles?? I really don't know. From what I've read even the new 1.2Cam belt engine is not without issues. Unfortunately long gone are the days were the competent DIY mechanic could keep his car serviced and on the road. As I understand it even if you did want to change the cam chain on a 1.2Tsi unless you have access to VAGcom to reset the timing data to default it can't be done. I bought mine as a keeper as my circumstances have changed so another new car in the foreseeable future was unlikely. Sods law reigns and it looks like the 1.2Tsi may not have been a good choice, that said fingers crossed up to now it's been trouble free. How long that lasts is anyones guess.