Just thought I'd start a new thread about my ongoing project that is my G40.

It's not one of these mental powered projects but rather a preserve with a few thrills project.

So my journey started back in 1998 when my parents owned a MK3 Saloon which I fixed up for them from having a blown head gasket and bits needing done.

It wasn't long before I joined club polo and starting going to shows, in 2001 I stuck an NZ injection system onto the polo and used to run the car up the track often racing Mark Hunter in his then GT powered MK2. Great fun but more power was brought on with a G40 conversion in 2003 when I found a scrap G40 with only 30,000 miles on the engine. I done a fair bit to this engine, from flowed heads to lots of charger upgrades and pulleys etc etc getting to about 160-170 BHP (depending on the rolling roads as ever). I used to take the car to santa pod all the time and nearly every car show going. I had one of the first saloon G40's going at the time, even took it to German who found it very interesting that there was a right hand drive G40 saloon.

So anyway here are some pics of how the saloon ended up:

Here is the saloon:

The engine bay:

A Club polo news letter print out from a rolling road day in 2004 I think!:

But in 2005 a women pulled her Seat Ibiza in front of me crossing a road when it was not clear and I ended up T-boning her at 30MPH which wrote the polo off

More to follow! including pics of the written off Polo and my new G40! :-)

Edited 29 July, 201412 yr by Paulg40

So after the accident the saloon looked like this:

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Since this I decided to sell the engine and move on, but in October 2013 we decided to buy another G40 and after searching we found this brilliant example. It was already in Club polo as it has a sticker in the window.

Anyway some pics:

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Standard engine:

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and even the standard stereo!

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Edited 29 May, 201412 yr by Paulg40

The G40 is in great condition however it requires some attention.

I have put a list together of parts I plan to sort out immediately due to parts being worn/tired or just to add a little fun into the mix.

Exhaust - Standard one has to go, its a mess and scrapes everywhere

Suspension - everything needs changing as its all tired

Supercharger - the usual rebuild required

Chip and pulley - it had a power chip on board with a S4 charger but I plan to put a 65mm Toothed set on with better chip

Oil Breather - as much as its not standard I prefer to have the breather separate from the supercharger

Oil cooler - just cos :-)

Induction kit - again I love the sound of the Charger with the large kit on

New clutch kit and gearbox oil seals

Brakes

Basically I am looking to keep the car standard looking but have a little extra poke. At the minute I don't plan to go as far as I did with my last G40 but then a 1341 rebuild is on the cards, but more so for extra strength and well I suppose I should flow the head like my last one... oh dear so maybe it will end up with more power but it's all part of the fun.

So I bought myself a Full Blend Charger for a relatively small amount of money

It all seemed fine but two of the threads on the outlet side were pretty poorly and it needed a rebuild. So a bought a rebuild kit all the tools and a small oven so that I could strip it down and sort it out.

The charger stripped down:

Cleaning the casing up with some carb cleaner before removing the old bearings

Drilled and threading the cases ready for the Heli-coils.

Heli-coil installed

Having stripped the main shaft out and removed all the old seals and bearings I took a close look at the oil ways in the main shaft and saw some foreign pieces of metal. Upon further inspection it turned out to be the remains of an oil seal spring, the funny thing is all springs were accounted for so it appears it had been like this for a while! anyway check out the picture below showing just how much I managed to get out! took me about an hour and a lot of patience to remove it all.

Scroll in the oven heating up ready to have the new bearing fitted

New seals fitted

All cleaned with the new seals and bearings fitted and ready to put back together

Back together and sprayed up complete with new bolts and belt :-)

Here is a comparison picture of the S4 charger when I took it off the car

As a little bit of inspection I took a look at the porting jobs to compare them as I thought the full blend porting looked very messy. i was right, I had a full blend back in 2004 on my old G40 and being one of the first to have it done it was a great job and certainly neater than this! when compare to the Jabba Stage 4 I am sorry to say Jabba stand out as the better porting job by a long shot, take alook and I am sure you will agree

Full Blend

Stage 4 (ignoring the fact its dirty and needs a rebuild now)

Its almost like they just starting chucking them through without much care, put it this way I am going to sort the Stage 4 charger out have it taken to either stage 5 at JP or R1 at Jabba then use the full blend as a spare.

