Watched some of your dash cam videos, you do like blasting the beats in the Polo....

The videos look a decent quality, often thought about getting one myself.

Absolutely, got 2 420W 6x9s which are fantastic quality by themselves, don't even need a sub

My early videos use a cheap knock-off camera I got for £15 off ebay, terrible quality and you can't even read reg plates at night - goes to show you can't skimp when it comes to dash cams. My latest one uses the G1W-H which I spent about £30 on, and I'd definitely recommend it if you're in the market.

A quick update on how she's doing. In short: everything's gone wrong all at once

The big issue is that I'm getting a frequent (but not consistent) intermittent grinding/whining sound when the clutch pedal is released in gears 1-3. It seems to get louder/more intense if I launch hard or hit 3000rpm+, and gets faster along with the speed of the car. The plan is to check the gearbox oil, and if that doesn't fix it I'll assume it's a bearing and unhappily take it to the local garage in defeat Of course nowhere in Leigh sells the 17mm hex bits I need to get the plugs off, so I have to wait till Tuesday for the one I ordered online to arrive. Yay.

From time to time I get a spinning/whistling noise when I'm doing around 40mph, which seems to go away when I turn corners. Sounds like a wheel bearing. Guess she's going to the garage anyway

Coolant level has dropped a fair bit below the min for the second time, but I haven't managed to spot any leaks. As a result of some bad advice, I'm running a mix of coolants atm, so plan to flush the whole system to start with and put the right coolant in, and clean some of the bugs off the radiator. If I still can't find a leak, I'll um... drive slower?

Looking to replace the head gasket, seems to be leaking.

Brakes are loud, even though the pads are fairly new. I'll buy a jack & some axle stands this week, and sand the pads down & rough up the discs, see if that fixes it. Might bleed the brakes as well.

Alarm system has died due to a key fob coming into contact with some tarmac, but I'm not that concerned - it didn't have an immobiliser and the shock sensor was so faulty I just disconnected it. I'm in the market for an upgrade, and hope to get central locking done at the same time.

And a host of minor problems on top of all that. Driver's side seat cable has snapped, centre console was already broken when I got the car and is getting worse, plastic surround to hold the gear gaiter in place has given up after about 6 superglue-based repairs, and then there's the rust...

...but I bought some blue chrome floor mats, which are nice.

Edited 21 August, 201510 yr by Vio

sounds like normal ownership

Everything isn't hard to fix, thiers loads of advice on here, seat cables allways snap, I don't carry backseat passengers but If I wanted to you can stick your hand round the back of the seat and lift up the hook to fold the seats back, until you fix the cables.

Edited 22 August, 201510 yr by Buxton

A quick update on how she's doing. In short: everything's gone wrong all at once

...

Brakes are loud, even though the pads are fairly new. I'll buy a jack & some axle stands this week, and sand the pads down & rough up the discs, see if that fixes it. Might bleed the brakes as well.

...but I bought some blue chrome floor mats, which are nice.

Please don't sand the pads or roughen the discs. They need maximum surface contact area to be effective.

Changing brake fluid and bleeding (use a 5-sided bleed nipple spanner and a one-man bleed kit unless you have a helper) might make them more effective. If brake fluid looks dark it has absorbed moisture.

The chrome floor mats are interesting. Do they still have protective plastic on or are they that blueish colour?

For the coolant leak - if there's no white smoke from exhaust when engine warm (so not going down exhaust via head gasket) look for any quite powdery build up around coolant pipe joints. It'll likelybe a fine spray you can't easily see.

Everything isn't hard to fix, thiers loads of advice on here, seat cables allways snap, I don't carry backseat passengers but If I wanted to you can stick your hand round the back of the seat and lift up the hook to fold the seats back, until you fix the cables.

It's sort of an unwritten rule with my car that if anyone wants to sit in the back, they *must* go in via the passenger's side. Having a broken seat cable just reinforces that, so I'm kinda happy to leave it

Please don't sand the pads or roughen the discs. They need maximum surface contact area to be effective.

