Was quite funny how the drunker you got, you more you kept saying 'Can't believe I won best polo!'

Cracking weekend, yours was looking much better than my rado though haha!

Note to self, don't let Alex play with fire :lol:

Saw this at inters! FOOKING MINT!!!!! good work man

Cheers mate :)

Was quite funny how the drunker you got, you more you kept saying 'Can't believe I won best polo!'

Cracking weekend, yours was looking much better than my rado though haha!

Note to self, don't let Alex play with fire :lol:

I don't know what you mean

Hmm... remembering USC 2010...

Perhaps, yes, you should keep me away from fire and alcohol.

Edited 25 June, 201214 yr by Alex

Busy couple of weeks ahead.

Off to AmD next Wednesday for corner-weighting - original booking got cancelled because the guy was off sick. I'll be interested to see just how squiffy the corner weights are at the moment!

Then I'm moving from Kettering to Cardiff the Tuesday/Wednesday after that, and taking the car up to Autotuning and Alarms near Pontypridd (same place that's worked on the car since about 2001) for a few odd jobs before the track day.

Namely:

- replace the ancient self-adjusting clutch cable fitted at Polo Show two years ago because mine snapped

- replace the sticky starter motor, as it's getting annoying now

- front wheel bearing is just starting to rumble. It's got hundreds of miles left, but Lincolnshire and back from Cardiff with a track day in the middle is too far to risky to leave it.

- and, to be on the safe side, I'm getting the cam belt done.

Token picture from last week. Just because:

Today has been an interesting day!

I took the car down to West Thurrock for corner-weighting this morning, arriving at 8.30am to give the guys at AmD Tuning plenty of time to sort out its all-to-cock weight distribution.

Polos are designed as left hand drive cars, so most of the weight is on the right hand side. Add in the driver and, well, not good. So I'd scheduled a day off work to let them tinker with it, expecting this to be a mammoth task.

Put the car on the scales and... well it's not as bad as I thought:

Total weight, with a half tank of fuel (just under) and no driver (so kerb weight) is 828.5kg. At 150bhp, that gives the car a power to weight ratio of 181bhp per tonne. To put that into perspective, it's roughly the same as the SEAT Leon Cupra R and Scirocco R. Not bad for a 1.3...

But what's more impressive is the way that weight is distributed. The following are figures with a ballast on board that weighs as much as me.

62% (front) 38% (rear) - about right for a FWD car

54% (offside) 46% (nearside) - time for me to go on a diet...

Diagonals:

Front right to rear left : 50.9%

Front left to rear right : 49.1%

I guess the fuel tank and driver are mounted far enough back that some of the weight is carried by the opposite diagonal measurement. The main seat mounting points are just in front of the shut line for the door, and the fuel tank is behind that.

Basically it's about cock on. Very surprised, and very happy too!

Shame I now have a cracked windscreen to sort, though. Stone flicked up off a car on the M11. I think it can be resin filled, but we shall see. If it can't, then I'll leave it until after Blyton to fix.

nice result at the weekend Alex, well done.

great to see you have been out enjoying it!

That's what it's here for

Amazing thread, Been with you sometime, I'm after respraying mine!

So it's been a month, thought I'd do a brief update.

Moved back to Cardiff on the 24th July, packed the car and convoyed back with my wife in her Z4. A funny pairing, because I reckon 99% of motorists would assume the Polo was hers, and that it would be the slower of the two.

It spent a few days with the mechanic who's looked after it for most of the last 11 years, and he changed the clutch cable, starter motor, cambelt/water pump and brake pads ready for a day out at Blyton Park doing this:

Blyton showed me my car is pretty fucking awesome on track, limited by my relative inexperience. So much grip and plentiful pace too, loved it!

But it claimed the life of my passenger side CV joint, but I got home fine. Took it in to get that sorted out, replaced with a VAG joint, collected it on Friday then drove it up to Porsche at Silverstone yesterday. Wish I'd bothered to clean it first:

Did a session of high and low grip surfaces in the new 911 in the morning, then took mine out on the skid pan and ice hill in the afternoon. It's moving in the pic, so the iPhone has distorted the car:

That's the skid pan, you drive over a kick plate at increasing speeds, and it has a hydraulic ram which kicks the back end into a skid which you have to control. Turns out mine's piss easy to bring back into line on that, and I got up the ice hill every time, even when I was giving the handbrake a yank to make it more challenging. But when you're the only front wheel drive car in a line of five Porsches and a Pontiac Firebird, it really ought to be that way.

Loving this car at the moment, it just feels really well sorted. Obviously not the quickest G40 in the world but still HUGE fun to drive and it'll hang onto the tarmac longer than my nerves will let me. So plenty more track days to come.

