Project Dr.Fraud's Private Scrapyard

[fatharris]

Don't leave me on tenterhooks, did the pump work after?

 

Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk

[3VOM]

Taking the grease cap off revealed why : the imbecile who had done the bearing had completely ignored VWs advice and had tightened the stub axle nut so much that I needed a breaker bar to undo it ! Thankfully, the new bearings hadn't been (too) damaged and were still fairly smooth. So I took the drum off, removed and re-greased the bearings, and put them back on, leaving the stub axle nut only finger tight.

Good job you found that. There is a story that someone was killed because of getting this wrong. The bearing heated up and seized on the stub axle, spinning the car.

New split pins I hope and beware the inability of the self adjuster to self adjust.

[Sigmund Fraud]

With all the above work done, the car was nearly ready for the road. The only issue that remained was the erratic engine temperature.

The new temperature sensor had shown me that the car would happily run at 90 degrees when sat still, but as soon as it began moving the temperature would drop to 70 or even lower. Classic thermostat symptoms, I thought to myself, so I popped into ECP and invested £6 in a new thermostat.

Removing the two 8mm bolts of the thermostat cover revealed that there was no thermostat in place ! I wasn't too surprised, I just assumed that the idiotic bodger who had fixed* the rear bearing had also been entrusted with the repair* of the cooling system.

So I installed the new thermostat, bled and topped up the cooling system and went for a test drive.

The car was running fine and the temperature was rising nicely... 70... 80... 90... so far so good ! Hang on... 100... what the fuck... 105... still going up... fucking shite ! So I stopped at the next layby, turned it off and and popped the bonnet. The hoses were rock hard and I could hear the coolant bubbling in the expansion tank. Could it be that the thermostat had been taken out due to early HGF ? Argh !!!

I let it cool down, topped up the coolant and drove it sloooowly back to base. I wasn't convinced by the HGF theory, as the car had been running so well before. I must have made some idiotic error whilst changing the thermostat.

Removing, or rather trying to remove the thermostat cover again, made the issue fairly obvious :



In the above picture, you can just about see a metal pin protruding through an opening in a vertical bridge, moulded in the thermostat cover. That opening isn't meant to be there, the pin is supposed to push into a blind hole. The fact that the pin can push through the bridge means that the thermostat is jammed shut.

It is apparently a common small VW problem, though not one I had encountered before.

You can buy the thermostat cover separately for £8, but I couldn't get one locally. As it was the only part keeping the Pooloo off the road, I drove to ECP and paid an extortionate £22 for a complete thermostat housing !

I hate changing thermostat housings in modern cars. It's a job that should be really easy - just 3-4 bolts and 3-4 hose clips to undo. But it always takes ages because access is impossible.

Ninety profanity-filled minutes later, all my knuckles had been skinned and the new housing had been installed. But as I began filling the expansion tank, I noticed that coolant was trickling out from the back of the housing. So the whole thing had to come off again. Bugger !

 

The cause of the problem was eventually traced to an o-ring sealing a large pipe coming from the back of the engine. Did the housing come with a replacement ? No. Did I have one in stock ? No.

Could any of the local parts places get me one ? No. "It's a dealership-only part, mate."

Could the local stealership get me one ? "Certainly, sir. It will be £4 and it will take 5 working days."

Bugger !

​
 

[Sigmund Fraud]

Don't leave me on tenterhooks, did the pump work after?

 

Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk

Of course it did ! VDO quality*, you see.

 

 

Good job you found that. There is a story that someone was killed because of getting this wrong. The bearing heated up and seized on the stub axle, spinning the car.

New split pins I hope and beware the inability of the self adjuster to self adjust.

Split pins are only a couple of pence each, so even I can afford them !

 

The self*-adjusters seem to work so far... Ask me again at MoT time ​

[3VOM]

The cause of the problem was eventually traced to an o-ring sealing a large pipe coming from the back of the engine. Did the housing come with a replacement ? No. Did I have one in stock ? No.

 

Could any of the local parts places get me one ? No. "It's a dealership-only part, mate."

 

Could the local stealership get me one ? "Certainly, sir. It will be £4 and it will take 5 working days."

 

Bugger !

Are you near a TPS? https://www.thetradepartsspecialists.co.uk/who do the OEM type parts for older VWs and the like. There seems to be an overlap between them and dealer parts, then the older parts are only available from TPS and no longer through the dealers.

[320touring]

Exc2llent work on the Storm Grey 6n.. I had a 1.9d version earlier this year- now being driven by another shiter's son.