So fitted the Charger back into the car along with the german toothed belt kit and induction kit from Jabba sport.

So this was pretty much one weekends work, next is the suspension and exhaust.

So sorted the Suspension next, basically as a daily driver I decided I didn't want to spend fortunes on the handling etc as it literally is just for the road at the minute. I bought a coil over kit from Technix which was a reasonable price and considerably better than the current suspension which is shot. When it turned up it look pretty promising and good quality.

Apologies but I didn't really take many photo's of this stage as I just wanted to get it done.

All bushes, bearings, hubs were changed at the same time, the only thing I forgot to by was some new top mounts!

The the rear was first

A comparison of the shocks and spring on the rear

The rear shocks fitted in about 10 minutes! no seized bolts which is great!

And the front fitted, like I say no photo's during this part of the build due to me being lazy! but as mentioned about all new hubs and bearings, polyflex bushes fitted and finished with some new discs and pads.

The front end will need to come off as the top mounts are shot! which is a bugger but as a daily driver I needed it back on the road. I took it for a quick drive having fit the suspension and it was very firm in the corners but unfortunately as I had disturbed the already poorly top mounts straight line handling was just not right. It also need the tracking sorting so visited a laser alignment place to sort this out.

I have had a little play with the levels of the coil overs and it's sitting pretty much where I want it to, here is the picture of how it is currently

You notice in the above picture the rear box! this is the new exhaust system but I'll take pictures of this at the weekend as its back off the car (see the next post for the update).

Lots to come this weekend. The only other thing that has changed above is the addition of the clear front indicators, this concludes the overall look of the car, gonna keep the wheels the same and maybe add the tinted rear light clusters and maybe even the clear side repeaters but thats it! I love the original G40 look and would be a shame to loose its iconic looks.

So to bring this post upto date since test fitting my exhaust I have had a funny rattling type buzzing sound. I was convinced it was coming from the exhaust and it was only on and off a little but essentially only worse when nailing it! but having been running my rebuilt charger in I have been able to nail it at all!

Anyway I put my foot down last week and the noise presented it self in a big way so I stopped using the car. I was convince the catalyst had collapsed as it sounded to me to be coming from this area. So I removed the cat only to find it was not this that was the issue. So rebuilt the exhaust and took it for another drive and still it sounded dreadful. On Tuesday night this week I started taking parts off the car to try and find the issue, me and a mate narrowed it down to the gearbox area making the noise, we concluded that it seemed to pick up every so often suggesting something has come loose. Anyway to cut a long story short I now have the engine in pieces and pretty much ready to be lifted out of the car.

The reason for the whole engine out idea is that I kept coming across parts that needed attention or cleaning or like the knock sensor replacing altogether!

So this weekend I will be taking the gearbox apart to make sure all is one inside, then replacing seals, the clutch and fitting my newly bought 4 branch manifold to match up with the new exhaust.

I think whilst its out I'll clean the engine up as well. So watch this space for plenty more pics and an update as to whether I find this pesky rattle (I am secretly hoping its the clutch release bearing).

Lovely Car, Nice read too. So what should be the difference between a stage4 and a full blend? Then following on from that what is R1 spec?

I love the refurb you did with your own small oven, great work so far and the car looks in great condition.

Thanks for the compliments :-) the car is in great condition but this I can only thank the previous owners for as I have only had it since October.

The Full blend is supposed to be a stage in porting which removes the most material possible from the charger (including the scroll I believe) but the stage 4 is supposed to be a limited amount of material removed (but if you compare my pictures the outlets look very similar.

The R1 is Jabba sports version of the "Full blend" But as mentioned above the porting is so much smoother from Jabba sport hence the reason I would like to swap them back :-)

The rebuild was something I wanted to do myself as one day it will be hard to find anyone who will do it! also the rebuild kit is £175 and a rebuild from jabba for example is from about £350. its a pretty fiddly job as I was always aware I could write it off pretty easy with one slip of a tool as the scroll is made from Magnesium so super soft!

nice to see another g40 local keep up the good work

hi Paul!

looking good glad you back poloing. Your old engines still going strong in my bready.

