simon's learning what to do with the polo thread

[simon k]

your next mini 'engine' conversion Simon? Would make a hell of a motorkhana car

the first engine conversion would have to be done for there to be a 'next'... one day

Good stuff Simon. When mine comes out of the car soon I'm going to bung it in a saucepan with a thermometer and see if adding shims to preload the spring wont let me alter the cracking temp. Any idea what temp yours is?

I know exactly what temperature - I bought it with a 92° thermostat as you recommended... I also bought it with AN fittings which I'm regretting a bit. I picked AN fittings because the oil cooler has AN fittings and that's what Sam used - but I think they're overrated and too expensive, barb fittings and hose clamps would have been better... I bought some hose and fittings this morning - $220 for 2m of hose, 2 straight hose ends and 2 90° hose to oil cooler fittings is just ridiculous. I'm not happy with the routing of the hose, it's going to rub on things. Angled fittings out of the filter head would help but I can see myself making hard lines in the future.

I made a bracket at the back that hangs off where the SMIC's rear bracket was and welded a tab to the front bar - it's in a good spot but it might be a bit exposed

[sambb]

looks good Simon. I mounted mine vertically but canted back at the top. Its always worried me that a ground strike on that corner could hurt the bottom of the cooler. Yours looks to be a bit less vulnerable than mine.
To be honest I just used -AN fittings because that's what my cooler came with. They turned out to be atrocious - all galled up on the seating surfaces and leaked. Definite lesson, never used second hand AN fittings. I ended up shelling out a again for Aeroflows which made the leaks better but yep I struggle to find the dollar value in them for most applications.
Having used push lock -AN fittings on my catchcan though, I'm sold on those. So quick and easy for the hose termination and then the convenience of being able to undo them.
Hey just be careful with whatever the braided lines touch. They are literally like a file and will go through anything the rub on. Where mine trail down off the oil filter housing towards the cooler, one of them just touches the belly pan. It has literally filed its way into it and is nearly through.
I'll be super interested to see how quickly your oil temps come up with that 90 degree thermostat in it. I found that water temps hit the mark much quicker without the oil slowing it down, but that my oil temps would get to the thermo's 80 degree mark and then really take its time to get beyond that to get to 100 and thats with it blanked off completely for anything other than the track, even in summer. Hope your is a bit better tailored for the street than mine's been.

oh and make sure you crank it for a bit with the fuel pump fuse out and really make sure the oil lines and cooler are primed. There's a lot of extra oil capacity in them.

[pogopins]

What a thread! just acquired a 2008 Polo GTI last week, after decades of mostly Toyotas, and read through this thread from page 1. It stirred up old memories of helping a mate with pit crew stuff at IPRANSW rounds. His wife and I used to religiously run around his p510 recording tyre temps (inner, mid, outer) and pressures as soon as he pulled into the pits. I also developed the ability to sleep blissfully in a chair in the garage between races, even with the sports sedans thundering past at WOT. Good times.

I doubt my car will see many track days but it's been super interesting to read about the suspension bits here. Thanks for sharing!

[simon k]

I pulled the pin on the hoses the other week - the hoses were too fat and rubbed on just about everything. I coughed up more money on Saturday and bought some hardline and fittings. I put it in yesterday afternoon and I'm fairly happy with the result, nothing worth taking pictures of though... I have flexi hose gcoming straight down from the sandwich plate (Z418 oil filter - same as the mini) and bending around to just below the centre of the drivers side radiator fan, then hardline out to the cooler. Aluminium pipe doesn't bend real well, there aren't any kinks but I think I'll look to have some bent up on something better than my knee at some stage - hopefully before any stress fractures. I drove it to work today with an 85km round trip and no leaks so far

It took a lot longer than usual to come up to 90° on the gauge this morning - it wavered between 70 and 80 for a while and then popped up to 90 at some roadworks after probably 20km, however it went up to 90° quite quickly on the way home, only 2-3km.

What do I log in VCDS to see the oil & water temps Sam?

[sambb]

Hi Simon. Yeah I hate plumbing stuff. That's why I stuck with factory hardlines on my turbo conversion (so far) because random add on lines can be far harder to route than you think.
Are you still running that front grill of the fog light surround open. Mine is blanked off with a thin sheet of aluminium like this:
I just remove the whole thing when I'm on the track to expose the cooler and tow strap.

Another alternative if you wanted to retain the fogs/fog surround is to make a sheet of something that just clips over the face of the cooler for road driving and unclips at the track ….. and wont melt! eg ford focus RS's came from factory with a sheet of some high temp plastic blanking off half the intercooler.
I found the same as you that on cold mornings it would be slower but afternoons it would come up fine. Sounds like its sensitive to airflow given that it moved quickly at the road works. Mine was similar so I blanked the cooler to airflow and found that it behaves more consistently and despite being banked off though, can cop a lot of street abuse and still not really top 100 degrees and sitting in stationary Sydney joy traffic for an hour and a half it didn't creep above 102/103 degrees despite doing that for an hour and a half. But then uncovered it'd do 11 laps continuously at South circuit on a 22 degree day and I don't think it got above 107 degrees and that's before I built proper ducting for the cooler - just free hanging in there.
In vcds instead of opening up "engine" go into "Instruments" I think its only the 4 th or so group in there. It reads off the sump dual level/temp sensor in real time and I think coolant temp is in the same group.

[simon k]

the grille and fog light are long gone, it's just a big open hole - tomorrows job is to make a blanking plate of some description

[simon k]

I did make a nice 2 piece cover plate yesterday... one piece covers the IC pipe and stays in place and the other piece comes out to expose the oil cooler. Temperatures were more reasonable this morning on the way to work

and while I had the bumper off I polished / lacquered my headlights! shiny!

[simon k]

I've had a noise coming from somewhere in my engine bay since Feb last year, I noticed it when I was leaving Winton after a sprint. I've done 15-20,000km, there is no apparent loss of performance and it isn't any worse than it was when it started.

It is louder with wider throttle openings and gets 'faster' with more revs. It starts at about 2000rpm and stops at about 4000rpm, from 4000rpm up to redline there is no noise. If I hold my left foot on the brake and hold the throttle open between 2000 and 4000rpm the noise won't be there as much, if at all.

The noise isn't present when the car is stationary, it only when driving (IE the engine is under load).

I've checked the turbo shaft and it spins freely with very little shaft play.

I've put my hands around the exhaust and turbo at idle and couldn't feel any exhaust escaping, I did put some upper engine cleaner spray through it but didn't find any smoke - but then it was only idling so no boost.

I made plugs for the inlet tract and pressurised it (~15psi), I didn't find any obvious leaks.

I took this video and unfortunately it's the only video I've been able to take as the GoPro refuses to accept an SD card. I pointed the camera at the wastegate expecting to see the actuator arm opening and closing it quickly (flapping) but obviously that's not the case.

polo acceleration noise - YouTube

thoughts?

I've bought exhaust/turbo gaskets and I think I'll take the exhaust manifold and turbo out - it must be coming from in there somewhere

[sambb]

still bugging you. that sucks. a cheap n easy would be the exhaust to turbo gasket if you havent already done it. with the 3 turbo bolts out you can just slip a new gasket in and align it all easy enough. only takes a sec to be able to rule that out. At least try that before doing the exhaust mani - thats a top level of **** fight that is. With a 1/4 inch drive and slim uni joints you can get onto most of the ex mani nuts while you're back there.

[simon k]

Ahh, yep I forgot to say that - I replaced the manifold to turbo gasket back when the noise first started. No change obviously