How to make a Polo Mint

Todays jobs on the Polo kind of remind me of the film "Christine." In the movie Arnie is restoring the Plymouth Fury and his boss's Dad comments to his Son, Darnell about the progress. Darnell replies, "See how cock eyed he works, new wipers on a busted windshield." It kind of feels like that becasue I'm doing stuff that would normally come later in the job list, but that's because I'm waiting on parts.  I'm still held up on the brakes, and the gearbox looks like it will have to come out for repair or replacement, which is a weekend job.  To make room to work around the car I have finish ed stripping the old worn out interior and fitted our replacement. Thomas actually prefers the black vinyl that she wore originally, but 38 summers have pretty much degraded the interior, the drivers side must have faced into the sun during the 12 year lay up, as that has suffered worse. The vinyl has peeled off the door cards, making them pretty much beyond ...

Project Polo update - only a half day to spare today, but rear brakes are now complete, plumbed in and just awaiting bleeding, which can't be done until the callipers are completed for the front. Thanks to Mark at MRD Garages Brough for flaring the brake pipes for me after my flaring tool failure. The Germans who are posting me those calliper seals, normally well known for their efficiency, promised they would be delivered today or tomorrow, but looking at the order tracking they only left their German depot at 2pm today, so I don't expect them until Friday as the soonest. Meanwhile the gas strut for the back hatch has been fitted and how nice it is to be able to open the boot without having to support it with my head. Fitting the strut proved a bit of a conundrum - the old one simply pulled off the ball and socket at the top end, and slid off the pin at the bottom end once the retaining clip was removed. Getting the new one on proved much more difficult, with the ball and ...

We now have the rear brakes fully refurbished on both sides and the handbrake cables hooked up so we can stop the car rolling away. New cylinders are nicely cleaned, painted and greased, wit the rear wheel bearings all repacked with grease and adjusted. The only bit missing is the copper pipe which will get manufactured and fitted when the brake flaring kit arrives later in the week. The front nearside calliper has been stripped cleaned and painted and is just awaiting the seal kit to arrive, hopefully tomorrow. A walk to the post office was first job of the day. The rear hatch gas strut I'd ordered arrived last week but didn't fit despite showing as compatible. The supplier Tetrosyl Express promptly replied to my email listing the correct part and agreed to refund the cost of the wrong part if I posted it back. The correct part was a fiver cheaper than the wrong part and with postage coming in at £3 I was going to be a couple of quid up on the deal, but even better when I a...

As promised , some pictures of our refurbished braking system. The offside rear brake is now complete, bar plumbing in a new copper brake pipe to replace the one we had to cut off to remove the old cylinder.   The back plate has a fresh coat of paint, hammerite on the back and a coat of gloss black on the working end, enough to protect it without affecting the movement of the working parts. With the new cylinder in place the existing shoes have been cleaned up and pressed back into service as there is plenty of life in them.  All reassembled the drum has been checked for any ovality and is fine and within tolerances, so after a wire brushing and a quick coat of paint its back in place. VHT silver makes it shiny and new looking again. And now for the same treatment to the nearside rear. Again the brake pipe tore off with the removal of the union joining it to the cylinder, so new brake pipes will be require don both sides. I have a length of brake pipe left ...

With the parts sourced but not yet delivered for the front calliper refurb I have turned my attention to the rear brakes. New cylinders have been acquired to replace the seized ones and the drums and shoes have been checked and are fine to put back into service. Before we reassemble things though I thought we'd clean everything thoroughly and paint it do it looks nice. Did I mention I like shiny things? Stripping off the back plate was easy enough, four simple bolts, but separating the old cylinder from the backplate proved tricky - the brake pipe union was an odd size, given that the Polo is German. I'd expect a metric size, but the union appeared to be somewhere between a 10mm and 11mm spanner size, neither standard metric or imperial. As the brake pipes were likely to need replacing it was no big problem when the pipe turned with the nut when I eventually got it turning with mole grips, ripping the old steel pipe in two as it did. With the hub and backplate now separated f...

