You shouldn't have put a solid line of masking tape around the area. Should have put it further up and fanned the paint out would have made it 10 times easier to blend.

Came out pretty well though a lot better than before! White shows rust a mile off!

Yeah, I thought of that afterwards! May get another can and try to blend it a little better.

It does look better but I'm not 100% happy with it.

Got a few more bits done today which I'm just uploading photos to share on here.

I'm surprised nobody's commented on the pieces of wood under the wheel.

Edited 23 April, 201511 yr by mbusby993

Okay so here are the few bits I got done today. Went over to Hope's stepbrother's in early afternoon and he ground down the rusty patch on my sill with his angle grinder and micro grinder. Didn't get an inbetween photo, but here's a before and after from after I spent all afternoon sanding and painting..

And I also touched up the odd markings underneath my number plate.

Both looking much tidier, albeit not perfect.

Strugglign with this car now. I still seem to be losing oil, even after my rocker gasket change, it's been a bit of money pit now. It's MOT is up in 4 weeks, so if I can get another 12 months on it I may just sell it with as much MOT as possible. At most I may wait until July when my years no claims comes through and then my quote on a 1.9TDI Bora is only £908 for the year. My quote for this will be £713 for another year.

I'm hoping that with 10-12 months MOT I might be able to scrape the £600 mark so I can recoup some of my losses. May put the standard shocks and my battered alloys back on, ask for less and sell the coilovers and GTI alloys separately.

It might be an idea to remove the breather block on the rear of the engine and give it a good clean out, as if this is blocked it will be causing the block to pressurise and force the oil out wherever it can find a weakness

Yeah, it's on my list of things to try. I've got a couple of bits left to attempt.

But I'm reaching the end of my patience with the car. I want to have a car that I enjoy working on because I want to, not because it's been fine for 3 days and then something else has cropped up.

It's just not been very well looked after and I appear to be getting the tail end of it.

Where's the breather block? I was planning on removing the pipe and cleaning it at the very least. It's meant to be miserable weather all week now, so i don't know when it will get done.

the rocker gasket must have not gone on properly to still be leaking though, right? I cleaned the surfaces as best I could, got the bolts up tight enough, so i don't really know how oil could even be getting out at this point!

I did that gasket maybe 3 weeks ago, and the oil was topped up in that time. In that time it's gone from the max line to the min line and I've had to top it up. I've got no signs of leak underneath, so for that much to have gone, is it likely to be burning oil as well? If so then I'm at a loss with the car.

Yeah, it's on my list of things to try. I've got a couple of bits left to attempt.

But I'm reaching the end of my patience with the car. I want to have a car that I enjoy working on because I want to, not because it's been fine for 3 days and then something else has cropped up.

It's just not been very well looked after and I appear to be getting the tail end of it.

It takes a long time to get to this stage with any used car.

The good thing about troubleshooting and fixing your own car is you will have a better idea of what the problems will be.

If you sell this and start again with another car you're back to the unknown. So any noises, rattles, bangs and leaky bits are all a mystery with a possible expensive fix.

Yeah, in part it's frustration that no matter what I do, something else always seems to pop up immediately after. I thought replacing the rocker gasket would be the end of the leak, but it's worse than before. I'm now losing oil a lot faster. Don't really know what I did wrong.

And to a degree it's boredom now. I'm falling out of love with it. Even the interior, which seemed in good condition at first, is shabbier than it seemed. For example where the heater controls are, somebody wasn't careful removing them and snapped some of the screw holes and so it's got a constant rattle. Driver's door card, and the sound deadening behind it, was poorly removed and refixed. I've got the rust sorted, temporarily, so that's something. But even that didn't go right as the paint looks awful now!

A huge part of me wants to get this car to a good standard, but a smaller part of me is tired of throwing money at it. I'm not confident it's going to pass it's MOT.

And another large part of me wants something with a bit more pull (or any pull for that matter, this thing is slower than other Polo's I'm sure) and just more reliable than this one's been for me.

Aesthetically, I love it (minus my recent orky paint) but I'm just tiring of it now.

It's slow, and there's always something wrong with it.

It's easy, when looking at insurance quotes and seeing that I could get a Bora or something for only £100 more per year on insurance, to want something different.

I don't trust this car to be reliable for me for another 12 months and I've got to think about moving flat in 5 or so months. Could just do without the hassle. And part of me hates that, because it's my first car and I do still love it.

Also I think that if I lived closer to people from the forums I'd be more inclined to stick it out and root out the problems. I don't really have anyone to put my head together with and crack on and get things done.

Edited 25 April, 201511 yr by mbusby993

I realise this sounds incredibly moany, but I don't have the space to make this car what it could be. Or the money. I can't do any work to it outside my own home as I live on a hill in a harbour town. If i had a garage, or a unit, to work on it in then I would absolutely love to get it going. Doing simple tasks on it at the moment seems to take a silly amount of organisation and a 50-mile trip just to use my mums driveway. If I did have that space i'd keep the car, but not as a daily, and I would strip it all back and I would make it better than it is.

But the frustration of not being able to do any of that is getting old. Especially when there always seems to be something playing up. My mood might change in a week or so, but I doubt it. I can't afford to have a daily where i'm constantly thinking 'Whats going to go wrong next?'

I went through this with mine mate, I feel your pain!

