14 replies to this topic

[Purple Tom]

Hey,

I thought it was about time I put up a bit about my daily driver, which has been a work in progress over the last couple of months. Some of you may remember this thread which is how my previous daily died in February this year, and maybe also this thread which explains what I wanted to do to the car.

Anyway, the day after the crash I went out and bought this little beauty:



A completely standard, 1043cc 1992 Polo CL with just over 88k on the clock. I got it for a bit of a bargain and drove it home the same night (very slowly and keeping a good watch for idiot Jaguars in my mirrors! )

Luckily I had been able to drive the black GT home after the accident, so I then had two Polo's and a Mini to find room for. I took the Mini to Dad's house so I had the garage free to do work on the black GT, getting it stripped of all its nice bits!

The first job was to get the CL onto some decent tyres, as it had 135 width ditchfinders on! I managed to get hold of some A539's very cheaply, so on they went with some GT steelies, already looking much better:



By this time I'd already swapped a lot of stuff from the GT, including the full interior, front bumper and cross member, foglights, rear lights and a few other bits and pieces.

I ran the CL as it was for quite a few weeks until the start of April when I'd managed to book a week off work in order to do a spot of work on the Polo. Over the weeks I'd been stripping down the GT until it was ready to go to the scrapyard....bye bye GT!





So it was time to get working on the CL. I'd been buying stuff over the weeks and already had some things to fit, but the bits included:

1391cc VW Golf ABD engine (previously removed from a VW Golf last year and bought home in my GT):





GT gearbox
G40 brakes
H&R Cup Kit - 60mm front/40mm rear drop
Braided hoses
GT steering rack
New TCA's
New loom
Alarm
Central locking
New brake pipes all round
GT rear axle (with ARB built in)
Front subframe with wishbone conversion
And lots of other things!

I only had a week to do it, so it was a bit of a push!

The first thing to do was to recondition all the parts from the old GT which were going on the CL, which included the rear axle, front struts, brake carriers, and lots of other things - out came the kurust and black paint:





Then I yoinked the engine out of the CL:





And got the engine bay cleaned up, from this:



To this

[Purple Tom]

Once that was done it was time to fit the front subframe. The Polo probably has the crappiest suspension design as standard, ever. It has track control arms, which are similar to a Mini's bottom arm, but rather than having tie-rods like a Mini, it has what is optimistically called an 'anti-roll bar', but which I think should be called a 'poor-attempt-to-hold-it-all-together-bar'. The 'pathiat' bar's job is to not only prevent the front end of the car from rolling all over the place, but also to control the castor and camber of the front wheels, as well as holding the lot together under cornering and when accelerating/braking. It does this by being mounted to the car in only two places, held in place by large soft rubber bushes, which do nothing but wear and you end up with awful front end handling. Polo's with this design aren't particularly nice to drive unless some work has been done to stiffen the front end up with brace bars and poly-bushes, but even then they still suffer with changing geometry when cornering and general crappy-floppiness.

The subframe conversion basically gets rid of all of that and uses the TCA's, along with a Mini style tie-rod, giving you a lower wishbone assembly - hey presto, great handling

Here it is:







As well as fitting the front subframe, I'd also been fitting the GT fuel pumps (needed to feed the Golf engine), as well as the GT rear beam and previously-reconditioned brakes, plus new brake lines throughout and the braided hoses:





Also, as well as doing all of that, I'd been reconditioning the head for the new engine, with new stem seals and re-lapped valves. The engine was coming together nicely, with a GT camshaft for good measure. The ABD engine is essentially the same lump as the previous 1272cc 3F GT engine, albeit with a bigger bore and slightly lower compression ratio (9.5:1 as opposed to 10:1). This slight loss of compression is more than made up for by the extra displacement, and coupled with a GT camshaft and GT management you end up with a really nice torquey, economical engine:



I fitted the genuine VW clutch (eBay bargain!) and the gearbox, then dropped the engine back into the car:





It all fitted a treat and I was ready to put things back on. While doing the rest of the work I'd had a custom exhaust made up for the car by a local stainless specialist. Its a 2" full system in stainless, single box, with a nice hidden TDi-style tailpipe, which comes out nicely just behind the rear bumper. I much prefer this as its nice and subtle, and Mk3 Polo's look much better with a hidden exhaust in my opinion. I'd done some research into exhaust and the 2" system would benefit the Golf engine greatly, hopefully releasing a bit of extra torque without affecting economy:







Then it was time to refit the front suspension, along with new wheel bearings, springs/shocks and the G40 brakes:





Then it all started to come back together very quickly:











Everything seemed to go really well. It fired up fine and sounded great with the new exhaust. A few tweaks here and there and it drove, and its been fine ever since! I've had the suspension geometry set-up properly by icklemini (thanks Dave!) and it corners almost as well as my Mini now

The Golf engine goes great, it might only be 1391cc but the car only weighs about 770kg, so its got plenty of pull, and still returns 42mpg consistently! Coupled with the full GT engine management system and GT cam the engine is a very smooth tractable lump with bags of low down torque and plenty of power at top end. Probably around 85bhp and around 90-90lb/ft. Not bad for 5 days work

Here it is as it stands now:





This weekend I am fitting an alarm and central locking (didn't get round to that last time) as well as the GT arch and sill trims. All good

I hope you enjoyed reading it and weren't too bored by pictures of Polo's!

Tom

[Tomf]

looks really nice Tom, Still prefer your mini though, that is one sexy mini you have got

[bert998]

Cool, great effort

Its nice when things go along smoothly, gotta love dubs. I'll be doing a similar thing with my mk2 gtd when things settle down a bit.

Cant wait.

[Jackman]

Wow i really like it, i think it looks great as it is Tom

[B-shaw]

Wow, thats a lot of work in 5 days

It looks ace dude!

2 weeks and ill be driving my shopping trolley around lol

Gotta fit my stereo, give it a service, do a bit of filling/painting around the locks and some general tidying up before then. Should be fun as its my last 2 weeks at college (going mad getting stuff finished) plus I'm covering loads of shifts at work lol.

[minivanman]

Looks great! And its been touched by the hand of Yardy too, which can only add to the value

[Pie]

Looks awesome Tom. althought the back end needs lowering a tad more.

Just need to start on the mini now

[Purple Tom]

Nah I prefer the slight nose down stance to be honest, the back's staying where it is! Its 60/40 anyway, and I think 60/60 is just too much on a Mk3, the wheels end up in the arches and it looks a bit daft IMHO.

And what exactly are you trying to imply? That my Mini isn't finished? Well you'd be right, I have muchos plans for it

And yeah, Tom, it has been touched by the hand of Yardy which means it now handles almost as well as a Mini

[Jammy]

Looks great Tom, not quite as good as my MR2, but keep working on it and you'll get there!

[minivanman]

Looks great Tom, not quite as good as my MR2, but keep working on it and you'll get there!

Put a smoke canister in the exhaust, red arrows stylee, and you'll be getting close

[Pie]

And what exactly are you trying to imply? That my Mini isn't finished? Well you'd be right, I have muchos plans for it

I know tom, cant ait till you do "IT" lol

Bring it back to a-series ok not quite that extreme

[jack_marshall]

Rather nice.

Simple and subtle. Always works well I reckon!

Thought you were nipping down for a quote for paint anyway lad?

[Purple Tom]

Jack - I may well be coming down for a quote, but this is kind of for sale at the moment as I've got a hankering for another VAG car, so if this does sell to the person who wants it then I'll be starting a new project thread

Thanks for all the nice comments everyone, always good to have a bit of appreciation for the Polo's

[Miss Jen]

Great topic honey!