I have some pics of your old saloon from Porka and CP if you want them emailed through.

did the charger casing need helicoils or did you just to it to make it stronger out of interest?

Hello mate!

Glad to hear its still running strong :-) have you had to do much to it?

Yeah any pics you have would be great as I just can't find any I had and they were only a few.

I must admit looking back I wish I didn't sell that engine, it was a strong nut!

Yeah the charger casing needed heli coils as the threads had been stripped, they are easy ones to over tighten to be fair as you always want to make sure its sealed, but these were a long way gone. Helicoils easy to fit but the casing is made from some very soft stuff! and drill guides are essential as you would be through into the compression ports in no time if you tried to guess it :-).

I have another update coming as I worked on it all weekend, engine has been out and gearbox apart and I think I found the culprit for the noise it was making.

Update!

Busy weekend had stripping the G40 down, The original aim was to strip the engine down and find the offending noise that was rattling about I suspected in the bell housing.

Having stripped the engine down I decided just to lift the engine out and split the box and get some other bits done at the same time.

Picture of some new bits ready to go on!

Only a few bits here as I forgot to put in the rest :-)

I had stripped the engine down in no time so forgot to take any pics up until this point.

So up on a saturday morning and built up my home made engine hoist from Scaf pipe :-)

Once the engine was free from the car I split the box, getting anxious that I might finally find the answer to this annoying noise I have had. I will be honest I was hoping part of the clutch or something was going to drop out as I split the box.

But nothing! or so I thought, having looked inside the housing there didn't seem to be anything, the little flywheel cover that sits at the bottom front edge of the bell housing had loads of scratch marks as if something had been hitting it! result I thought but what was it?

I looked under the engine and found this:

I am positive I didn't take this from anywhere as I would have remembered stripping a bolt this much, so I can only think it was stuck in the bell housing of the gearbox right at the bottom against this plate, and every so often was getting hit off the flywheel making this annoying noise. Not 100% happy with this answer I wanted to make sure the gearbox was healthy with no bits that shouldn't be in there floating about :-)

Pretty tidy really, and the bearings aren't bad and will do until I do a re-build with an LSD in a year or so.

So to conclude I have decided it must have been this bolt that made the noise! there is nothing else out of place.

Anyway looking at the engine I though as it's out I may as well give it a little clean and slap some paint on, so the wire brush came out

I decided to spray the alloy parts once cleaned and give the engine some fresh black enamel :-) It became a little obsessive as once I clean one bit the rest had to follow!

Whilst the engine and box was split I decided to fit a new clutch as well but nothing too special! that will come next year when I do a proper rebuild of the engine, also I ran my last G40 with 170 BHP on a standard clutch and I didn't really have an issue, although I totally understand it would have been 100 times better with an uprated clutch, the car is also a daily driver until next year and if I am getting an uprated clutch it will be a paddle clutch which won't be much fun around town! :-) anyway with about 140-150 BHP Max it will do for now.

Note my clutch alignment tool! a Maglite :-) always worked for me and never failed.

Anyway so Engine and box back together and the get the engine lifted back into the car, Note I haven't painted the sump yet, I'll do this when its in the car so I can get to it when on the ramps.

Now for the fun bit, the manifold. As the Catalyst was buggered and needed replacing I was determined to use a de-cat. unfortunately most exhaust place around me are either way too busy to give a crap about making one up for me or they just aren't interested. So yes I done the worst thing and bought a 4 branch which seemingly doesn't fit. I bought it from MAXRPM.de thinking all will be great, I know its not the top quality but it will get me on the road and as I am not yet after max power it will still flow better than the standard set-up (being stainless and cat less). I was also aware that modifications where on the table to get it to fit.

So I had it delivered and went about getting the lambda boss welded inplace

Having fitted the manifold I modified the engine bracket to accommodate the new manifold, to be fair it wasn't that far out, intact not that much at all, and nothing a little bit of grinding wouldn't sort out.

Now for the G-Ladar to go back in, this time with the toothed belt drive system from MaxRPM.De (my new fav shop!)

