Really do love the colour of my car, its hard to portray with the crap camera on my phone, but this latest pic shows it quite well

In summer it really comes alive

So today, i had a small bump, really annoyed at myself as it was a stupidly small error, luckily the damage to my car is only slight, but still pisses me off no end.

Basically was behind a car at a slightly acute downhill junction, waiting for traffic to pass so he could pull out left, he was looking up the road, and a gap appeared so he began to pull out, then a golf came up the side of us both wanting to turn right and he mustv'e blocked the guy in front of me's vision, so anchored on, I was still looking up the road looking to see if I could get out also, and literally just rolled into the back of him, as I wasnt aware he'd stopped.

We pulled over and I immediately apologized, explained why I bumped him and he was fair about it, had a look at the damage on his car, it had bent the lower part of the bootlid (just about where our handles are on 6n's) and flaked the paint, cracked his nearside fog/reflector and cause the buffer beam (for lack of a better term) to just push through and tear the bumper on the offside. quite dramatic when you consider mine just had a bit of cracked paint and a plastic grille pop out!

Anyway I've said ill sort him a replacement bumper and bootlid out, and he seems ok with that! (for those wondering, his car was a 52 plate corsa)

and the pics of mine:-

Feel like such a complete tit! haha

Well thats one problem sorted, in the end he said he'd rather have it repaired by a professional who can guarantee a colour match, I argued that the parts I were getting for him would be nigh on a perfect match and it would only take an afternoon of the car off the road, but he had his mind set so I had to oblige really, bodyshop quoted him £150 which I thought was fair. had to sell some things sharpish to raise the cash and ended up with a Stainless manifold in one of the deals, but he's got the money now, don't really care if he doesnt get it repaired and keeps the cash as long as its out of my hair, I did ask for a receipt though, just incase of any shenanigans further down the line, but I don't expect any he seemed a genuine honest bloke.

Gave the engine bay a quick check over today and noticed water on the subframe right below the water pump...again

really annoyed as the current pump is less than a year old, and the one before that was 2-3 months old when that one failed. Two totally different brands but exactly the same failure, beginning to think the garage haven't fit it right again so might consider doing a replacement myself, but I cant really see what there is to screw up, unless the belt is tensioned way too tight or something?

MOT on saturday, so thats gonna be fun... grumble grumble

MOT passed, 2 advisorys, 1. Child seat fitted, but seatbelts work any way so no biggie and 2. Slight Movement at top of Strut on Nearside, probably just a battered top mount! Very Pleased :)

I hope mine goes through that easily in a couple of months!

I suppose if you keep on top of any problems it will do :)

its lookin good so far mate,

its lookin good so far mate,

Thanks bud :)

Just been out for a celebratory drive round yorkshire in it, otley, pool, collington(?) then up to york, took A59 towards harrogate, then onto A658 back to pool and then headed back home, love them roads

not much to report lately, got the bearings ready to go in on Friday, entered into an autotest with a local club which should be good fun, replaced the centre silencer as the baffle inside had come loose and rattled like hell, although I don't think this replacement is going to hold up too well, few cleans here and there but marks and scratches are annoying me. Got a quote of a guy to clean them up as best as possible for £40, which seems fair, he said theres no point going the full hog what with the ages of the car, the depth of some scratches and of course the rusty arches!

I've spent quite a bit of time messing with the kids 12v ride on toy which is fun!

Still got an anti-roll bar to fit onto mine and see about fitting the stainless manifold but they are non-essential and can wait till I have the time and money!

the wheels really suit it. wheel choice can make or ruin a car

Thanks mate, it's not without a cost though, keeping them clean is a pain haha!

I agree, a suited set of wheels can make a car, even if its standard elsewhere. The moment I saw a set of these on a polo I knew I had to have them in white

Well the bearings went in today, dunno what they used on the hubs to get them in/out but it smells absolutely gorgeous, almost like Castrol R!

few points to note from the being fitted, its so smooth and quiet on smooth tarmac, but quite rumbly on anything else, bumps and ridges are a lot more pronounced, this could also be due to the suspension settling again.

Steering has become VERY heavy on full lock but very light when centred, but the tracking is out a bit, felt some movement under load that wasnt there before and seems quite happy to break into understeer at lower speed compared top before, so going to have a play tommorow and get the alignment back to something better. To be fair I told the guy to pull the struts as far out as they would go when fitting back together to avoid rubbing whilst I get some spacers, didnt think he'd go to the extremes though haha.

also going to plug up the dry exhaust joins tommorow to prevent the blowing and see if theres anything else I can do while I have time!

well a little over a month ago I got a replacement centre section on the exhaust which I was going to plug the dry joins but weather prevented that, and thankfully so..

The exhaust developed a rattle on saturday evening, thought nothing of it as the old one developed the same fault, I was a bit miffed but knew I could probably exchange it at ECP given its only been on the car a month or less.