 

great wee car!

http://autoshite.com/topic/18817-1996-polo-6n-19d-selt-to-richardf-of-thus-parish/?hl=polo

[Sigmund Fraud]

Are you near a TPS? https://www.thetradepartsspecialists.co.uk/who do the OEM type parts for older VWs and the like. There seems to be an overlap between them and dealer parts, then the older parts are only available from TPS and no longer through the dealers.

​

​Closest TPS is in Southampton, which is quite a long way to travel for most stuff.

 

I only use the local stealership on rare occasions, and they've been pretty shite in general. Earlier this year, I had to order a fairly obscure part for Mrs.F's car. I went in, bringing the car's chassis number and the part's ETKA code with me. They looked puzzled, so I proceeded to actually find the part on their ETKA system, to make sure they ordered the correct thing.

 

Two weeks later (instead of five working days, the car having been off the road through all this time), I turned up to find they had ordered the wrong part. To add insult to injury, they insisted that the part they had was a substitute part for the original one, despite the fact that they looked completely different. Argh !

 

[Sigmund Fraud]

Anyway... On this occasion, the stealership did order the correct part, and the over-priced o-ring was in my hands five days later.

The next evening, I re-fitted the thermostat housing (re-skinning my knuckles in the process), filled up the cooling system, turned the engine on and waited until it got up to temperature and the fan cut in. Thankfully, everything went as planned and the car ran perfectly ! No HGF, no problem !

​

By the time I was finished, it was really dark so I thought I should take ten minutes to top-up the gear oil before calling it a day.

Unfortunately, things didn't quite go as planned. I'm very embarrassed to have to admit this on a public forum, but I really struggled to find the hole (stop sniggering at the back !).

 

You see, I was expecting the filler hole to be here :

 

as this is where I've known it to be on 6N Polos. Right at the front of the gearbox, nice and easy to access. But it wasn't.

After a bit of searching, I found it here :

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This is where it usually is on 86C Polos and Golf IIIs - further reading suggests that this position is also correct for the very first year of 6N production, which suggests the Pooloo is a very early example !

I can really see the ebay ad : "Extremely rare survivor from the first year of production of the iconic 6N Polo. A future classic and therefore an excellent investment."
 

With the gear oil topped up, the Pooloo was practically ready for daily use ! Yeah !

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[purplebargeken]

Practically?

 

You kept the Rover purchase very bloody quiet

[vulgalour]

I daresay that because everyone* else had an R8 he didn't think it worth mentioning, nobody would have been surprised.

[purplebargeken]

Fair point. 

[Sigmund Fraud]

This blog has so far been written retrospectively - the Pooloo has been my daily for the past three weeks and has already done over 1500 trouble-free miles in my hands. Here it is, in the glorious English countryside :

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My initial impression is that it's a fairly dull but thoroughly competent car. It's perfectly happy sat at 70 on the motorway, and has never returned less than 45mpg.

All the important, safety-related issues have been fixed. There are numerous small issues that will eventually need to be dealt with, but nothing that I can't live with for now...

​
...with one exception : the rear wiper blade was completely perished ! The rear hatch on those cars is almost vertical, so when it rains it only takes a few hundred yards for the rear screen to be completely covered in road spray.

Replacing a wiper blade is rarely rocket science, but on those early 6Ns the wiper arm is plastic and incorporates the wiper blade clip. The arm is a Bosch item and appears to be designed for Bosch blades. Now, I wasn't going to pay £10 for a bloody wiper blade so I had to find a better cheaper solution.

 

There's a large box in my workshop, labelled "RANDOM SHITE". This contains various used/broken parts that most other people would have long discarded. I keep them because I'm a pathological hoarder recycling visionary.

Rummaging through the box, I found an old 21" Bosch blade ! It was in a good shape and looked similarly made to the worn out, 11" blade of the rear wiper, so I wondered if I could make a good one out of the two :

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Turns out that I could ! So the Pooloo now has a new* rear wiper, and I can once again enjoy* seeing tailgating Audis in my rear view mirror even when it's pouring down !

 

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[320touring]

I found that after I sorted my hot start issue the wee 6n was utterly dependable.

 

they're sull but worthy- and there are much worse little cars out there!

[LessThanEqual]

This blog has so far been written retrospectively - the Pooloo has been my daily for the past three weeks and has already done over 1500 trouble-free miles in my hands. Here it is, in the glorious English countryside :

​

InDailyUse.jpg

 

My initial impression is that it's a fairly dull but thoroughly competent car. It's perfectly happy sat at 70 on the motorway, and has never returned less than 45mpg.