Next up... MOT. Le yawn.

That's what a G40 is for

Good to see you using it ! Daily driven or not?

Not any more, though I used to do about 12-15,000 miles per year when it was. It's worked hard, this car.

These days it gets frequent use, but it's not driven daily. I get cars through work, and most miles I do these days are up and down the motorway. The G40 can do that sort of stuff, and it'll do it well too, but I'm not getting the best out of it just racking up thousands of miles stuck in traffic.

But this is built to be driven properly. No stretch, purposeful stance, nothing too wide on the wheel front. It's a functional machine, a way of getting from A to B with a big smile on my face, but with a full interior and usable boot so I can use it for normal duties too.

Good lad! I'd love to not drive mine daily, but I don't have a long commute to work so it's not too bad =)

I used to go through phases, when I had the Passat as well, where my nice comfy daily would be laid up (or my wife would borrow it) for weeks on end while I used the Polo. It's huge fun, and as I say, it's still totally usable too. It's not even that heavy on fuel.

But chugging through traffic on humid days, an air conditioned car with a nice soft clutch is a nicer place to be!

No new mods, just new pics. I bought a DSLR last weekend, and spent a while cleaning it earlier, so thought I'd get used to the camera settings by taking photos of a subject I'm familiar with shooting. These are straight off the camera (downsized, obviously) as I've not got Photoshop on my laptop yet. :)

And I've left this one a bit larger. Went to the Heritage Motor Centre earlier to meet up with a group of motoring journalists and PRs. The one rule was you weren't allowed to turn up in a press car. Made for an interesting car park!

From today. 430 miles covered this weekend, fault free and full of G-smiles. Really loving driving this at the moment!

Oh yeah. 12 and a half years tomorrow. As in, I've owned my car 1/8th of a century.

Stunning mate, amazing in the flesh. :)

Chars

It's come out well, needed a good pre-winter wax (sorted yesterday) as it's being kept outdoors at the moment. Always looks ridiculously shiny after a wax

So, ten years ago I painted a Schabak Polo to look like my car. But I used the wrong shade of grey, I didn't lacquer it, and I've been on the lookout for wheels intermittently ever since. Well, yesterday, I got a set of Revos for it, which has kicked off a bit of a resto project.

This meant taking it apart. Takes a lot less time than stripping the real thing.

I've got a can of Pearl Grey in the garage, so the bodyshell is now exactly the right colour:

Lacquer next! Then I've got to find some thick wire to use as axles for the Revos, and work out a way to attach them to the floorpan. I'll have to paint all of the plastic bits back onto the body too.

Went to the Heritage Motor Centre earlier to meet up with a group of motoring journalists and PRs.

Give me a shout next time you're heading there - I'm only just down the road!

Ah shit I've spent the whole weekend rushing about like an idiot, the invitation for a cuppa slipped my mind. Will probably be up there for a JLR day in a few weeks so I'll let you know.

So, ten years ago I painted a Schabak Polo to look like my car. But I used the wrong shade of grey, I didn't lacquer it, and I've been on the lookout for wheels intermittently ever since. Well, yesterday, I got a set of Revos for it, which has kicked off a bit of a resto project.

This meant taking it apart. Takes a lot less time than stripping the real thing.

I've got a can of Pearl Grey in the garage, so the bodyshell is now exactly the right colour:

Lacquer next! Then I've got to find some thick wire to use as axles for the Revos, and work out a way to attach them to the floorpan. I'll have to paint all of the plastic bits back onto the body too.

Looks nice Alex, I've been doing a capri green one to match mine but cannot get a decent job on the arches getting the all blacked up so think i'm going to leave them colour coded, where did you pick up wheels?

Edited 12 September, 201213 yr by quiksilver_jake

Looks nice Alex, I've been doing a capri green one to match mine but cannot get a decent job on the arches getting the all blacked up so think i'm going to leave them colour coded, where did you pick up wheels?

Zeus from here knows someone who can make them, I've been looking for Revos for ages!

Also, lacquer has had two days to dry, and I'm quite pleased with how it's come out. Not bad for my first attempt at painting!

haha, so cool!!!

Love it all Alex, Great stuff.

Thanks :)

I've given it another layer of lacquer - that's four now - just to make sure it's all covered in an even gloss. It's pretty shiny, but quite hard to capture on an iPhone camera. This does it fairly well...

Tomorrow I'm going to paint the plastic arches and side trims back on, and fit bits like the headlights and glass. I've got some seats coming for it (just the fronts) which will need to be painted black to match the rears, then I can re-assemble it. :)