g40jon
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Dec 26, 2013 22:01:10 GMT
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Yet more set-backs with the polo! Noticed the brakes were feeling a bit odd and the grinding noise which was present prior to the gearbox swap has re-appeared, so I decided to take a look today. Got the car jacked up and the problem was pretty clear. The wheel had over a cm of play in the bearing and I suspect this was the cause of the spongy breaks (my theory being that the play was allowing the disc to wobble and kick the pads out causing the excessive pedal travel). I had a spare set of struts in my garage loft, so decided the best plan of action would be to swap the shock and spring over to my spare strut as it has a good bearing in it.
The plan was going well! Got the old strut off the car in record time!! This was all too good to be true though. I don't think the person who last changed the suspension were very skilled. The castle nut had been chewed to the point that it was no longer useable and had clearly been re-fitted with mole grips. So I concluded that the only way to remove it would be to use mole grips also! Thankfully the nut came off. At this point I thought I had done the hard part, but no, one more prob to get around! Even with the correct tool for the job I could not get the screw cap off of the strut to enable the shock insert to be removed. This resulted in a trip into work to borrow their big vice.
Back home and with the light fading, I set about rebuilding the strut back up. This went fairly smoothly, although having to use basic spring compressors was a bit of a chore. I managed to save the damaged castle nut by cutting new slots into it. Why the previous person to have the suspension apart didn't do this is beyond me. Either that or replace it altogether (an option not open to me, what with it being boxing day).
Getting close to wanting rid of the car now that I have fixed most of the niggles!
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Last Edit: Jan 16, 2014 8:15:12 GMT by g40jon
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g40jon
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Posts: 2,569
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Dec 22, 2013 16:42:07 GMT
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for under £750, i'd consider pretty much anything from the late 80s/early 90s as all will be getting rarer and all will be creeping up in value soon, as they are kinda in that half way point between being banger fodder and future collectable. If you plan to try and make a few quids on it, I'd stick with popular brands, as they always command best prices, mk1 golfs and rwd drive fords being good examples of this. Having said that, anything from the late 80s/early 90s will be pretty much free motoring for a year, so just buy something you fancy!
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g40jon
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Ditch the panasonic and fit a blaupunkt instead. Back in the 80s/early 90s the golfs could be spec'd with a variety of decks from different manufacturers. High end blaupunkts were good bits of kit, powerful, had line in and outs and tbh look far nicer than panasonics offerings. You could add a line in and even a line out to your panasonic without too much trouble if you have a good understanding of electronics. You could probably fit a more powerful amp too. The amps on most stereos from the early 80s onwards use opamp chips for the amp section, so you need to find what pin out your std chip amp uses, then find a more powerful version with the same pin out. The line in needs to be connected to the volume pot if the radio has one and if not you need to work out the audio part of the radio circuit, find somewhere suitable to connect to, then find a way to mute the radio if it doesn't auto mute in the presence of an aux signal. The line out is pretty simple. Find the inputs for the amp chip and attach some rca leads to the input, so you effectively bypass the on-board amp. Only issue I found was that the input signal was pretty weak. This could be sorted by making a basic pre-amp (it might even be possible to re-use and mod the pre-amp that will be fitted to the tape deck, something I had planned to try but never got round to doing) I did offer a service to carry out such mods, but the vast majority of people appeared to want the work doing for peanuts, so I stopped doing them. Happy to give pointers though. Personally if I were to carry out such mods for my own car I would start with a better period radio as those old panasonics are a bit naff compared to the competition. I am pretty sure some sony decks with cd changer control and rca out could be spec'd on later mk2 golfs (back when sony made fairly good stereos that weren't lit up like an xmas tree.) Wouldn't bother with a modulator as that will degrade sound Q to below that of mp3 or cd.