 

All the important, safety-related issues have been fixed. There are numerous small issues that will eventually need to be dealt with, but nothing that I can't live with for now...

​

...with one exception : the rear wiper blade was completely perished ! The rear hatch on those cars is almost vertical, so when it rains it only takes a few hundred yards for the rear screen to be completely covered in road spray.

 

Replacing a wiper blade is rarely rocket science, but on those early 6Ns the wiper arm is plastic and incorporates the wiper blade clip. The arm is a Bosch item and appears to be designed for Bosch blades. Now, I wasn't going to pay £10 for a bloody wiper blade so I had to find a better cheaper solution.

 

There's a large box in my workshop, labelled "RANDOM SHITE". This contains various used/broken parts that most other people would have long discarded. I keep them because I'm a pathological hoarder recycling visionary.

 

Rummaging through the box, I found an old 21" Bosch blade ! It was in a good shape and looked similarly made to the worn out, 11" blade of the rear wiper, so I wondered if I could make a good one out of the two :

 

​Wiper.jpg

 

Turns out that I could ! So the Pooloo now has a new* rear wiper, and I can once again enjoy* seeing tailgating Audis in my rear view mirror even when it's pouring down !

 

 

In my experience, new Bosch blades don't fit the rear wiper arm of the 6N. They're too wide. I managed to break my rear wiper arm by being very smart* and trying to force it on without noticing that the wiper is indeed too wide. Bloody Carparts4Less said it'd fit. £7 later and I got myself a later 6N wiper arm which is a hook type. Wiper fits just fine now. By the way they do the SP11 for £3.00 delivered.

[Sigmund Fraud]

You kept the Rover purchase very bloody quiet

 

Not really, it has appeared on the "News 24" thread on a few occasions !

 

I daresay that because everyone* else had an R8 he didn't think it worth mentioning, nobody would have been surprised.

 

Indeed, Autoshite is the only place in the known universe where 3-door R8s are common and unremarkable !

[mercedade]

Between this and Fatharris' ZT fixer-upper clean-everything-yes-even-under-the-bumper blog, I'm in serious danger of being motivated to pick up some of the work needed on my Vitesse and the other half's boring (C-Max).

 

This is why I read autoshite every day - as much as I love collection threads and madcap ADDDVENCHERS (and I do), it's grimly detailed pictures of wishbones and cooling system parts balanced on boxes that reminds me I've found the right place to be.

[Sigmund Fraud]

Four weeks later, the Pooloo remains a paragon of frugality and reliability ! I have therefore had the opportunity to devote some time to another member of the fleet, the Loopoo !

​
I'll start by giving you a bit of background on this : earlier this year, Mrs.F's daily Lupo was involved in a front-end crash.  It was a fairly low-speed incident but it did manage to cause some pretty impressive damage to the front of the poor Lupo, which had to be taken off the road. Mrs.F bought a 6N Polo as a temporary replacement, and I spent some time disassembling the front end of the Lupo to assess the damage. Luckily, there was no structural damage so Mrs.F decided that we should go ahead and repair it !

The local scrapyards didn't have any Lupos in stock, so many evenings were spent looking for parts on ebay. Unfortunately, Lupo parts seemed to be in short supply and prices were strong. We eventually decided that the cheapest solution would be to buy a parts car, transport it to my workshop, strip the bits we needed and scrap the rest (scrap money was still around £100 back then).

After a bit more searching, a potential donor was found in the "car parts" section of ebay. It had a borked gearbox and was in Devon, but it was the correct colour (Taft Green) and the panelwork looked immaculate. The auction didn't attract much interest and we eventually won the car for a bargainous £165.

So the following weekend we rented a beavertail, collected the car from Exeter and transported it back to base. Here's an ebay-quality picture, taken at the end of the journey :



The rest of the weekend was spent frantically stripping the front of the donor and swapping all the necessary parts onto Mrs.F's Lupo. By Sunday evening, everything was done and it was time to load the remains of the parts car onto the beavertail, so it could be weighed in the following morning.

Unfortunately, I couldn't bring myself to do it. I had always been (and still am !) a VW_H8R but this hideous little green thing was simply far too good to be scrapped.

 

So I bought it from Mrs.F, parked it in a field close to my workshop and left it to fester for a few months, while I collected the parts I needed to return it to the road.

