Hi guys and girls, I've been playing around with my car for quite a while now so i thought id get a build thread up to show you guys whats happening with it and also get some opinions on various things..

So the present spec is as follows:

Model- VW polo Mk2 1984 in white

Engine- 1.3 8 valve (none of this 16v nonsense)

Suspension- Phil J 60/40 kit

Brakes- standard

Wheels and Tyres- BBS RZ 14"

Exterior Styling- Standard

Interior Styling- Standard

ICE and Security- Sony head unit with alpine speakers

Right, hopefully this doesnt drag on too much but i thought id give a quick run down of my history with the car and what my plans are.

I am currently building and tuning a 1272 coupe s engine and thought that when it was done i wanted to put it into a nice, rust free, reasonably tidy coupe as the bready i had at the time was a bit tatty. So i saw a nice fella named George (G.dot on here) was selling his coupe on here around a year ago i guess and made him an offer that he accepted. It was all done very quickly to be honest, took my by suprise. I travelled up to surrey with a trailor hoping for the best and thankfully i arrived home a while after with a very tidy coupe in white with 70K on the clock!

I had been told that it started but did not run well so as soon as i got it home i investigated. After a bit of dismantling i found that the water jackets in the head had corroded and were letting water into the combustion chamber. I managed to get them welded up and the head skimmed, put it all back together and it ran!

Since then it has had a new alternator, fuel pump, wheel bearings, wing mirrors and track rods, as well as a phil j kit and bbs wheels.

I am currently studying motorsport engineering so I've been designing a lot of components that will hopefully end up on this in the future. The main component I'm designing at the minute is a plenum chamber and inlet manifold for cbr600 bike carbs. The program I'm using is solidworks and I'm still learning the ropes so go easy when i post up some pics of my designs lol.

The engine that will be going into it (soon hopefully) is a coupe s as said, but with quite a bit of modification. Done so far is:

New GT pistons machined down to 10:1

Clutch, crank balanced as well as lightened and balanced fly wheel

balanced and lightened rods

kent fast road cam

ported and flow benched head

back cut valves

skimmed block

new bearing and gasket set

5spd box

The engine will be running a GK inlet manifold with a DMTL just to get me going but i have bike carbs ready to go on, just need to design/ make the manifold.

Anyway, I've waffled on for quite a bit so ill get some pics up and ill keep this updated as often as possible.

As said, id love some opinions on the designs i post up so if you can see a way of improving something, feel free to let me know, I'm open to constructive criticism but please keep the 'thats a stupid idea' to yourself lol.

I hope these pictures work!

Thanks.

Edited 28 January, 201214 yr by azza46

Looks lovely that mate! Very tidy.

Plans sound ace, pics of manifold designs?

Thanks for the reply! Ill include a few pictures. None of them are final or perfectly accurate, just sketches to give me a few ideas.

This first one is basicly my plan to move the inlet port. The port is a pretty crap shape in the standard form so I've tried to sketch it as accurately as possible and then in light grey. I've also drawn a outline for a new port. The new port will sit higher up, making the port much straighter, improving the flow and the opening will start parallel to the sloped face of the cylinder head rather than the old ones which come into the head parallel with the gasket face.

Next I've done a model of the manifold which if i get cut out i can weld the tubes to ready for the carbs.

This is my first design for the plenum. I worked to 150% of the displacement however i havnt come across a standard formula for this yet.

I've also been looking into the length of the intake runners between the head and the carbs as using really short ones are not great in terms of pulse wave tuning. Short ones will only work at very high rpm's which i will rarely drive at.

The equation I'm working to is 85x330/0.012x desired rpm

The rpm id like to work to is around 4500 whch gives a length of 519mm from front of carb to back of valve.

This is pretty long so I'm going to have to see what is possible with the space available in the bay.

So yea, theres a few pics there to look at and think about. Ill try and get some better ones of the car when i get round to cleaning it.

Thanks.

Edited 2 March, 201115 yr by azza46

Interesting! How are you gonna go about moving the intake ports?

Was planning on grinding the roof of the port and then filling in the floor with a really hard filler. I've forgotten the name of the stuff but I can find out. It should help having an accurate cad model so I know how far up the port will be, giving me something to work to.

The head I'll be doing this on is buggered anyway as the valve seats have been pulled down so it's not the end of the world if it goes wrong but if it goes ok I was planning on maybe putting some bike valves in it as the standard ones have huge stems, restricting the flow. All depends on finding a bike that has the right size valves though.

Edited 2 March, 201115 yr by azza46

Ah thought that might be what you had in mind. Guess you'll weld up the stud holes and re-drill em?

I look forward to progress :-)

Where you studying btw?

Yea re drill thm or it might come to welding tubes directly onto the head.

I'm studying at Brooklands in Weybridge.

wow, this came out of nowhere! plans sound amazing.

there's a local member on here called azzy, thought it was you for a minute and had to double take.

are you on TidyVAG? it's a local owners club that meets in poole. www.tidyvag.co.uk

look forward to seeing you about.

Edited 2 March, 201115 yr by CarbonImage

wow, this came out of nowhere! plans sound amazing.

there's a local member on here called azzy, thought it was you for a minute and had to double take.

are you on TidyVAG? it's a local owners club that meets in poole. www.tidyvag.co.uk

look forward to seeing you about.

