UK-POLOS.NET - THE VW Polo Forum

Hi all,

been on here for a fair while now, but never really posted much. Anyway, I've had my Polo since March 2010 and have done nothing at all to it in that time.

I got it for £2850, with 70k on the clock with FSH and with new front tyre & tracking, new gearbox and clutch, refurbed wheels, service inc. cambelt and brakes done just before I picked it up!

It's been faultless since then, with just a misfire at idle to track down. (Changed the coil which was cracked but it's still there )

It's pretty much standard at the minute, but I've plans for it once I've picked up something a bit more comfy/refined to use daily. The only changes so far are a better radio, OEM headlight protectors (£7 brand new! ), 99 relay which was really useful over the winter months, some G60s for winter wheels (not to everyones taste, but since seeing the same colour scheme on a 205 GTi, I feel in love!), and some G60 brakes I got off eBay the other day.




£85 for 100 mile old disks (no lip at all!) and pads, one refurbed caliper, one not-refurbed, both rear calipers and carriers off an Ibiza Cupra/G60! Bargin! (Full GTi setup for sale if anyone wants it? )

Anyway, here's how it stands now:



and how it was over the winter:




Should get the brakes fitted in the next few weeks when my dad has time to help me, and then bigger things would happen once I've found a replacement.

Joe

Looks really good, clean and tidy (except for that winter photo )
Great price for it!
Look forward to seeing more updates

looks like its been well looked after,and someone on here told me red ones are fastest lol

Cheers. Mechanically it's fine, but up close every panel is dented or chipped. Still, looks good from a distance.

I thought it was fact red is faster and everyone else is delusional?

lovely little motor, and yes red ones definatley are faster

Ohhh another red one , nice tidy looking car mate!

Another Joe Looks nice man, notice any difference with the brake upgrade?

Nice car mate, Red ones are a lot faster.... Fact

Nice car mate nice to see another red GTI owner on here

Endi_GTI wrote:Nice car mate, Red ones are a lot faster.... Fact

Il second that

joe2612 wrote:Another Joe Looks nice man, notice any difference with the brake upgrade?

I'll let you know when they're fitted - still painting them up at the minute and trying to find a decent replacement.

Might do some 60-0 tests before and after, see if stopping distances improve, or just fade resistance.

Looks good dude.

Well, two updates - some good, some bad.

Crashed into a curb corner stone at ~20mph like a complete retard, and taken a chunk out of my otherwise perfect rim lip and nearly new tyre. On the brightside, the garage said it's not needing replacement and the tracking etc is fine. (Big thumbs up to HiQ Aylesbury!) But while on the ramps they found the gear box is caked in oil, so might need to look into that! Anyone know if there's a common place to leak on them

In good news though, a deposit has been placed on one of these (the 231 one though, not the 189 pictured), with collection when the seller is back off holiday. Time to start work on the Polo I think!



Probably sell it next year when I'm back into uni, but will see how expensive petrol is by then!

Right, my first update!

Finally got the car back home again after keeping it at my Nans for a couple of months or so while we cleared the garage out for it. It needed an MOT, and as it was SORN this seemed like a good time to drive it home via the MOT centre.

The night before the MOT I checked the obvious stuff like bulbs, wipers etc, only to find the rear washer wasn't doing anything. After finally tracking down the leak to inside the rear 1/4 panel it was good to go.

It passed the MOT the 2nd time around, after being ten times over the emissions limits! Sorted by a bottle of Redex (or something) and an Italian tune up.

To get to the wiper pipes required removing the inner panel of the back of the car under the rear side windows:



(Awesome photobucket editor FTW!)

Sadly, I'd wasted a massive amount of water trying to find the leak, and had soaked the entire left carpet/underlay, and the back seats. So I decided the best thing to do was to remove it all, save it smelling, and doing any damage to the floor of the car. Most likely going to keep the under-lay out to save on weight anyway, seeings as it's mainly going to be used for track days/fun.

I'll do a guide when I re-assemble it all on how to remove the centre console, as there's nothing on here that I could find, and some of it is pretty well hidden.





Those black things by the handbrake tunnel are footwell vents for the heater system. Never knew this had any, and was a pleasant surprise to find it did. Always found it odd my old Fabia had them, and this didn't!



The front seats weigh about 20kg each! Reckon I'll have knocked 50kg off the weight of the car if I keep it as it is, although, it's not easy to drive without the drivers seat!

My long term plans for the car are to turn it into something I can hoon around tracks in, while learning a bit myself (as much as I love cars, I've not really worked on them before) and a budget. I'm doing a computing degree atm, but am on a placement year, so can give it some time now. I intend to do as much as possible myself, and leaving the electrics to someone else.

Planning on doing: brakes (got G60's waiting to be fitted), weight reduction (stuff like rear speakers, sound proofing, remove seats & fit lightweight drivers seat) suspension, bracing and rear ARB, and engine work. Engine wise, I'm thinking an AFH head with some high lift cams in, throttle bodies and whatever is needed to support those. The mechanical side of that should be doable at home with help from my dad, but will need to ask my university nicely if they'd be willing to map it/wire in a standalone ECU. Things like manifolds etc I can get made up cheaply by a friend who runs an engineering firm.

That's all for now, but should get the brakes fitted in the next week or so, then it's just a case of saving up some money to buy stuff as I keep wasting it all/ spending it on the Mazda (£40 a spark plug! )

Thanks,

Joe.

Haven't updated this in a while, but then again, not much has happened!

Since I last updated this, the RX-8 has been and gone, as has the Golf GT that replaced it. Due to pick up a 330d next weekend. Hopefully I won't be spending all my money on petrol, or repairs any more so can give the Polo some love! All I've done since this was updated is fit the coming home lights, got a set of Golf 4 Recaros and some 'HiSpec Motorsport' 4 piston brakes on it.

Future plans are the obvious lower, wheels (seen some RH Cups I quite like) and then I'm thinking something engine related. I don't see the point on working on this engine, and I don't like the 1.8t much, so I've been looking around and I've got something in mind. . .

I had a go at cleaning up the doorcards today too - 60 points to whoever can spot the additions!

Before:





After (ignore the crack, that's oooold!):





Taken all the plastic bits off, cleaned the doorcard fabric and sprayed any plastics with plastidip. I'm not sure I like the finish on it though or how long it will last, but it's at least neater than before. If it does turn bad, it just peels off like sunburn, so not the end of the world. It's not as dirty as it looks - it's mostly dusty. Does anyone have a rough price for the cost of replacements from VW?