Went to take family out to morecambe today and 15 mins into the journey, went to accelerate and there was a loud hissing noise and the car really struggled to get past 3k RPM, so I think the baffles/silncers inside have completely collapsed. I stopped the car and had a 2 minute check, but without the engine being under load its not noticeable, only the rattle.

So hopefully ECP is open tommorrow so I can exchange it, I have the old really rattly one still aswell, hopefully I haven't caused any damage elsewhere and I'm quite thankful the joins were dry to ease the back pressure or else it would have been even worse.

edit: just read it could be the catalytic converter. but it has recently passed MOT fine and would the "clogging" occur so quickly?

Edited 3 May, 201511 yr by R10tz0r

turns out the cat decided it wanted to have a rest!

some drilling and a conveniently sized crow bar and removed it all, won't have to worry about that until MOT time

a lump of the offending stuff

and Kim as always had something to say

Just been to adjust the toe/tracking on the car because it was miles out, and the 20mm nut on both tie rod ends was practically seized, which makes me wonder what the garage did when I've asked them to adjust the tracking, anyone know of any other ways to adjust it?

Would you believe that I've had the exact same today. I attempted to sort out my camber issue on my offside front and instead of camber, I got toe, so I attempted to loosen the TCA's and adjust and the nut on the rod ends just would not come off. I got it after a LOT of force, but then couldn't get the rod ends out at all. I recently had my tracking done at Kwik Fit and they said that they heated the track rods in order to adjust them? But I have no idea how.

haha, I just used my heat gun, WD40 and a lot of heave-ho on a spanner!

looking forward to saturday, really excited to have a go and drive the polo in anger at the autotest!

unfortunately, I have a weak handbrake so have adjusted the nuts inside to make it a smaller lift, I dont have the time or money to replace the shoes right now so will do what I can. I'll also pump loads of pressure in the rears to reduce the footprint as much as possible, I dont have my spare steelies with 175's on anymore (gave them to a competitor in a lupo) or else I may have considered putting them on the rear.

won't do anything at the front, might drop the pressures a little bit but I do need a quick reaction from them so its kind of a null point there.

Weight wise I have removed the sub from the back, really because the head unit has gone tits up and is wasted economy sat their, but it helps lighten the rear up too. I have to carry a passenger so have asked my best mate to volunteer, he is currently off the road due to health issues and is hating every second, so it would be nice to let him have a bit of fun, even if its from the wrong side!

I've been to check the venue and its quite a small place so its going to be quite tight, hopefully the hand brake holds up, practiced a start a couple of times, 4k and feed it in quickly seems best, theres a little bit of scrub from the tyres, but any harder just bogs it down and any lighter just burns the clutch.

I do stand an advantage with the coilies, they keep the car very flat, even though they arent wound all the way down! from marshaling a few tests, wheelspin and open diffs kill time, so I'll try keep the wheelspin down and momentum up.

oh and a little trick I'm going to try is taping up the handbrake button, so its an on/off approach, reminiscent of hydro handbrakes drifters have, albeit a bastardized version, lets see how it goes!

any thoughts?

Great day at the autotest, 4th in class, some really fast times too, unfotunately my inconsistency let me down or else I would have been higher I think!

I'm still quite pleased, my first time doing it, and car was superb, well the handbrake wasn't any good, so had to work around that, but everything else went well, even got complimented on my lines and tightness (well, I am from yorkshire )

My fastest on the 1st course was 34.56
the second course was basically a reverse of the first and got a 32.00 on that!

Had a few daft errors, like going round a cone the wrong way (don't laugh, its not as easy as it sounds!) and with the aforementioned handbrake issue sometimes I'd have to go in reverse to get round a cone as it was a really tight circle.

The run below is a 39.12, apologies in advance for the vertical video and the wind noise!

My times, WO means I buggered it, +1 or "cone" means I knocked a cone and incurred a time penalty.


Before the event


The "Paddock"


Me ready to go, and my mate in his "race" lupo behind me.


Overall I really enjoyed the event, nice venue, just about big enough, had a great laugh with my Co-Driver.

Entry was £15 and was organised by the Airedale and Pennine Motor Club, well worth it for the hoot!

Credits go to the guy with the camera, Oliver Blair, here are some images from the autotest, I wont spam them all on this post, more can be found at this link - http://imgur.com/a/IYawv

15 inch they look like. @wheels

must feel heavy with them though

15inch have always made the 6n look better. filling the arches and making the car look more square.

i have 14 inch wheels on for lighter rotational weight but don't look as good. thinking about respraying them. is the colour pure pure white lol.

I might just go for silver and be a wuss.

yeah they are 15's they do fill the arches quite nicely, without looking like big hoops, I think it pulls 14's off too, 13's always seem a bit lost to me unless its absolutely decked haha, steering is heavier over the standard steel and thinner tyre combo, and the Powersteering can't quite keep up when your really giving it the twisties!