So this is where I came across the biggest problem with the 4 branch, something I kind of knew about but didn't think it would be such an issue having been sold from MAX RPM??

The charger outlet was fouling the manifold cylinder 2 ( everyone always worries about cylinder 1), it is a little bit of a poor design as it could have taken a slightly different route but from two companies saying they would never build a manifold for a G40 cos it's just a massive hassle and supplies being limited to nothing on anything else I had to work with this!

So anyway a little bit annoyed how far out it was I started to think about how it was obviously designed with standard pulley setup in mind as when the charger was pulled out another inch it would fit ok. but then it also sits very close to the anitroll bar (another thing I was aware of possibly happening).

Anyway this is when I decided to stop and sleep on it, but stupidly took the manifold out thinking it was a no-go.

I sent MAX RPM an email about my disappointment but not surprised! and he just advised I bought the nylon blocks in place of the anti-roll bar bushes and also look for a larger belt for the toothed pulleys.

So I have put an order in for these parts and also found a supplier for a larger belt and put in a order for a belt I hope will give me the clearance.

I'll leave you with some pics of the engine as it sits in the car currently, really happy with how it looks, although ignore the scabby cam cover bolts they will be changed :-)

what changer you running

I have two chargers, one Stage 4 Jabba which I have just taken out then I am now running a re-built "full blend" which i am not too happy with the porting so will probably get the Stage 4 sorted unto R1 spec and put back in.

I have two chargers, one Stage 4 Jabba which I have just taken out then I am now running a re-built "full blend" which i am not too happy with the porting so will probably get the Stage 4 sorted unto R1 spec and put back in.

I'm running the r1 charger think it needs rebuild but

Due to work and a holiday I have not really touched the G for about a month but here is a little update:

having managed to get the manifold to fit in every way! I fit my 63mm exhaust and it just didn't have the clearance, I think if I was running a standard size exhaust it may have been fine.

Anyway I have given in and have bought a second hand PPP manifold. :-)

update with pics coming soon along with a threaded oil return on the charger! yet another Heli coil required. This charger has had some poor care before I bought it

The saloon feels like such a long time ago!

So a little update as lots has happened in the last month!

First of all I got most of that other manifold to fit with the charger! amongst other bits going back on following a lick of paint and a new fan motor.

It actually looks smart

But the issue was to follow. I tried to get the manifold to fit but the outlet elbow was fouling on the cylinder 2 port of the manifold. So to make room I ordered a new belt for the toothed pulley conversion in order to lift the charger up out of the way. This worked a treat but then came the issue of fitting the exhaust! and it just wouldn't it. I didn't even take any pictures of it I was that annoyed.

So I gave in and as luck would have it a PPP item came up for sale just in time so I bought it.

I could already tell the difference in fit was massive, interesting Cylinder 1 design though?

So getting on with this pretty quickly now and it was time to fit the supercharger, not so easy with the new manifold fitted, I eventually worked out that the charger bracket had to be fitted to the engine mount first then the manifold (the big allen key bolt is obstructed by the Cylinder 1 port!) then the charger lowers down in the tiny gap left with just enough room to swivel it around and mount it. I have to admit there was some swearing going on through out this whole time :-)

So after a lot of fettling about I got it all fitted and was pretty happy with how it looked.

Seems like happy days....right?...wrong unfortunately my spare charger I am using until my other charger is rebuilt had a bit of a weak thread for the oil drain banjo and following numerous fitting sessions the thread finally broke. So I had to remove the charger once more and decide how to fix it if at all.

I found a helical kit to repair it, (not cheap) and had to decide if I was going to break the charger open again to ensure no material enters the oil-way.

I had an idea which would mean I didn't need to open it up, that was to get a cotton bud, cut it down so that it fit snuggly into the oil way whole and only just stuck out. this meant that nothing could enter the hole and I could drill the thread away with no worries.

This has to be one of those moments I hate the most, the chargers are made of such soft material and the drill goes through like a hot knife in butter. Guides on the drill bit are essential as I have done here, similar to the other two hell-coils already fitted to this charger.

Now for the threading.