[Sigmund Fraud]

The parts situation hadn't changed - there still wasn't much out there, and you had to pay top dollar for anything decent.

 

My shoestring budget meant that I had to make do with the shittiest parts available on ebay - a £6.50 bonnet that is covered in dents and scratches, a £12.50 bumper that is the wrong colour and appears to have been filled with a trowel and rubbed down with a cheese grater, a 99p grille with more cracks showing than an international bricklayers' convention, 99p indicators that had been expertly* modified to host daytime running lights... the list goes on !

Eventually, I found some time to assemble everything into this :

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I think it's beautiful ! Don't you ?

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[320touring]

Its not often a storm grey 6n polo looks desirable..but I reckon you've cracked it!

[Sigmund Fraud]

The reason the Loopoo was on axle stands in the picture above was that it was about to receive this :

​

 

A reasonably-priced replacement box, out of a 1400cc Polo ! I did a fair bit of homework before buying this and concluded that the 1400cc box would give me a "4+E" set of ratios compared to the standard 1000cc Lupo box - the new 4th would be the same ratio as the previous 5th and the new 5th would be an overdrive. This would be good for economy, and also good for saving the little that is left of my hearing, as the standard Lupo ratios make it fairly loud at 70mph.

​

​The VW workshop manual makes it clear : to safely replace the gearbox you need an engine support beam, a four-post lift and a special gearbox jack.

I didn't need any of that, because I had two axle stands, an old trolley jack, an even older scissor jack, a length of rope and a couple of old wheels that I had borrowed from my workshop neighbours' scrap pile :

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It certainly wasn't a job that I'll be looking forward to doing again, and it took far longer than expected. Still, I managed not to die or destroy the car in the process, which is good enough for me !

 

 

[Sigmund Fraud]

When everything was back together, it was time to start the engine for the first time in months :

​
 

Disappointlingly, but not entirely unexpectedly, ​it ran like shit. So I cleaned the throttle body with some carb spray and the distributor contacts with some emery paper and tried again. Much better, and after a few minutes the engine settled to a nice, even idle.

​

​Time for a test-drive, I thought to myself... Let me put it in reverse, so I can manoeuvre... hang on... why is the car driving forward while in reverse ? OH FOR FUCK SAKE !

Despite double-checking and triple-checking everything, I had still managed to forget an important detail : the adjustment of the gearchange mechanism !

Perfect adjustment requires a special VW tool :

​

Of course, I didn't have one and wasn't willing to spend £££ buying one. Thankfully, Mrs.F was able to come to my aid and took the driver's seat while I crawled underneath the car :

 

WHAT POSITION IS THE LEVER IN NOW ?
LOOKS LIKE THIRD ?
WHAT ? CAN'T HEAR YOU ?

​THIRD !
CAN'T HEAR YOU ! SPEAK UP !

THIRD !

​etc. etc.

​
Eventually, all the gears became selectable and I was finally able to take the Loopoo for a short test drive around the farm ! It behaved itself, so I treated it to an oil change with some nice GTX 10W40 and a Mann filter ! That's right, no* expense spared !

A longer test drive revealed that the thermostat was stuck open, a-la Pooloo, so a new one was purchased and installed :

​

With the car finally running well, I turned my attention to the interior which was truly disgusting. I used a lot of upholstery foam and even more elbow grease, with good effect (the seats are still wet in the pictures, they are no longer mucky !) :

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[Sigmund Fraud]

So last week, I paid £145 to the DVLA and was finally able to do this :



It was very interesting to drive the Loopoo back-to-back with the Pooloo. The Lupo feels like a sportscar in comparison, partly due to the stiffer bodyshell and partly due to different spring rates and the presence of a front anti-roll bar​.

Unfortunately, when I returned to base I noticed a small puddle of coolant forming underneath the front of the car... UNGRATEFUL PIECE OF SHIT !

 

 

Edit for an update, hot off the press :

 

 

I spent some time this afternoon trying to identify the source of the leak. I had initially thought that it was due to a weak hose clip or something, as the leak had only appeared after an extended test drive - which was the first time the engine had gotten properly warm in over six months. Unfortunately, it wasn't that simple. Coolant was dripping from somewhere in the front panel, so I checked the radiator hoses first, then the fan switch - all nice and watertight. I then took the grille off, to take a closer look at the radiator. Sadly, this proved to be the culprit. The bottom of both end tanks is fairly corroded but the leak was coming from the nearside one, which was covered in disgusting, furry coolant deposits.

