Mclaren still have the contract with ricardo, been to the engine manufacturing facility at the airport and have seen test mules rocking up and down the airport as late as july.

and yes they are thieves at angmering, I now just go to Bridges in crawley (if they ever have a 6n2)

Do you work at ricardos then? The Ford focus in the background belongs to one of are fabrication guys but he left about 6 months ago. The last I heard was that mclaren had threatened to half the production and they were going to start laying people off? I don't know how true it was as I've only heard this from guys that used to work there.

I just ment your accent, bet you dont even okow what a barm is lol

good luck with the build :).

You're from Manchester not Yorkshire! You're supposed to call it "A FUCKIN BUTTY MEYYT"

Dirrtydubs, what magical scrapyard are you finding all these £70 minters?! You won't find cars on here for less than a grand in the same condition!

You seem like you have the restoration game down to a tee, nice work

Yes but when you got to the butty van and say, give me a fucking bin lid butty you tosser, normally results in some sort of excrement ending in it lol.

And i demand an up date tbh

no luke its can i have a bin lid with bacon sausage an egg please bud ta

no excrement as the guys understood you perfect and you used manners

now if you walk in and say excuse me old chap do you mind awfully if i order a rather large muffin with some tasty cumberland sausages and your finest back bacon oh and a free range egg to top it off you would get a kick in the teeth for being a toffee nosed twa* so thats the dos and donts of ordering large buttys around manchester

back on topic i to would like updating on your progress fella

I really worry about you northern lot, cant we all just get along with are weekend drunken munchie serving brotherhood .

Your all mad i tell the :-D . ok ok updates coming.

we all own polos course were mad

Good times on the Polo restoration front.

Ok onwards, I have only got two hours each week day evening to work on her plus some time at the weekends. There is plenty to do on this sorry excuse for a polo so i will start by showing you what I'm faced with, first in the bay.

Evening One =

This is the cleanest thing i could find to take a pic of

Dont worry i still have the original grill and spots the only part i ended up robbing form this car over the years was a nearside head lamp. It was time to have a look underneath and trust me it gets worst this is the chassis .

Although what I thought was a totally standard polo has had a brake upgrade with golf gti front calipers, vented disc's and Green stuff pads I think? I will have a closer look later .

It looks like I've parked it in the sea for the last 6 years! Oh well anyone one that knows me will tell you "I live for this shit" :-D

Here is how the exhaust and rear beam looked.

Next was to get the bumpers, arch and sill covers off just to check behind and to make sure there wont be any nasty surprises later on .

All the arches are very clean no serious rust in sight

The sills were in great shape aswell this is all to good to be true!!!!

After spending some time under her with a big screwdriver and a very large hammer it became apparent that its fight with tin worms was not a winning one :sad: .............. But you will have to wait till next time to see that lot!

Do you work at ricardos then? The Ford focus in the background belongs to one of are fabrication guys but he left about 6 months ago. The last I heard was that mclaren had threatened to half the production and they were going to start laying people off? I don't know how true it was as I've only heard this from guys that used to work there.

I don't work for Ricardo I'm studying my motorsport degree just across from there and I go racing with one of the heads of engine design with his Formula Ford. I work at Wickes

I was talking to a good friend of mine that owns a work ageny that they used to use and he said they are thinking of expanding over the next year or so, so it looks like there here to stay thank god. Good luck with the degree bud hope all goes well for you.

thanks man. If you need any help with the mk2 I'm local (nearly) usually very busy but always willing to help especially if it means working on a car similar to my first car.

Keep up the good work dude! Will try and come over and see it in the flesh at some point. Oh i've got a few headlights too if you need one?

To those unaware with Alex's "analism" this thread will get way out of hand, he will never finish the car and it will cost him a small mortgage to get it to a half way stage.

That was said just to provoke you mate - go prove me wrong!

Andy

Provoked

Andy can you let me know if you man get me a set of new front lights for the polo, h4 type later spec items if possible and not the cheap shot plastic backed ones that gsf do. Bosch or hella item if you can get. Pm me lad. Cheers bud xxx.

Edited 21 August, 201114 yr by dirtydubs

Loving the in depth discussion on ordering breckfast.

And as for the update, a bit of surface rust never hurt anyone, even if its gone all the way through Crack on fella :).

Looks like many many hours of hard graft but i bet its satisfying after when you see the finished product.

Cheers everyone i will update very soon i promise, I've been working some mega long hours so haven't been able to get on here much so sorry for that. Thanks for all the kind comments, I've got hours of stuff to update with so keep your eyes peeled .

Right then, Well i have had some time to poke around under the old girl now and I'm very happy with what I've found :-) , Rot was always going to be a issue so i was expecting the worst but what i got was in short a very solid and original car.There are NO DENTS to the sills or any of the wheel arches plus absolutely NO ACCIDENT DAMAGE anywhere on the vehicle so as far as i can see there is really only 5 or 6 areas to structurally sort out. We will start with every polo owners favorite ............ The offside rear inner wheel arch or filler neck area.

With the sill cover off i could see the damage to the outer sill.

And from under the car.

Now you see it!

Now you dont .

And the internal breather pipe.

The areas of concern here are the outer sill, inner sill, outer arch, inner arch and of course the filler neck area. I,ve done a great many of these over the years so i have ruff idea how to deal with it :-) .

Other areas of repair are : The very back of both rear quarter panels/rear valance.

And both nearside and offside front jacking points.

This really is the worst of it! which I'm very happy about. Although this project is on a time frame I'm not going to rush the repairs i want to repair these areas as i would any other project i've done, put simply there will be no grinding away at the rust then filling over it, there will be no plates or patches welded over damaged areas and there will be no black underseal in sight . This is a resto and the only way to get rid of rust is to get rid of it Sorry its only a short update but this was only the first evening i had worked on the car, on the second eve the fun really started :-D .

Again thanks for reading, Alex.

my old mk2 was worse........

Excellent update, please keep the progress coming!

Your brave man! Big respect to you for taking on something like that. I thought mine was bad

Look forward to the updates!

my old mk2 was worse........

Did you ever do a thread on it bud? Would love to have a butchers. How's the commute to work been of late did you get stuck in the traffic around arundel the other day?.

Thanks guys, It looks a lot worse than it really is I should rip through it in no time fingers crossed :biggrin: . I will try to get You up to date with this over the weekend once again cheers for all the comments.

my old mk2 was worse........

Did you ever do a thread on it bud? Would love to have a butchers. How's the commute to work been of late did you get stuck in the traffic around arundel the other day?.

sadly didn't do a thread I'm not very good with this build thread stuff. I haven't been round arundel way for weeks so no idea about the traffic round there.

I do have pics of the mk2 though.

That rocks i love it! good colour as well jade green by the looks of it? Was it lowered?