UK-POLOS.NET - THE VW Polo Forum

After hunting around for a car I finally settled on a lovley, nearly original 1992 K G40, which I now intend to get back to A1 condition - it is quite good already.

So I have some questions for all experienced owners:

1) My car is black - should it have red stripes on the bumpers? If so are these sprayed on or are they just a piece of tape? Are they available?

2) Should my car have tinted rear lights (it has orange front indicators so I figured it should have normal rear lights).

3) Is it best to use genuine VW spark plugs or is there a better alternative. And what about engine oil?

4) Will the be a big improvement in fitting a sports air filter in the original housing (not an induction kit).

Thanks for reading, and hope to get some replies.

1) yes they should have red stripes in the bumpers, and they are stuck on, you can buy red strying tape from halfords for about £3 a roll
2) early G40's had standard lights but later ones had half tinted rear lights
3) the Spark plugs people recomend for G40's cost about £60 a set but I dont know what they are. Also people recommend using VW's oil but the main thing is to change it regualrly
4)You may find an improvement if you fit a sports filter in the standard housing, but dont use foam ones, because if they get damaged and bits get sucked into the charger they can destroy it (so stick to cotton gauze like K&N's etc). You will find bigger gains if you remove the restrictions in the air filter housings and the cold air inlet in the front grill etc.

I dont have a G40 but the engine bits are what I've heard, the real masters of the G40 engines are http://www.pitstopdevelopments.com so for engine info you may be better posting on their forum

hi mate, welcome to the forum & G40 ownership!

heres some answers:

1 - yes it should, they're just tape. you cant get the proper stuff from VAG anymore but halfords & other motor factors will sell rolls of it

2 - only later models have tinted rear lights. as you say I think it would also have clear indicators.

3 - spark plugs cost a fortune on G40s. what you need are Bosche part number W5DPO. These cost around £15 each but dont be tempted to buy cheaper alternatives, people have done & they cause running problems. For oil you're best off using VW stuff which is Quantum Synta Silver (semi-synthetic).

4 - you're best off fitting an induction kit. the standard airbox is quite restrictive. or what you could do is fit a K&N panel filter (or similar) & de-restict the airbox, if you look at the outlet on it there will be a circular piece making the tube smaller, if you take that out then it should make things better. ideally just get rid of the airbox altogether & fit a cotton gauze cone filter (i.e. K&N or Jetex) with a heatsheild like they use on Jabbasport R1 upgrades.

hope that helps a bit.

One other thing worth mentioning, do you know when your charger was last serviced? if not or if it was quite a while ago (more than 30k) then you definately need to get that done as a priority.

check out http://www.pitstopdevelopments.co.uk

they're the people to see about charger services & upgrades etc... also lots of other tuning products for G40's if you're interested.

cheers,

Paul.

hayesey wrote:3 - spark plugs cost a fortune on G40s. what you need are Bosche part number W5DPO. These cost around £15 each but dont be tempted to buy cheaper alternatives, people have done & they cause running problems.

I can't stress this enough! Even VW tried to sell me NGK alternatives once, and according to my local motor factors that's what VW told them to recommend too. On a standard car you might not notice a huge difference with the cheaper plugs, but once you start tuning it the differences are more pronounced. An extreme example is Mark Hunter's mental turbo'd G40 - he melted an NGK plug, so he switched to Bosch ones which were fine.

VW charge about £65 for a set, but Pitstop Developments should be able to sort you out cheaper - I got a set from my local motor factors for £55. The plugs are used in some Porsches too, and I remember finding an American website where they were much much cheaper (about £25 a set) - but you might get stung on import duty buying them that way.