Here's a little summary on my most-time-consuming project of the last months..

I bought this polo when I saw an add on our registers website ( www.polo86c.nl ). It's a 'real' 86c as it is a 1982 model with chassisnumberWVWZZZ86ZCW058310. I fancied the car because it has the 'one year only' flat rearview mirrors, and it looked like quite a undamaged car, in 'diamont-silver': It could be a panel-donor for my 1981 GL (same color), and with a primer finish be a replacement for my daily beater.

Here's how it looked like in the add:










Quite all-right. If does feature some minor dents on the front right wing and the bootlid (as visible on the second picture), but it did look ok overall. Since I do have a daytime job, I visited the seller and inspected the car.. in the evening. I'll tell you this: in the moonlight, every car looks good!

No seriously: The dent on the bootlid looked far worse then I expected, the 'top' of the car has been resprayed (professionally, but with some color-difference): Probably the result of serious hail. But overall it still is quite ok, not to say excellent for a 24 year old car.

First landmark was to get the car running PROPERLY. The ignition wasn't all to happy to rev above 3500 rpm,. accelerator-pump was completly off/non functional and the waterpump was leaking water... So we started to do some cosmetic surgery:

Bfore / After:



And finally I fitted a bigger unit



I've even sourced a 8 liter unit, but that'll come in later (if there's still room).

The ignition was fixed/swapped and the accelerator-pump has been adjusted to offcourse, but that doesn't look good in pictures

After this, I dug out an NOS rear hatch, since my damage-repair-skills did turn the original hatch from 'slightly-dented-not-to-bad' to 'cracked-paint-total-loss' in just 2 minutes..
Some loony did paint this hatch in diamont silver
n black trim, Opel/Vauxhall Corsa/Nova GSI style, but he crashed the rest off the car before he could fit it.



Looks quite awfull to me, with the black rearclusters and the missing mudflap. The other remaining mudflap went, the original lights came back in, and it isn't all that noxious.

Then, to get it MOT'ed the usual repairs followed: battery-floor, licenceplate lights, and some other minor things. Turned out the front brakes needed some inspection, and since time was a factor I had them fixed..

Some time went by. Did get the engine to run a bit more economical: it was doing 1 liter per 10 km (10liter every 100km's), and although it did consume like a porsche, it didn't feel drive one..

Summer arrived, and I finally sourced tyres to fit these NOS Centra Pepperpots: 175/50 R14 Pirelli P6000 on 6J-R14-ET48.










As you can see, it's not lowerred at the front.. but it's hanging to the back.. Did I only lower the rear? Nope. It's allready having it's new engine lying around in the back..

Because my daily needs to go, and I did drive that daily at 16 km / liter (6,25 liter/100) I wanted to get something REALLY economical..

I first planned to swap the petrol engine in my daily to a diesel, but the high-diesel-tax-rate killed that plan. This car is all-most 25 years off age, which means it will turn tax-free in the netherlands, it would be economical x 2.

Here's one diesel engine:



and here's another:


(Thanks Mark for stating it's all 'OKAY' but the engine wasn't anyways)

To get the diesel engine conversion through the conversion-test of the 'RDW', I need to get a Polo 2 Diesel engine in (engine code MN, 1300cc, 40BHP), but the later Polo 2f diesel engine is way more powerfull: code 1W, 1400 cc with 43 BHP...
Plan: swap to MN 30BHP, get it lincenced, that swap to 1W 43BHP.
The original petrol engine is a 1300cc HH block with 60BHP: The chassis will hold those enormous amounts of 43BHP easily, but to get it licenced 'the cheap way' I need to do it like this. Swapping it directly to a 1W engine would make the conversion test about 10 times as expensive.


Here's the first test, to see whatever is wrong with the 1.3 liter diesel engine (which came out of a breaker-car, which was being scraped since the engine died)



It turned out it was running on only 2 cilinders. Here's why:



And somewhere in it's horrible life the timing of the camshaft was off to:



Needless to say we fixed the headgasket, and got it up running on 3 and 4 cilinders: cilinder 1 is still a bit awkward.. maybe some injector problems?

Before I will fit the engine, the suspension needs to be updated: I fitted a 2f GT rear axle: 6mm thick and with stabilizer,. and i swapped the complete front to Diesel / 5 gear specs :


You can see the soundproofing that's allready waiting for the diesel to arrive.

When the speedo died (or better: the tacho did), i swapped to a mile-speedo, so even with the diesel engine in, I'll be using the whole scale (I hope).




Yesterday, we finally swapped the engine: Here's me checking out the enginebay from an unusual perspective:




And this is me, still smiling...




It turned out things where more complicated than we expected, so somewhere last night (or this morning) I finally drove home with an alternator giving 16 volts off power, and a speedo going to 70 miles TOPS..

Thanx to Marcel86c for all the help, work and coffee!

More to come, later on..

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