Got it! fortunately got an hour of good weather.

one final q.

how do you unfreeze a water pump?.. its stiff.. WD40? I've tried some reasonable hammer blows, broke the pump on my MK3 I remember. See no reason to replace this one, its almost new lol.

One last q

how to unfreeze the water pump.. its stiff. WD40?

You've been working with the wheel taken off right?

The pulley only goes on one way as it has a little bubble in it which locates onto a small hole.

yeh. thanks.

Today I'm putting it back together. Whats the consensus on cam belt tensioning? I've done it like 4 times now and it always ends up noisy. I'm guessing I'm going too taught..

people say its so you can just turn the belt a titch past 90 degrees- at the point halfway up the shortest legnth of the belt.. This seems a bit vague to me as people have different amounts of grip. I would say I have a fair amount/ alot of grip in my hands. I guess to be sure I do it tighter because i can -physically- turn it through 90.

What do people think?

I'm my opinion mine is set to a loose 90 deg , as you said it howls if its tight so back it off a smidge

ok haven't got there yet, thanks.

Also.. this is IMPORTANT. How close can the timing be.. as in the belt seems to dictate that the cam wheel is slightly out (around 1/3 or 1/2 of a tooth). this means I cant line the marks up perfectly!

well yeah you cant help 1/2 a tooth ...just keep checking until you are sure its right

think it was partly paralax error on the cam wheel pointer

Great! job done. Thanks for the help people. shes running beautifully as before. Thanks for the tensioning tips, really paid off, no noise!

Is there a proper tutorial for this? if not I would suggest one. Haynes says nothing about lowering the engine- which proved the correct method... in fact the polo haynes strikes me as one of the weakest I've seen/used, which is odd.

Glad you got it done, and I'm glad that for once I could help someone else.

Interestingly the haynes manual I had told me the opposite with regard to tensioning (twisting the water pump with a screwdriver) I think it said clockwise to tighten but it was the other way around.. Good for a point in the right direction though.

It pays to replace those four pulley bolts once you have them off, they do tend to suffer from rusting, so don't last for ever, for the cost of new ones, it's not worth risking that next time you want them off, the internal corners may have rusted away. ( I have drilled the heads off of them before now though)

I made a wooden beam that fits in the bonnet shut, it has a length of 12mm studding through, with a plate and nut on top and a stirrup which I attach to the engine hanger bracket with a bolt, I find this easy to control the engine height and you don't risk damaging the sump. (If you do make one of these up, put some shallow holes in the legs that go into the bonnet shut in the wings, these align with the wing mounting bolt heads and stop the thing from sliding, just note that the wing bolts are not in the same position on each side.

As said above, Haynes seem to make a meal of this, what should be a straight forward job, just why they go on about marking the distributor, I don't know, it's not as if it can turn without the camshaft turning!

Regards.

I made a wooden beam that fits in the bonnet shut, it has a length of 12mm studding through, with a plate and nut on top and a stirrup which I attach to the engine hanger bracket with a bolt, I find this easy to control the engine height and you don't risk damaging the sump. (If you do make one of these up, put some shallow holes in the legs that go into the bonnet shut in the wings, these align with the wing mounting bolt heads and stop the thing from sliding, just note that the wing bolts are not in the same position on each side.

Regards.

This is the bar I have, upto 500Kgs capacity ideal for changing the timing belt or pulling the gearbox off without balancing on jacks or axle stands

for me the haynes has several omissions/ errors.

a) its says nothing about the very awkward 10mm bottom water pump bolt.. Surely it could have just mentioned the fact that its difficult!! haha. The first time I did a cam belt on these cars it took me an afternoon just to work out a way of turning it!

b) It says nothing about lowering the engine, when clearly that is the correct method (hence the semi-circle of recessed body panel down there).

c) The difficulty level (no. of spanners) of removing the timing belt and sprockets is lower than the difficulty of REASSEMBLY?!?!! doh! blatant fail. And the former and later are at different ends of the complete engine-in-car overhaul sequence. WHY?!

These sort of omissions run through the entire book. Disappointing, given the polo is well known for being a good place to start for the DIY mech.

Another example is the 'location of' photos/ diagrams... They dont show the location!!! they show it close up!! epic fail.

Sorry, I will send this to haynes lol.

Also whenever I have to raise/lower anything and want it to stay there for more than 10 secs I use the (very brilliant) jack supplied with the car. Its great! honestly its so versatile. I understand a hydraulic jack is SUPPOSED to be safer but I would put my faith in that little thing any day! I have two now!

but yeh, especially with the transmission, its like juggling ming vases lol.

Glad you got it done, and I'm glad that for once I could help someone else.

Interestingly the haynes manual I had told me the opposite with regard to tensioning (twisting the water pump with a screwdriver) I think it said clockwise to tighten but it was the other way around.. Good for a point in the right direction though.

Mine was well frozen. didnt break it tho! And kept all my ORIGINAL G11... of which I have ordered some genuine replacement! (did I say mines only done 20K?!) experience lol.

Also, thanks for the warning about stripping them. I've done many a driveshaft now so I have a good feel for a slippy socket and always put my all into pressing inwards :-) . In fact driveshafts is what I did today!