A wideband gauge is a good piece if kit for monitoring your mixture mate :) I like the oil breather I may copy haha

A wideband is on the cards. Had an extra bung welded into the downpipe when it was made.

Just can't decide on what I want. Seen the eBay ones start at £150ish but don't know if they will be good or not. More research (and also more money) is required before I buy one.

Bollocks!! That is all...

ouch. did that happen instantly and you heard it or something?

The piece that stripped off was still attached to the belt. So I heard it flapping about inside the cover.

Another fun job to add to the list :)

pretty lucky really, atleast it was flapping you heard and not banging! lol

A wideband is on the cards. Had an extra bung welded into the downpipe when it was made.

Just can't decide on what I want. Seen the eBay ones start at £150ish but don't know if they will be good or not. More research (and also more money) is required before I buy one.

I did a fair bit of reasearch and choose the aem one of eBay, works great you can also get an lm1 which clamps to the tail pipe like at an mot station, a wideband is a far better way of monitoring fueling than anything at an mot station.

Update time again, probably the last one before the track day.

So after this disaster..

Saturday morning I set to work, didnt take me long to get this far thanks to the lack of supercharger now :)

Then once the crank pulley was off I found the issue...

Looks like one of the timing belt cover bolts had rattled loose and fallen into the belt. Looks like I've had a lucky escape here. The belt had skipped a tooth or two as the crank and cam TDC marks were well out also, so really glad I caught it before anything more serious happened.

Anyway got the new belt on,

Wasn't too bad a job to do with the engine in the car and having to do it on my street,

But I was worrying as the cam mark wasn't lining up as well as I'd have liked.

I had nothing to worry about though as first turn of the key it fired right up :)

Then just let it sit and warm up and I reset the ignition timing once again, had to wait until Sunday to take it for a drive but she still pulls as well as before so all is well there.

Anyway before all this happened I was in the middle of sorting these.

The dreaded mk2 Golf rear calipers that like to seize up for fun.

I had a set of mk4 Golf calipers that I painted up so got them fitted on.

And the braided conversion brake like fitted perfectly :)

No pictures of the next bit but I had to re-do the handbrake cables. I was still using the old ones that were on the car originally and they were all a bit stiff, so replaced them with new ones, but then ran into another issue. They were too short. I had previously 'flipped' the cable brackets on the rear beam which worked fine but now the drivers side one was too far away. So I had to drill a new hole in the beam and got the cable mounted slightly further in. Doesn't effect the operation at the caliper end but just brings the cable 2 inches closer to meet the joiner for the centre cable. Perfect :)

Finally today was my last chance to have one final check over everything, also found some old jump leads so decided to make up some more engine bay earths.

Only picture I took but you get the idea.

There is still two issues which I probably won't be able to solve before the track day, still have a slight exhaust blow, pretty sure it's coming from the manifold. Starting to think the flange is warped as all the nuts are tight but I can still hear a blow. Also the cam cover gasket is weeping a bit. Going to order a gasket but doubt I'll get a genuine one before Thursday.

Apart from that the car is tip top and ready to go.

I have a cam cover gasket (non genuine) if you want it. I also might have a gasket for your downpipe. It's like a metal o-ring. Just have to chech the diameter.

It is a non-genuine one that is on it Scott, so think I'll just try and find a genuine one.

60mm I.D. is what I would need for a downpipe gasket. I did try a Volvo one I found but it made no difference at all and it was a little on the thick side so I binned it. So if you have a better one to try that would be ace :)

I think it's smaller than 60mm tbh. I'll check tomorrow.

Just a quick one,

Picked these up today from being fitted :)

Yokohama Advan A048 Medium, will be running them on the front on Saturday :)

Obviously I'll give them a clean before then...

Cool :) I've just ordered some A539's from Nick at Mazda on Track. He's fitting them Saturday.

Back at work tonight so I can update this again. Really need to save up and buy a new laptop...unless anyone wants to donate one to me? haha.

Anyway to follow on from my last post, track day!

Made it down there fine, managed 48mpg on the way down which was good.

