2004 Volkswagen polo False alarm now back to BMW

[Vince70]

I started my new job today and got through the first hurdle which was the driver training and I now need a car for the coming winter months and wish to go back to a RHD that I don't mind getting covered in salt and road grime which also needs to be economical as I will have a long commute to work and someone at work has offered me a cheapish 2004 polo.

 

Now not knowing a thing about modern cars from this century is there anything I should look at or be aware of when buying a Polo it's a 2004 1.4 petrol it's also in yellow again.

[Kiltox]

Any sign of a misfire walk away

[UltraWomble]

Rust

[UltraWomble]

Fooked suspension

[UltraWomble]

Mismatched panel colours that might indicate accident damage

[twosmoke300]

Generally I would avoid any vw petrol . The 1.4 16v isn't great and has cam seizure and cambelt issues . Throttle bodies and vac pipes cause problems too .

As a car they ain't bad apart from the cabin water leaks ( std vw there then ) and front arm bushes .

The 1.4 tdi 3 pot pd is the best motor in those IMO

[LessThanEqual]

Don't buy the 1.4. Mate had one with a BBY engine, it was wank even with 92k, nearly FSH, and 3 prior owners (I think). Randomly died in traffic after driving for a bit, sounded very tappy, was slow, rev counter would shoot up randomly then die until the car was restarted a time or two, and the thread in the sump was knackered so it pissed oil everywhere all the time but that's not the engine's fault. I also looked at a mk4 Golf once with the 1.4 which was on 72k or so, that one leaked oil and had a MASSIVE rod knock, honestly sounded like a diesel. Something like this.

 

Just to add, these Polos can leak from the rear light clusters causing an enitre ecosystem to manifest itself in the car's interior, as well as the front wings rusting, and the rear bump stops being very creaky -- they are on my Ibiza and they were on my mate's Polo.

[oldford]

They can have piston ring problems and really drink the oil.

[Sigmund Fraud]

Avoid ! The previous generation (6N2) is a much more durable car !

[Ghosty]

Anything to look for? Different car.

 

We had a 2004 1.4 Twist auto in metallic black.

 

Miserable, slow thing.

MPG poor on petrols even being driven carefully, as the even then aging 75bhp 1.4 is overworked and underpowered (I dread to think what the 1.2 is like with 60bhp or whatever - they're probably all dead now). Autos are especially bad, struggle with steeper hills and will not comfortably pass about 65/70 on the motorway.

CD players are very rare from the factory, most have cassette decks. There is space to fit a VAG player/changer (available on eBay) as they have double DIN slots, and I've seen it done but I don't know what wiring is there.

Interior nothing special, hard front seats and don't adjust much.

Plastics only of average quality, folding seat pulls fell off on ours.

Rear seats comfy and space ok, but that's only to account for the horrible, crashy rolly ride back there (beam axle).

Boot space excellent for the size of car, and there's a full size spare wheel too.

Engine management/EPC light comes on for fun and it may or may not put the car in 20mph limp home mode - if it does then restart the car and see if it clears, usually it will, sometimes the light stays on sometimes it doesn't. If it does, attaching a code reader might clear it, there may or may not be a code. If you're still having trouble at that point something's broken.

ABS randomly didn't work on ours once on a greasy downhill and it slid axle tramping into the back of someone's Jazz. 

 

Never went wrong tragically but threw up a lot of annoying things, and ours wasn't even high mileage. 

Uninspiring, dull, and there's better quality out there for the money.

Avoid.

[crapcarcollector]

Sounds like you are better off with an AlfaSud at this rate!

 

 

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[Ghosty]

Don't buy the 1.4. , rev counter would shoot up randomly then die until the car was restarted a time or two, 

 

 

Ours did that on occasion too - we were the second owners, and it was on about 60k when we got rid...

[2MB]

If the 1.4 is the same as the one in the 6n it has the magic quality of being underpowered at the same time as shit on fuel and far from smooth.

[Ghosty]

It is. The auto ones used the 6N autobox too - when they facelifted it in 2006? they changed it though, but they still had a variation of the BBx engine.

 

I don't even see many of the facelift ones any more - and they go up to about 2010, so they must be pretty bad too.

[crapcarcollector]

Boll's 214 Sei?

 

 

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[michael1703]

CV joints

ABS light on is quite common

They break front coil springs for fun

[purplebargeken]

N reg Audi A4 diesel (veg slurper too), great engine and uber good mpg.

 

Plus cheap!

[oldcars]

[Asimo]

 

My Golf did that from new, never resolved. VW blamed me, supermarket fuel, whatever. Anything but themselves.