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g40jon
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Posts: 2,569
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Dec 18, 2013 10:50:11 GMT
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So.... I haven't updated for a few weeks! All has not gone to plan!! First up was the clutch change that never happened. The car had been making some grinding noises and upon inspection I concluded that the diff bearing had failed, so saw no point in changing the clutch to refit a pooped gearbox. Being on a budget, refurbing the box was not an option, so I sourced the cheapest polo box I could find (£80 delivered!) and waited for it to arrive. It turned up, so the following weekend with help from my workmate we set about removing the old gearbox and clutch. This went well and by lunchtime we were ready to fit the new clutch and box. After a quick bite to eat we soon realised that the new box (a 4 speed) had a completely different mount to the 5 speed, so for the next week, the car was left with no box and up on ramps. whilst up on ramps I thought it would be a good time to check the underseal, repair if needed and repaint the sills with stonechip paint. Passenger side is in pretty good shape, but the drivers side will need a patch repair on the rear of the sill. So another week went by and I managed to source a 4 speed gearbox mount, so game on I thought! Decided to have a crack at fitting the new clutch and box on my own. Got the new clutch out of the box and offered it up to the car and to my surprise it didn't appear to fit. So I dug the old clutch out of the bin and compared the two. The new one was smaller and it turned out that I had been sent the wrong one. This wasn't helping to get my car back on the road though and with my mx5 leaking from its waterpump I really needed to get the polo functional! Being a bit of a hoarder of parts, I had kept a 2nd hand, but barely used clutch from an ibiza 1.4 the wife owned and lucky for me it uses the same clutch as the polo! The clutch went on a treat, but I then wasted a good couple of hours trying to dead lift the gearbox into place and line it up at the same time (the joys of having no engine crane or gearbox lift). Thankfully my workmate dropped by and helped me out again. So by sunday morning the polo was back in one piece! Time for a drive! All good, but then 2nd gear started to sound like a straight cut rally gearbox! Lucky I didn't drive very far so no damage was done. Checked the oil level for the box to find it had been drained! (should have checked it first! you live and learn). Topped the oil up with just over 2 litres of oil and tried the car again and I am pleased to say it is working well! Finally got around to finishing my tweeter pods too! Ditched the plan to paint them and instead wrapped them in some black vinyl which matches the polo dash pretty well.
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g40jon
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Posts: 2,569
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Dec 15, 2013 13:06:26 GMT
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philips xenons are good lamps. consistently good and last well. The set in my polo have been in the car around 4 years. They do a selection of types too, so you can choose from lamps which are aimed more towards style and lamps which designed to perform as well as they possibly can.
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g40jon
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Posts: 2,569
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Dec 12, 2013 15:07:58 GMT
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not on std arches, especially with that width of wheel too. My mate gave me a set of bbs rms in their std vw size of 6.5j wide with et38 offset in exchange for some 14" alloys with tyres that wouldn't scrub because they rubbed on his mildly lowered polo g40. That was using 195/45 toyo tyres. You can just about get away with 195/45s if you don't stray from the std offset and go no wider than a 6j rim
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g40jon
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Posts: 2,569
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that halford plastic bumper paint is ok, but I did find after about a year it started to flake off in areas susceptible to gravel rash
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g40jon
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Dec 11, 2013 20:01:44 GMT
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just checked the boot sticker for the car and the box is an AHD code.