 

Not the end of the world, I thought to myself, let's see who has one in stock locally... After a few phone calls it turned out that nobody did ! Bloody hell, it's a fucking Lupo, not a Lamborghini Urraco ! How can they not have one ?
 

So I now have three options : Option one is to drive 60 miles to the nearest ECP branch that actually has one in stock. Option two is to order through ebay - slightly cheaper than ECP but past experience suggests that radiators and couriers don't get along very well - the last thing I need is a damaged radiator and a four week ebay dispute ! Option three is to fit a used radiator - I actually have a Polo one lying around the workshop somewhere. But I have no idea whether it's still watertight. And even if it is, nothing tells me that it will remain watertight for long after it gets installed in the car.

 

Argh !

[colino]

I would definitely look around for a local radiator rebuilder.  ECP are crap, no ifs, buts or maybes.  We no longer use them at all having put up with their comical, "it must be the right part, we put the reg number in" far too often.  For the last six months they got into the habit of putting the alternative (or two) into the van when delivering, just in case.  The final straw was having to replace a 13 month old radiator that had split on a car that the customer had wanted, and paid for, the oem equivalent for.  Any chance of goodwill as it was the part that failed, nothing else?

NFC, but they could supply a cheaper alternative for £44+VAT, we just needed to buy different hoses to make the cheaper part, "fit" the car.  A bunch of clueless salesmen reselling anything that Alibaba things is cheap enough.

[Sigmund Fraud]

​

I would definitely look around for a local radiator rebuilder.  ECP are crap, no ifs, buts or maybes.

 

​Considering the state of the (metal) end tanks, I'm not sure if the original radiator is rebuildable. They'll probably be able to braze the hole in the nearside tank, but there will still be many areas that have been weakened by corrosion and which could potentially start leaking at any time ! A rebuild is also bound to take a good week until it's ready and the cost will probably be similar to a new radiator.

Agreed about ECP, I am really surprised that they still manage to get trade customers - their incompetence must cause plenty of lost workshop time ! They're not too bad from the clueless hobbyist's perspective - you just need to collect the part in person, bringing the old part and a printout of correct part numbers with you !

​
I find that GSF are far better, but significantly more expensive unless they have a "35% off" offer going.

[colino]

Our local radiator re-builder can do a while you wait service.  If someone is quoting you a week, they are sending it out and adding their slice on top.  Give the local ones a call and get a quote and check out their reviews.  (Although not always the best source of objective info!)

[Richard]

In my experience the right part usually comes up with the registration number on ECP but if there is a choice of parts they don't tell you, they just take a punt instead of trying to narrow it down.

[sloth]

if your stuck, pm me the vin and i have acess to etka and elsa, As i work for a main stealer. plus my boos loves lupooooossss

[Sigmund Fraud]

Our local radiator re-builder can do a while you wait service.  If someone is quoting you a week, they are sending it out and adding their slice on top.  Give the local ones a call and get a quote and check out their reviews.  (Although not always the best source of objective info!)

 

Your local place sounds excellent, unfortunately you can't get that kind of service around here

 

 

In my experience the right part usually comes up with the registration number on ECP but if there is a choice of parts they don't tell you, they just take a punt instead of trying to narrow it down.

 

You've clearly been lucky, I've had to argue with them on multiple occasions. You do occasionally come across a member of staff that knows what they're talking about, but they are sadly a minority.

 

 

if your stuck, pm me the vin and i have acess to etka and elsa, As i work for a main stealer. plus my boos loves lupooooossss

Many thanks for the offer of help, I have access to ELSA but not ETKA (speaking of which, I've always wondered why VW name their software after kinky German callgirls !).

 

Sorry to hear about your boss, I hope he gets better soon

[phil_lihp]

Good work, it's great to see 'lost cause' cars like your Polo given the attention they desperately needed to prove there's plenty of life left in it.  This and the MG ZT thread are quite inspiring really.

[Sigmund Fraud]

I popped into the workshop this morning, and had a look at the spare Polo radiator... The end tanks are better than the ones in the Loopoo but the core looks pretty battered. I would have probably used it if a new one was £100, but for the sake of £30 I'd rather not take any risks.

 

So I bit the bullet and ordered a new radiator from the lovely people at Advanced Radiators. The internets suggest that their products are excellent value and their service is brilliant, and I hope they're right. The new radiator is supposed to be with me tomorrow, fingers crossed that it arrives in one piece !

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​I also wasted invested some money on a pair of new tyres, as the Loopoo is likely to take over daily duties from the Pooloo in the near future :

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