1989 polo coupe s

Cool car... And without having a dig... Your wrong about the standard lump being un-tuneable...



Ok so that ones been turbo'd

But sorg and vw performance spent along time and alot of money making polos very competative without swapping engines out for the bigger brothers...

All thats needed is an open mind. Personally i think g40's are over rated and wouldnt waste my money on one (AGAIN)
Id say tune the lump you have. Theres lots that can be done on a budget... My lil 1043 loon went realy well with a 4 branch. My old 1100 bready went realy realy well with upped compression.. Or then theres fitting a solid lifter (rev happy) 1300 and a 1043 4 speed box for off the lights fun

Oh and the standard compression ratio is fine to run a turbo.... ;D

Think:

Early 1300 lump (solid lifter head),
lightened flywheel,
balanced rods,
skimmed head,
passat Formal E? valves,
4 branch
homebru porting job with a dremmel
4 speed 1043 ratios and a 1300 5th gear for the mway.
possible bike carbs? Or just a well tuned weber


and it would be different... Theres loads of stuff rocking about with gt/g40 engines... But no smaller engines that people have actually played with

Thats sounds good, would certainly be easier than messing around swaping it over not sure on what condition my engine is in tho as i have a feeling its been abused a bit over its life (maybe should find another 1300 motor and build it up.....)

I just assumed that they weren't easy to tune as i can find next to no information on them online (maybe my google fu is weak) and other then the odd camshaft and exhaust I've seen there is very little easily avaliable bits, bike carbs is somethign I'm looking at tho if i go down this route and i did think of doing a home brew turbo setup (before i thought of the micra thing)

yeah.. starting to think that might be a better idea lol, if i can find a doner car, they are a bit thin on the ground up here now sadly, i heard the fuel injection loom plugs straight into the non fuel injected loom? is that correct? i guess i need the fuel injection tank and pump etc too.

Check out my project here

Engine tuning all the way ;D

Love the color of youre wheels any better pics?

Yeah, that's why it's best to get a complete car if you can.
Apart from obviously the complete engine and gearbox, you'll basically need,
The engine bay and ECU wiring loom and ECU.
Fuel tank with lift pump and bracket under car with filter, inline pump and accumulator.
Fuel lines that run under the car.
You may as well use the rear axle too as it has a built in anti roll bar. You'll need to use your old rear brake assemblies (or at least wheel cylinders though) as the GT/G40 uses a load sensing valve and the wheel cylinders are a different size.
You'll also need the remote gearlever linkage from the GT too.
You should be ok with the front ARB clearing the 5 speed box as yours is a later model mk2, but check them side by side before throwing anything away.

Well long time since this was updated.... had a major lack of mojo, almost sold it but didn't, so I've decided to fix all the stuff that annoyed me on it, and start using it again (well not that i use a car often as i use my motorcycle most days, but sometimes you need one)


main reason i got annoyed at it was running issues, i think I've traced that to the rubber carb gasket (shock) so hopefully once that comes it will actually idle OK and not stall, secondly the wheels.. they look good, but are totally wrong offset for the car, as there mini wheels so it handles terribly, also the fact its running low profiles makes the speedo read out by 10mph

third was the paint on the roof, its pretty bad, and makes the car look tatty up close,



*i'd started rubbing it down there, but you can see all the marks over it when paint seems to have been sprayed when it was wet

Anyway I've managed to find a set of 14" gti bottle tops for it to replace the superlites, need to get them refurbed and get tyres for them, anyone know what size i should be going for? think 185/60/14 will be too tall, but I'm not sure?



As i need to repaint the roof, i decided to take the opportunity to change the colour, and go for a light blue, had a quick look round halfords and found this *test sprayed on a can to see what it looks like



always liked that colour and it should go ok, I'm somewhat amused that halfords still sell it though i mean not like ladas in that shade were ever really common was it, even 20 years ago


i started rubbing down the roof, removed the gutter trims as they hadn't been taken off last time it was done (will need to find one as it was broken already, they get brittle and hard to remove without breaking)
think the head gasket has gone, once i get the carb fixed illl take it a run and see (it loses water, but doesn't seem to boil or airlock)



oh and before i get it all done, anyone fancy shopping this pic with gti bottle caps and a blue roof?

yeah they look good, if the offset was somewhere near what it should be id leave them on, they do stick out way to much at the front though

did a little more work on it today, laid the first coats of high build primer on it, going to need another coat, but it decided to rain as I was rubbing the first one down





As you can see still needs sanding to get rid of the low spots (looks like rain spots in the pic, was where the top coat had been seemingly painted over rain), yes I know I should have sanded the orange right back, but was going to take an age, and the paint seems well attached, good enough to paint over (I'm impatient lol) another coat should do it, looks better already thankfully