Hey, yea I'm on Tidy but not much seems to go on there so I'm on here mostly.

May start coming to a few meets soon if I'm in btown.

Cheers.

yeah as a forum it's not much cop, although some good stuff sometimes pops up in the classifieds.

you should come along to a few meets, they're a good bunch of people.

Little bit of an update. Started building the bottom end tonight, managed to get the crank in with the new shells and the pistons on the rods.

Took quite a long time as we had to plasti-guage all the gaps so all the bearing sat right..

Crank finally in.

Lightened and balanced GT rods.

Brand new, machined down Gt pistons. Mmmm.

Good to see my old car again lookin good mate i see you are looking after the car aswell hope to see more pictures soon

Good to see my old car again lookin good mate i see you are looking after the car aswell hope to see more pictures soon

Nice to hear from you bud!

Yea getting there slowly, it been hard finding the time time to get the new engine in but the car is still going strong! Gets used a lot.

Ill try and find some time to clean it then ill stick some better pictures up.

Hey people!

Hope someone can help because I'm really hating the car at the mo, its such a pain in the arse!

It WILL NOT run without some choke out. I've had the carb apart today, cleaned out the jet and the float chamber with carb cleaner, adjusting the idle speed and mixture alllll day and i just cant get it to work.

So I'm appealing for help from anyone that can offer it really, it is really really annoying to drive at the mo as every time i stop at a junction i have to heal toe to keep it running and then pull the choke out, very annoying.

Any help would be much appreciated!

Also, in terms of the build thread, I'm hopefully finishing the bottom end off this weekend! Cant wait to get rid of the pile of crap thats in there at the mo and get the new lump in!

Thanks.

I had the same problem when I put a DMTL on my coupe s, found the problem to be an air leak.

Plans look cool man, nice to see something different being done with the head.

Matt.

Small update, pistons in.

Car is now off the road due to this carb issue, just angers me too much to drive it at the moment, new engine is soooon hopefully..

Also, if anyone has a exhaust manifold they want rid of let me know...

Edited 3 April, 201115 yr by azza46

Sorry for the serious lack of updates recently!

I finish uni soon so the project will be in full swing when i get back.

Plans are:

Finish building engine

fit engine and choose whether to try and get my weber to work or just stick bike carbs straight on

buy a fit four branch and possibly full system

spray all plastics and possibly remove arch trims

sort the issue with the top mounts

re spray roof, bonnet, doors

new wheels! (in the pipeline)

lower the back way more

possibly a quad light grill?

some serious love

Ill be needing the ignition and dizzy from a mk2 coupe s for my carbs (i think this is correct from reading) so if anyone has one drop me a pm and we can sort something out.

Also, i bought a GK manifold and a weber but the weber does not fit on the manifold which i guess isnt that strange but the hole in the top of the inlet manifold is smaller than the two inlets on the bottom of the carb from end to end (tangent to tangent).

Anyone else think this is a bit strange? I'm going to have to get the adapter plate I've made welded onto the manifold as the holes crossover and then grind out the hole in the manifold.

Edited 19 May, 201115 yr by azza46

Bit of an update.

Head ported and polished with valves in ready for the cam

Oil pump on with new lower crank flange gasket

Sorry for the crap pics, taken on the phone.

Also, just on the off chance, the hole to the left of the chain and half way between the top and bottom cog is normally fitted with a sleeve type piece. Can anyone confirm this or even better, have one that i could buy?

Thanks.

Edited 11 June, 201115 yr by azza46

Bit of an update....new wheels!

Thanks to richoco on here for working around difficult circumstances!

Most of the old engine is out now and there is nothing stopping the new lump being completed apart from time so hopefully ill have some progress soon.

Jobs that will be done soon are:

spray the plastics so they are black again

research wheel spacers as the back needs spacing badly

lower more at the back

find lowering top caps

Cheers.

Edited 5 July, 201115 yr by azza46

Nice work fella :biggrin: If you're still planning on re-shaping the inlet ports then the stuff you can use to build up areas is called JB Weld Its great stuff, have used it myself!

Looking great mate any news on the intake manifold? cant wait to see this engine fully built up.

Awsome stuff mate!

Personally i wouldn't bother with re-designing the ports, i may have got confused with your design but the original ports match up well with the angle of the mounting face and the original manifolds.

So what the idea behind the angled plenum?

Hey, thanks for the replies. The idea of re shaping the posrts was to make it a more direct route to the cylinder making it flow better. Its a long was off yet though as I'm just trying to get the engine in and the car running at the moment.

I lowered it down to the bottom notch on the rear the other day. I'm not too sure whether it looks lower on the back than it does the front though.

Thoughts?

Planning on getting some spacers for the rear as well.

Thanks.

Edited 13 July, 201115 yr by azza46

Engine is almost done! Just need to do the timing but unfortunately i need a vernier pulley, so if anyone has one they want to sell or know where i can get one, please let me know!

Just bought a four branch, 5 speed conversion bits and a stereo!

Coming together now!

Also, does anyone know where i can get some centre caps for my new wheels?

Thanks

small amount of progress today. Removed the gearbox so the rest of the engine will be out very soon ready for the bay to be cleaned up and the new engine to go in!

Really can't wait to get this thing running. I'll hopefully be able to put it on the rolling road at college soon as well which will be interesting!

In the mean time the search continues for a vernier pulley.