Beleive it or not yeah they are meant to be pure white haha, but the dust from the brakes just sticks to them like glue, give it two or three days and they are dirty again, its a hard life :P

Solitudes come from the factory silver but I didnt like how they went with the car so of course did mine white :)

So I had another go at the autotest on Saturday just gone, had a barrl of laughs, my aim was to improve consistency over raw speed, got carried away a couple of times haha, actually managed to swing the back out proper for once, and had it on two wheels at one point (although I didnt know that in the car, shame there were no pics!)

a couple of action shots, what the surface did to my (already well worn) tyres and finally my times!

This is my mate Gom, who frequently runs in the Westfield Srint Cup Championship, I think he was a bit scared here hahaha

Miles past the apex, I'm looking back to see if I knocked a cone over coz it looked pretty damn close from the seat!

The surface is very very abrasive, a chap turned up with rally snow tyres on the back, 12 runs later they were down to the wire no joke!

No wash outs and 2 cones, mainly thanks to a simpler layout, pretty pleased with the consistency, to say they were all within roughly 1.5seconds within the tests, still room for improvement though!!

I didnt play with tyre pressures or anything for this event, could definitely fell the difference up front, understeer was in abundance on the power out of the sharper turns, especially when I couldnt get the back to pull and tuck it in. I do need to get a steering knob though, because there was one particular manouvre that needed a full lock to lock transition and a nip on the handbrake which just couldnt be done without the knob.

The timekeeper was impressed with my speed on the second test, apparently I was one of the quickest to a certain point when my lack of mad handbrake skillz let me down!

Final result was 5th overall, which I wasn't too bother about as my aim was consistency, I think I was near the top of my class though, which is cool but with so little entrants, is nothing to brag about!

Hopefully next months will be a bigger entry, If I can make it!

Rang up my insurers as I've recently moved house, about 500metres as the crow flies, apparently I'm in a higher risk area now so they've slammed an extra £100 on my premium!

not best pleased with that one!

Well that was the final autotest of this season done! few mishaps here and there and one that resulted in a code brown moment!

few pictures and whatnot below!

One Wheel in the air!! and plenty of understeer too!

My times, on the first course I started steady and got quicker until I just clipped a cone, managed to get another 24 and then ballsd up the last run lol.

The second course was altered to slow down the cars and was really tight, almost everyone was clipping one certain cone, times were fairly consistent had I not hit the bloofy thing, aside from the 35.72, thats explained below.

Here you can see where the cars all turn left round a circle of cones, apart from me, those lines are mine! hurtling down, I dabbed on the brakes, turned in and yanked the handbrake, but it didn't lock the wheels up and slide round, instead the car just plowed straight on so I anchored all on and slid right to the very edge, looking at where the lines stop, the front of the car can't have been anymore than a couple of inches from the corner of the wall there! very lucky!

So the cars still going, recently had a replacement windscreen put in as I got attacked by a rather nasty stone/bolt on a bypass which cracked it! still got a list as long as my arm of things that need doing to it, but as usual, time is lacking and so is money!

Good news though, that APMCC autotest championship is back in October and I'm already making preparations!

The two spare solitudes I had left over from my problems in febuary that were part refurbed are now painted so that they can become dedicated "sport" wheels, instead of chewing up my road tyres every time I go to an autotest, I'm gonna have these with some of the nastiest, hardest and cheapest tyres I can possibly find stuck on them. The colour? Black

but not gloss black, chalkboard black, painted on by an expert hand with a 2" generic paintbrush

I know many are going to frown upon this totally backwards way of doing it, but the paint was free, the wheels were sat around doing nothing and they are literally going to be hooned to death, blacks probably the best colour!

Marshaling wise, for those of you who are interested, I just done my second season at harewood, its gone too fast but have had such good times, I've even put out a good word to friends and family about a hillclimb school day they run, and it's my birthday soon

I'm at rally yorkshire this weekend, which is a cold and early start, 3:30am, but the payoff is I get to stand feet away from a whole host of balls out nutcases in old escorts, who could want more?

I'm looking at trying to get to marshal a few time attack series weekends, the series itself is rapidly getting gaining popularity and some recent backing by the MSA means thats only set to improve, plus as a fan of Japanese cars (pls dont hate) and a childhood filled with Gran Turismo and video option magazines, its like porn to me.

Back to the Polo side of things, with any luck, this car is going to be a second car sometime soon, it's just not feasible to have as a commuter, family car and as a toy to fool around in too, I'm sure many of you can appreciate that, so I am looking at bigger things. The upshot is that I'd like to see it become my perfect image of the polo I'd like to own, and I will be able to have it off the road for weeks at a time and not have to worry. I read some of the threads the Mk1/2/2F and see how they are stripped right back and tidied up, improved upon and such for their purposes, be it early to say but the 6n is getting to that age now, where the numbers are dwindling faster and the re-sale value is low. Theres no incentive for me to try and sell it or break it and weigh the shell for pittance. unless something majorly structural happens, I'd like to keep her going as long as possible :).