Changing brake fluid and bleeding (use a 5-sided bleed nipple spanner and a one-man bleed kit unless you have a helper) might make them more effective. If brake fluid looks dark it has absorbed moisture.

The chrome floor mats are interesting. Do they still have protective plastic on or are they that blueish colour?

Fluid change & bleeding sounds good. They work fine, they're just loud

Floor mats are indeed blue, but it's the wrong kind of blue they're also terrible quality, so I'm planning on replacing em a second time with a darker blue set, and maybe throwing these in the Rover or something...

For the coolant leak - if there's no white smoke from exhaust when engine warm (so not going down exhaust via head gasket) look for any quite powdery build up around coolant pipe joints. It'll likelybe a fine spray you can't easily see.

Think I've found it, noticed this today just below the distrubutor:

When you say the brakes are loud, what sort of noise is it? A high pitched squeal?

Also, I would be replacing that full thermostat housing. It could be cracked. Throw in a new thermostat whilst it's out. The bolts for the thermostat elbow might be seized in the captives so I'd order an elbow and save any hassle. And have 2 bolts ready too (m6 I believe). All parts are on eBay from KMS. Usually Febi items as well.

If you plan to do the engine repairs above, I recommend doing them all at once since you'll need to change the coolant/oil anyway. Worth doing the cam belt and water pump at the same time too since you'll need to disturb it anyway. I've just done mine (although didn't think about the thermostat!) and it was a full days work. the failed head gasket could be the reason (or at least contributing) to your loss of coolant too. An indicator will be a clean cylinder bore (due to 'steam cleaning')

Well, I have one more tiny little problem to add to my to-do list... a snapped cam cover bolt. I'll get back to all that other stuff once I figure out whether or not I'll have to rethread the cylinder head :(

Yup they don't take much to snap. How much of the bolt is sticking out of the cam carrier?

With the pressure of the cover off it, the bolt shouldn't be too hard to wind out if you can get something on it to turn it.

How much of the bolt is sticking out of the cam carrier?

Practically none - less than half a milimetre and the walls of the carrier made getting anything on the sides impossible. However, I did notice that the top of the stud was slightly uneven where it had broken off, so I tried giving it a push counterclockwise with a flathead screwdriver. It just kept slipping off at first, but eventually I got it to turn about a milimetre.

It took me 45 minutes in total, 3 screwdrivers and 2 pairs of pliers, but by 2:15 AM I managed to get the damn thing out.

You don't know what satisfaction is until you spend 45 minutes trying to remove a broken cam cover bolt at 2AM, and finally succeed.

Everything that's gone down recently:

- We took the Polo to our garage, and figured out gearbox, clutch and 2 front tyres needed replacing - hefty garage bill associated with that.

- I got told to change the gearbox myself so started doing some shopping. Polo was the priority.

- We then decided to get our Porsche 944 going and SORN the Polo for a short while. Porsche became the priority.

- Porsche refused to start. While we worked on that, I got a gearbox and gave our garage the go-ahead for a swap. Polo was priority.

- Gearbox was fitted but turns out it was missing 2nd gear, thus £300 was wasted. We decided to recondition the old one.

- We got the Porsche started, and it became priority again.

- Porsche failed its MOT due to corroded brake lines.

- Polo passed its MOT.

After that 2-week emotional rollercoaster of having absolutely no idea which car I would end up with, Dora has pulled through and is back home with gearbox, clutch & tyres all sorted, plus fresh tax & MOT. Total cost: just under £1k for everything. Totally worth it though - she sounds healthy all round, and drives like she's straight out of the factory

The final thing to do is sort out that coolant leak and stop antifreeze getting all over my shiny reconditioned gearbox but for the most part the boring important things are done with, and I can finally get back to the fun stuff like LED number plate bulbs

Edited 25 September, 201510 yr by Vio

Shame about the gearbox. 2nd gear is the common one to be faulty and the exact same thing happened to me when buying my first second hand gear box but I done it through PayPal and got my money back

Any chance you can get a refund?