In an Eric Morecambe moment it seems that the internet supplier has not supplied us the wrong seals for our Polo brake calipers, He has in fact supplied the right seals, just not necessarily for the right callipers. I shall explain. The car is an '82 model and it seems early '82 and '83 models used a smaller bore calliper than the later models. A search on the internetweb shows that the majority of suppliers don't know this so list the later ones for all models. Not a problem, I thought, I shall go in person with the callipers to our local old fashioned motor factors Waterloo Engineering, who have always been very knowledgeable and good at matching up old parts. After a bit more internet research I had produced a shortlist of possible matches including parts from Toyota Land Cruisers, Land Rover Defenders and Mitsubishi Shogun - it seems like the same brakes used on the front of Polos were possible once popular as rear disc brakes on 4x4's. And also the...

Only small progress on the Polo today, first job being to order some HT leads to replace the old (original?) ones which were falling apart. They should arrive tomorrow., but in any case something called "work" will stop me doing much else until Thursday anyway.  I'm still waiting on brake parts, so rather than start with the bits I've got I thought I'd do a clean job for a change. My hands need a bit of respite from being covered in oil or brake fluid anyway.  The replacement interior we have acquired is, as previously reported, in food condition with no tears or significant wear but is a little eon the grubby side. Cleaning it up brought mind the episode of Top Gear when the three boys bought almost identical BMW convertibles and had them forensically examined as one their famous challenges. Theirs proved to have saliva, semen, mucus and poo in the interior. I'm not saying these seats had such bodily execrations upon them but, well, lets just say I wo...

A little progress on the restoration today, whilst I have the front offside brake caliper off I decided to pull the disc off too, and then the brake shield. The brake shield has been clean, the surface rust rubbed down and treated with zinc primer followed by a coat of black hammerite. Did I mention I like shiny things? It looks much better bolted back into place. The disc had a little surface rust on, but nothing a good rub down with wet and dry couldn't put right. They are actually in very good condition, probably new before the car was laid up.  The disc measures up as 10.2 mm thick. Minimum thickness is 8mm, maximum when new is 10mm - go figure. With a few days use I'm sure they'll clean themselves up to full shininess - I like shiny.  Sundays are for shopping though aren't they? People go to B&Q or the garden centre on Sundays. I thought maybe we could give shopping a try - shopping of a car related type. Let me explain. When Thomas decided he wanted ...

It's the weekend and that means it's time to play with the Polo. Tackling the jobs list in a totally haphazard fashion I decided it was time to hang the exhaust - don't worry it had a fair trial. Two mystery rubber hangers that had been in the glovebox parts stash proved not to be the exhaust hangers, which are simple rubber rings, priced at less than a quid each. Trying to fit them proved something was amiss. The exhaust is a simple two piece affair, but whoever fitted it had twisted the rear section on the front so that the silencer sat at an angle instead of flat, and they had also pushed the two parts far too much together - if that makes sense. As a result the hanger brackets were misaligned with the brackets on the exhaust and the rubber rings wouldn't go anywhere near. Separating the exhaust components took a bit of persuasion with a hammer, a blow torch and much twisting until the ten year old exhaust paste jointing the two bits eventually let go. R...

Another victim of the classic car bug, my son Thomas turned 17 yesterday and I bought him his first car, a 1982 VW Polo "Breadvan." Exactly what he wanted - no boy racer Corsa for this young man. Described as needing light restoration it could already fill the pages of a "Practical Classics" magazine staff car saga. And so I will. Our purchase involved a trip to Leicester where we had arranged to see another Polo which turned out to be much worse than we imagined, so we passed on it and went to view the one we did eventually buy in nearby Loughborough. The vendor wasn't available, but we were able to have a good look around it, and although it had stood for ten years or so and the fuel had evaporated/gone stale/gummed the fuel lines we managed to fire it up with carb cleaner. Getting any gear to drive it proved impossible, but in any case the brakes were seized on. The chassis and body however were incredibly solid given the cars 38 years, the only ...