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g40jon
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Posts: 2,569
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Dec 11, 2013 11:39:47 GMT
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No longer need this, I had swapped it out, as the car was making a grinding noise. Turned out to be a front wheel bearing in the end and not the gearbox (the wheel bearing when first checked didn't show any signs of play and was not noisy when rotated by hand and it was only a few weeks later when it completely collapsed that I realised that it was the wheel bearing that was grinding and not the box), so as far as I am aware the box is fully functional. It has covered a lot of miles (160k), but the box was perfectly smooth in use, all gears engaged well and the car drove fine with it fitted, (ignoring the grinding noise caused by the wheel bearing). It also explains why I could feel no play in the driveshaft flanges or hear any nasty noises when turning the flanges by hand. collection only from chipping norton as I don't have time to sort posting it at the mo. It is fairly compact, I picked up my replacement box using my mx5! £75 ono
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Last Edit: Jan 16, 2014 7:49:22 GMT by g40jon
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g40jon
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Posts: 2,569
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I have two gt steel wheels up for grabs. The reason there is only two, is that I found my newly purchased polo gt to only have 3 gt steels and the other wheel was a coupe s steel. One of the gt steels is being kept as a spare for my gt as it was missing, so I don't need the other two. Both have 165/65 r13 tyres fitted which are just about legal in the eyes of the law. I wouldn't use them on the road though.
13x5.5j 57.1mm centrebore et38 4x100 pcd
Would be perfect to slap a pair of winter/snow tyres on ready for when the really curse word weather arrives.
£10 collected from chipping norton, oxon
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g40jon
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165/50s, 175/50 or 185/45s
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g40jon
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Posts: 2,569
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they are 2pin din connectors. the round pin will be +ve
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g40jon
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Well that has shot that idea down in flames! Can't say it is an idea that I have given much thought tbh, but yeah what you say makes perfect sense. Another idea I did think about though was to gut the chassis of an old radio, then add the insides from a more modern unit (when I say modern, I am thinking along the lines of an 80s radio with analogue tuner/volume pot etc. into a 60s chassis)
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g40jon
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Posts: 2,569
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It is a pretty accurate asking price. I have often seen them make £100+ from 99p no reserve auctions. They were top spec radios in their day, often found in high end german cars, porsche, merc, bmw. They still make for good sound quality now
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g40jon
Posted a lot
Posts: 2,569
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it'll pick up long wave and medium wave. You could probably tweak the tuner pots if you are a bit of an electronics geek, so you could have fm. An easier option would be to add a line input and disconnect all of the tuner inputs, so essentially you are just connecting the line input onto the volume pot. most phones these days can play mp3s and have inbuilt radio tuner. The other easy option would be to use the old radio for show and install a modern radio away somewhere
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g40jon
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Posts: 2,569
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in a word yes it is worth good money, so don't give it away for peanuts. If you want the best possible price for it write a really good advert and crack it on ebay.
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g40jon
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Nov 28, 2013 23:16:34 GMT
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that has some great detail to it! Nice photography too, almost looks real
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g40jon
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Nov 23, 2013 23:55:39 GMT
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Yeah the poloace chips are good. The guy who used to do them (alan) was/is a top bloke. A real polo enthusiast.
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g40jon
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Posts: 2,569
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Nov 23, 2013 23:52:42 GMT
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Did a bit more on the pods today trial fit to make sure it'll go in drivers side one nearly done, looking pretty good, can't help feeling I should have nade it completely flush though I've also fitted my new stereo loom which I made to replace the butchered oe one. Also sorted the dodgy idle by cleaning the throttle body out. Judging by the gunk, I don't think it had been cleaned since the last time I did it 4 years ago! For my troubles I got some carb cleaner in my eye (that stings I can tell you!) On the outside I have given the car a quick mop to try and get the shine back looks reasonable from those pics, however....... Arches are showing their age, I have rubbed them down and slapped some underseal on them for the time being as it is too cold to paint
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g40jon
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Nov 23, 2013 10:05:24 GMT
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Its a shame your work didn't make money as it was a great idea I'm not that worried tbh. I'm not loosing anything from not doing them (I've got a bit bored of them anyway, as they have lost their challenge, which was part of the appeal doing them). The idea is good, there are people doing similar on ebay and fetching 3 figure prices for most of their radios (if their feedback is to be believed) I do however think they are probably shill bidding their radios up. Most of the other ones I have seen are converted using the easy method of playing over the top of the radio. I have always tried to mod mine so that only the line input signal is getting to the amp stage.
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