 

[Sigmund Fraud]

My Golf did that from new, never resolved. VW blamed me, supermarket fuel, whatever. Anything but themselves.

 

They used that excuse a lot when angry customers started turning up with broken 1.2-litre Polo 9Ns. The frankly awful three-cylinder engines in those love OMNOMing their valves at anything between 40 and 80k miles.

 

Poor design ? Poor quality ? Of course not*, it's the fault of UK fuel !

[Vince70]

I'm sorry guys after everything you said I still went ahead and bought it..

The car has a few scrapes and a small dink on door as the elderly lady owner had a bit of trouble parking it in the garage and It was an executor sale in the end and I paid £1000 for it so it seems a good deal.

It hadn't been used since April and it started up 1st turn of the key and sounded ok and it was serviced when it went in for its MOT back then.

 

The thing that done it for me though was the mileage as it has only done 10000 miles so I'm basically getting a new Volkswagen which was built in 2003 for my money and it comes up as an SE model so I think it's supposed to be a posh model with parking sensors etc.

 

It should make the commute to work easier than the Z3 and I didn't want to use the smart this week as I have another driving test on Thursday as apparently I need to brush up on a couple of things before I'm allowed on the road so want to drive a RHD as much as I can at the moment as I would feel a right tool getting in the wrong side for my retest.

[BorniteIdentity]

Why apologise?

 

Shit cars get bought around here.

 

(!)

[HillmanImp]

My experience of low mileage cars is that they tend to go wrong when used properly all of a sudden, so break it in gently.

[dieselassist]

...low mileage/ little use/little old lady use, may not be such a good thing for one of these - word in the trade is that when new n below 10k, they benefit from a 'good regular thrashing' - to seat in the pistons, otherwise piston ring failure occurs between the 60-70k miles mark... on the other hand you can look it as 'ive got at least 50k' to go before that happens...

...keep an eye on gearbox 'woes' - these have notoriously chocolaty gearbox's - the casing can crack round the back near the diff area/under the slector, and the internals of the box themselves  are notoriously weak; loosing/popping outta reverse, 3 n 5th becoming unelectable - ive changed a few over the years - thankfully not for awhile, as I imagine sourcing a box nowadays would be quite a task - such is the demand for a 'good replacement box'... 

...also if it has been laid up after little old lady use; a good clean out of the engine's breather system is definitely in order - it clogs up with gungey mayo, if all it does is short runs - a blockage occurs the pressure builds up n shoots the mayo up to the inlet throttle body- sometimes you can get away with a careful  clean with carb cleaner etc - if not its 'new throttle body time' - again changed a few of these over - 2nd hand units etc - lots of plugging into VAGCOM to set it all back up, n its like a flip of a coin as to whether or not it will reject its 'donor organ'....

 

...might be worth keeping it 2 or 3 months, MOT clean up etc n sell on - I certainly wouldn't rely on one 'long term' - too much of a roulette wheel...

[saucedoctor]

I'm maybe remembering this wrongly, but is the 3 cylinder the one where the sump gasket leaks, and if you take off the sump to fix it, it won't go back on cos the block flexes? Or something?

[Vince70]

Bloody hell it sounds like I've gone down the Laguna II route again..

I think this one is a 4 pot auto and I think it had MPi written on the plastic engine cover so I don't know if that makes any difference.

[dieselassist]

...Ive not had any experience of the auto's - but VW don't make the nicest of auto boxes - lethargically slow to change up n round town they sing like a bad queen tribute band murdering bohemian rhapsody, changing up n down, randomly...

 

,,,auto might make it more saleable, to folk with hip/knee or whatever problems - as you own it now, its best to stay positive while you can - there may be plenty of opportunity to be miserable later...

[Jazoli]

I bet it will be perfectly fine and have no real issues, not all cars are shit regardless of their 'reputation' or what other people think.

[Vince70]

Apart from the scrapes and dent it looks quite a decent motor...

I didn't have a good look over it but the interior looked like new and I couldn't see any rot anywhere.

But it was covered in some poop in places but it didn't look like a bird had done it and it's been siting in the garage for 4 months so I hope it hasn't damaged the paint.

[Partridge]

...Ive not had any experience of the auto's - but VW don't make the nicest of auto boxes - lethargically slow to change up n round town they sing like a bad queen tribute band murdering bohemian rhapsody, changing up n down, randomly...

 

They make shit manual gearboxes too. Have you driven an original Beetle? Changing gear in them is as pleasant as snapping your own teeth.

 

But the Polo isn't that bad. Nicely screwed together a classier than the Corsa and probably less troublesome than a 206. Ours has been fine, annoyingly fine because I really want to find faults with it. But other than being boring to drive and the tailgate handle snapping...it's fine.