It's just pent up frustration I suppose. In an ideal world, I'd get it in my own garage space and strip it back. Sort out the bodywork and drop a 1.8t in it or something. Because I love the body shape, aesthetically it's great. With the debadged grill and the clear indicators etc I really like the way it looks. I'd just like to have something a touch pacier and a bit more reliable. Even a valver or something. I'd be happy to just do an AFH conversion on it or something.

Right now I'd just be happy to sort out my oil loss, get rid of my tyre-munching camber problem, get 12 months MOT on it and just have a reliable little car. would be nice to be a bit nippier too. I refuse to believe that it's meant to be as slow as it is sometimes. 60hp? Feels more like 30 at times.

I'm just brainstorming here, but would an AFH be a straight swap for an APQ?

Edited 25 April, 201511 yr by mbusby993

With the work involved, cost of conversion, parts you may as well replace at the time etc. you'd be easier and possibly cheaper buying a decent Polo 16v. Then just swap your suspension and wheels over. That's what I would do anyway.

Yeah, i'd already considered that. I've only ever seen one valver in Cornwall though. I'd love to do the conversion, but again I'd have the problem of not really having anywhere to do it other than to try and do it all by myself of an afternoon on my mums driveway.

I want to keep the car, and i want to make it reliable.

Or alternatively I want to buy a decent valver if one ever crops up near me and replace every cosmetic part I've put on mine. the problem is finding one near me!

Theoretically though, is it a fairly plug and play swap? I assume I wouldn't have to modify the engine bay much, if at all, if it's a 6n engine.

You need all the wiring, ECU and all the bits that link into the immobiliser to make it work.

But if you have all that and the complete engine then yes it is a simple swap.

If you want a certain car then you need to widen your search. I pick up a lot of my cars hundreds of miles from where I live. I'd rather spend an extra £100 or so travelling to buy the right car.

Yeah, I know about needing the ECU etc. It's not gonna happen, it's just a dream situation. I'd love to do an engine conversion.

The problem I always seem to find is that 100 miles from where I am still seems to be the middle of nowhere!

I never seem to get any results!

I don't know, I'm in that indecisive stage of what to do next. I'm trying to get quotes for this car for another year to see what it would cost me.

So far Elephant have been the cheapest with £713. Haven't tried the companies on here yet, as I've still got 2 months on my policy.

The wiring is the same, so you'd just need the ECU immob & key chip, the exhaust downpipe/manifold is different but would match up to yours

So from the CAT onwards would still be fine? Would be nice to keep my Powerflow system if I did do it, because it sounds pretty good for what it is.

This will probably never happen, but it's nice to consider my options.

Just did a search for 16v models and the nearest was 285 miles away and £1,200.

Get it through it MOT and then think about it, you don't want to spend time & money on an engine swap, then find it needs many ££££'s of welding to pass the test :)

Oh yeah, I wouldn't be silly enough to do anything before finding out if it's gonna get another 12months or not.

I'm thinking about doing it soon, MOT expires on May 23rd, but I want to just end my apprehension and get it done. It's just finding somewhere to do it that's reliable but doesn't charge plenty of ££££.

If it's going to fail on anything it'll be the fact the airbag light has been badly covered over. There was also a small hole in the floor pan as an advisory last year but the only hole I could find was the tiniest little mark, hardly a hole at all, which makes me think they were being picky. I am however gonna try and get the car up and check the underside over the next few days.

Hey i don't normally write stuff up on the forum i normally just like to read everyone's threads but when i saw your MOT Polo love problem i had to say something because I think most of us can feel your pain. I had my MOT 2 weeks ago and literally just passed with a nice list of advisories to go with it. So my plan of action that day was to go back to my dads workshop and start cracking on with all the little problems to keep her going for 1 more year (I've said this now for 2 years) So what happens when i pull out of the MOT garage?? My windscreen cracks and then on my route back to my dads garage (5 miles max) smoke started to fill up inside the car.... Not only did i crack my windscreen on the way out i had half a dozen speed bumps to get over and i managed to split my exhaust!! AND it still gets better!!! The valve stem seals also decide to let loose on my way back! What was supposed to be ordering a few bushes a new back box and few other little bits and pieces is now an epic job :( i wanna get rid but i don't have the heart to sell her just yet as the misses has her driving test in a few weeks and may end up driving her but i wanna move on to a project like yourself something with a little more grunt.

Blimey, that's a fun collection of things to go wrong all at once! I'm still undecided. Can't make up my mind between keeping her and trying to fix it all, or restarting a clean slate with a bigger car.

I've been wanting to book my mot for weeks but my boss has been monumentally rubbish with the rotas. We're supposed to have them up 3 weeks in advance and for the last week solid we've just had one.

Edited 28 April, 201511 yr by mbusby993

I think if i could go back 3 or 4 weeks ago i would sell now.. But its mainly because I've had nothing but problems since my MOT shes my daily and needs must but going back i think id be happier with buying another VW and doing it all again...

That's the thing with cars though I suppose! I think I may get this one through its MOT, see how it goes and I may move on over summer. In that time I'd like to make it a decent car again.

I love it, for being my first car, and form the experience I've gained working on it, but I think it's time for a step up. If I had moremoney I'd hunt down a G40, would love to hAve a G40 project.

G40s are the way forward, but they are constant money pits and can be really annoying/expensive when things start to go wrong. But they are worth it for the G smiles.