This picture was taken thanks to Motorsport in Focus

Done 40 track miles and worked out at 9mpg on track, pretty good I thought. Also there were no stoppages for me, but a small oil leak and my manifold blow did get worse.

But the car made it home in 1 piece and achieved 50mpg on the way back :)

Once home I could investigate the manifold blow. Found two issues.

The first being this lovely weld that had decided to let go.

The second being the ends of the gaskets had been blown out. Looks like my thoughts of the flange being warped are correct.

Took the manifold to my mate who made my exhaust up and he did this.

And also this.

Just to try and add a bit of support to it.

Fitted it all back on the car and decided to try and cheat and use two layers of gaskets to see if they would take up the flange warpage...

Seemed to work fine, so on Sunday Ross (Citrus), Scott (Dougstar21) and myself went on a little trip to Crail Raceway for the drag strip.

We all met up in Dundee and Ross suggested we make a Polo Oreo.

I still love a good old Polo convoy.

Anyway I didn't take any pictures at Crail but I got 6 runs and achieved a new personal best time.

14.5 seconds, isn't too shabby for a little 1.3 Polo built in a shed :)

But after the last run, disaster....got the sound of the manifold blow back, and louder than before. So my day ended with just 6 runs :(

Anyway managed to nurse the car home and got the manifold off again.

My cheat with the doubled up gaskets didn't work, just blew them out again.

Was blowing that much it also started to melt the elbow on the thermostat housing :(

So that is how it sits just now, turbo and manifold off waiting for me to decide what to do. Might just take the manifold to a machine shop and get the flange faced off. Hopefully that will solve my issues.

Until next time....

Just a thought Steven, have you checked the head to see if it's straight?

Also, I have a new Febi coolant elbow if you want it.

Just a thought Steven, have you checked the head to see if it's straight?

Don't scare me with things like that Scott....I'll check it tomorrow.

I'll text you about the elbow.

Just had a good read through your thread and sounds like you have had plenty of issues with this build! I've missed it somewhere I bet but what power is it running now?

Oh no :( how much boost were you running?

Just had a good read through your thread and sounds like you have had plenty of issues with this build! I've missed it somewhere I bet but what power is it running now?

Issues are to be expected when you have a G40 engine, especially one that isn't standard. But it is worth it in the end. Power wise I don't know. Still need to sort out getting it mapped properly. But if it's in the 150-160 bhp range just now I'd be happy.

Oh no :( how much boost were you running?

Boost is set to 15psi, that's the maximum I can run with the stock MAP sensor. Like I said above need to get it mapped, I have a bigger MAP sensor in another ECU so I'll get it mapped on that so I can wind it up more. Although it is a nice drive on 15psi.

Updates! Couldn't do anything on this until I got paid. Had to be a grown up last month......BORING!!!!

Anyway, that annoying manifold. Got it sat on a flat surface and found the flange face was shaped like a banana.

Thanks again to Ross (citrus) for the use of his old kitchen worktop and his driveway.

Also thanks to my mk2 which made itself useful!!

The idea was...flat worktop with a piece of sandpaper attached and just run the flange face over it several thousand times until it is flat.

The first few passes showed how much it was warped.

After a couple hours, about £10 worth of sandpaper and a sore wrist I ended up with this....

Still not perfect but much better than it was.

Found a genuine set of exhaust gaskets which I bought years ago, they are much better quality than the cheap £3 each things you get from motor factors these days. Had a couple of goes bolting it up and tightening the nuts down in different orders to get it to sit flat and finally this afternoon I got it spot on. No blows and it sounds much better. Drives much better especially off boost.

I'll use it for the next few days to make sure all is well, if it is then it will have a day out on the 13th to the drag strip again :)

Cant believe how much that was warped, I would have got bored after 2 minutes of sanding, glad that it's all sorted now

Ideal 👍 nice work hope I won't have to copy 😂

Yay finally got a computer back at home :)

So better late than never....here is a video of me at Blyton Park on the Club Polo track day

Quality isn't great...going to have to work on that.

Better quality now :) 10 minutes long too.

Just incase anyone wants to watch my poor driving for that long....