Glad to see you have it sorted now though

Paid for it in cash when I collected, but have messaged him about it so we'll see.

Realised also my math was wrong

- £60 for the gearbox

- £300 to fit it and a new clutch, then take the box off again due to lack of 2nd gear

- £350 to recondition the old box (should have been £450 but they knocked off £100 as they felt sorry for me )

- £78 for 2 new front tyres + fitting

- £155 tax

- £50 MOT

Totalling £993. Could have just bought 3 more Polos

Damn I would be kicking myself hard for not doing it myself lol, by all means if you have it to spend then do it lol, I had no option back in the day but I would never pay now I know what's involved ain't about 600 quids worth

How was the MOT and which tyres did you go for in the end?

MOT was perfect, no advisories which is kinda surprising... I guess they just missed the coolant leak and the 2 chips in the windscreen

Ended up just getting some Michelin 145/80s (uuugh) on the front - despite having already bought a set of steels I didn't have the spacers as yet, and desperately needed the car on the road. Once I've recovered financially I'll get the full set of 165/65 Yokohamas a little later down the line... and then see if someone is crazy enough to buy the old wheels with 145/80 tyres

And yeah, am 50/50 on the gearbox thing... on the one hand, spending that much is not nice, but at the same time if I'd fitted it myself without realising there was no 2nd gear... I can't see that ending well

Edited 26 September, 201510 yr by Vio

That's a huge sum of money for an old polo - let's hope you keep it for years.

That is a silly amount of money!

Gearboxes aren't hard to change on these, especially if you have a couple of mates to help.

Also I personally wouldn't have paid to get the old 'box reconditioned, there are plenty of perfectly usable 084 and 085 style gearboxes all over the country.

But at the end of the day at least you kept the car on the road. If your car was owned by someone not into cars then you can guarantee it would be cubed by now.

My first gearbox change without a manual to follow took nearly a full day especially with seized bolts and stuff, 2nd gear synchro was gone. Got money back and put new gearbox in in less than 3 hours lol

Glad to hear it is pretty sound everywhere else and it passed with no advisories, it might be that the chips in the windscreen aren't in the driver's line of site and where ignored?

For tyres mine are only 155s but grade A wet grip. They are falkens and believe me despite the smaller area of contact they are immense. I'm solely using them as winters but I Still haven't got summer wheels with sticky rubber yet

Looks like I won't be getting a refund on the gearbox, as the £60 I paid was mainly for the labour of taking it off the original car

...anyone fancy buying a gearbox with 100k miles and missing 2nd gear?

I'm still not quite over that £933 figure (I could have bought air suspension with that ) but at the same time had I not bought the second hand box I'd have still paid £733 for reconditioning and everything else. Maybe I could have cut it down some more if I had car-savvy friends/time/workspace/a working replacement box, but seeing as I got the car back on the road within a day and it feels like new when driving... I'm somewhat happy.

And I suppose I'm commited to the project now - spent 3x the value of the car to keep it on the road once, so now I'm priced in for anything else that happens. First car syndrome

Any news on the project vio? you still going on with the repair and if so have you got any progress on the damage?

It will happen eventually, but first we're concentrating on getting out of debt and sorting out our other 3 cars first though. Porsche is getting its fuel system cleaned out, I've got to give the Rover an oil change and I almost blew up the Nissan this week (don't ask). Polo is still under the covers for the moment while I do some shopping for a space I can rent out to work on it... but there's also the slight chance that our local garage might let me use their garage where it's being kept atm for work. Would save me a ton of money & possibly give me access to their on-site stuff like a welder, which might save me buying my own. I'll ask nicely on Monday

where are the crash damage pics?

where are the crash damage pics?

Went round today to steal some LEDs so managed to snap a few

Can't see much of the underside though but it needs a boot floor & I think a rear axle.

It's quite handy as a storage space tbh. Holds 4 wheels, a gearbox, a dash, arch trims, pancake filter, and a whole bunch of other stuff, and would still be driveable

Edited 26 November, 201510 yr by Vio