Fit the helicoil

And done!

This is not for the faint hearted! but the thread you are left with is so much better and stronger than the original. So once done I got the hoover out and pulled the cotton bud out and cleaned up the area and re-fitted the charger to the car.

Now for the exhaust!

bought from Germany it is unfortunately not the greets fit, but the quality of this 2.5" exhaust is actually really good.

I did have to buy a 14" flexi pipe which I did not photograph, I hate fitting exhausts and it was a right chew on so I was not in much of a mood to take photo's at this stage, I simply wanted to fit the thing and get the car running.

So the next bit I didn't take photo's apart from this one!

Pretty much says it all, this is the result of firing it up for the first time.

So the photo was taken following me taking the charger out again, this was due to the oil pouring out of the main shaft oil seal on the charger, i'd guess it was flowing at about a rate of a litre per 30 seconds it was that fast.

I had to stop and think about it but at first I simply thought it must be the oil seal on the charger has simply popped. So I put the original charger back onto the car and fired it up....the same thing happened again. So it can't be the oil seal it must be due to high pressure.

I forgot to mention further up that I fitted an oil catch tank so I instantly thought I must have a kink in the hose so decided to check it out. But of course if the crank was pressurising it would be pushing out the dipstick and all sorts, having checked all my pipe work including the charger drain pipe I couldn't find a thing.

I was stuck until I thought about what I had changed, the oil supply pipe to the charger was new! a quick look and compare of the old and new confirmed that the pipes are marginally different and the new one was a tiny bit (I mean like 1/4 of a MM) bigger. Not convinced it could make that much difference I decided to refit the old pipe and test it. So on with the rebuilt charger and the old pipe and I started it up with my fingers crossed...

As I got around to the front of the car I was greeted with an oil fountain! the old oil feed pipe had perished and burst and was currently spurting oil out all over the place! so I ran over to kill the engine but by now oil was all over the place.

I was ready to take a hammer to the car at this point :-) took ages to clean up but whilst doing so I remember that I had a spare banjo bolt that came with the new oil feed pipe so I thought I'd check it out....DAMN its a reducer Banjo bolt. So if only I had paid attention to this when fitting the new feed pipe non of this would have been an issue. So on with the reducer and started up and all was fine no fountains of oil and no waterfalls of oil from the charger. At this point is was 10PM so no time to set the timing, will have to wait till the morning.

So following that nightmare first firing up I got the car running and timing setup, and took it out for a quick spin only to notice the temp gauge sitting at 110 degrees!

After a close inspection the bottom radiator pipe was cold so meant the thermostat was not opening, great another part required! but this time only £3 :-) or so I thought, the housing had done its usual Polo trick and the bolts had rusted into the metal inserts of the housing, which meant I needed to order a new housing.

Again no pics as it was a simple swap of housings and the cooling issue was sorted.

I also bought a set of these:

Should help clearance for the manifold and also help the handling :-)

took no effort to fit, just jack both wheels up and pull the anti roll bar forward to fit.

So after taking the car out for a spin I decided to clean it up and venture down to the local VW show for a first outing since two months ago.

The great news is the gearbox is not making that annoying rattle any more so it must have been that bolt that was the culprit! although I suspect my now run in charger is not boosting correctly as it just feels flat top end! the swirl marks in the charger did look a little worn thinking about it.

So once back from the show I realised that oil is still coming out of the charger oil seal, which I think is only happening under high pressure loads so when revving hard under boost load and when cold (oil thicker). which means the new breaded line is a pile of crap!

So I am now awaiting for delivery of a full rebuild kit for the original charger as this is in very good condition and boosts well and an original oil feed pipe. I do need to get a dry sump oil setup sorted but can't afford it at the moment so this will do.

I have also ordered a 60mm pulley :-) sod it the bearings in the rebuild kit are rated for higher RPM and I don't rag it all the time.

Also on order is some heat wrap for the manifold to get the heat down under the hood, and help get the gasses out the back quicker.

Update to follow:

charger rebuild number 2

wrapping of manifold and down pipe

fitting of new oil feed ( maybe the dry sump system if I can afford it)

and fitting of the 60mm pulley