Dear Polo Fans

I'm taking part in the 2009 Mongol Rally which as the name suggests is a long distance rally from the UK to Mongolia and back again, a round trip of about 15,000 miles! Our team consists of five of us driving a 1967 Morris Minor and a 1991 Mk2F Polo Fox. The Morris side of the team is so obsessed with their so called "Classic" car that they reckon no one would be interested in our lowly Polo so I thought I'd prove them wrong.

We're looking to have some work done on the Polo, both to improve our chances of success, by fitting a sump guard and giving it a well deserved service and to "pimp it up" a bit so it looks the part. We'd greatly appreciate any suggestions as to how/where we can get this done, not to mention any donations of parts etc that could help us out.

For more information check out the official rally website at http://mongolrally.theadventurists.com/

and our team page at www.morristomongolia.com (sorry about the name, the other side of the team got their way there I'm afraid)

We're doing the rally in support of Christina Noble Children's Foundation and Mercy Corps Mongolia please help us to reach our sponsorship target by donating a few quid to either of these fantastic causes at Just Giving CNCF and Just Giving MC

thanks for your support, pics of the car coming soon!

For the sump guard, your best bet would be to get a sheet of aluminium or steel, re-inforced with some metal quadrant along the edges, and drill 2 holes at one end allowing you to bolt it where the exhaust tunnel brace goes, just behind the cat. At the front, a piece of quadrant with 2 'tabs' at each end. This would allow you to bolt to the cars factory sump guard location (you can find the holes for the VW sump guard just above the anti-roll bar mounts).

The factory sump guard is still available (last I heard a year or two ago), but you're looking at upwards of £70 including all the nuts and bolts. Knocking one up yourself could probably de done for less.

I didnt think you drove back from the mongol. Thought cars were left there?

Either way its pretty cool, Good luck.

I would put money ont he fact that you will be towing that morris most of the way.

Yeah the rally itself only goes to Mongolia, some teams sell their cars and fly back others drive.

We heard it might be possible to stick our cars on a freight train on the Trans-Siberian Railway which we could catch just inside Russia and would take us as far as Moscow

where are you? if your close could offer a cheap respray :)

you might wanna watch the long way round to see what the roads are like, charley boorman and ewan mcgreggor road to ul to ulan-bataar(sp) on motorbikes, roads looked pretty shocking!!

bet it will be fun though, I'm well jealous!

People seem to do ok though. Just make sure there are a pair of waffle boards and a high lift jack strapped to the roof!

But you might not want to lower it any mroe that 80mm!

yeah saw the long way round ages ago, thats part of what got us onto the idea of doing the rally in the first place.

I'm based in Southampton during the week and Oxford at the weekends. A respray would be awesome especially as there's a mismatched drivers door at the moment

back again with news that we've set up a second website for our team at www.missionmongolia.co.uk which has more details of the Polo,

I've just put the old girl through her MOT and service which she passed with flying colours (unlike my other, personal, polo, a 51 reg 1.4 which needed a full set of disks and pads changing)

Please take a look at the website and if you can chuck a few quid towards either of our two charities

cheers

Pete

ps, hi res photos available on resquest =)

take a winch, just to be on the safe side! lol.

Best of luck with this.