Woohoo! An update! With pics!
I've spent the day at VW2000 near Peterborough servicing the Polo with Nick Goodyear and fitting its new oil cooler.
Because of my foglights and the complete lack of space, I decided the best place to mount it was under the number plate. Admittedly this involved much more dismantling than expected. I thought at first we'd be able to drop it in by removing the grille, but that didn't work. So we removed the front bumper:
This still didn't give us enough access, and we found the horn bracket was getting in the way, so whipped off the front bumper bar:
It's a flimsy bloody thing. You can see the horn bracket in the middle of the bar:
First thing to get sorted was the thermostat sandwich plate, so we could mock up the route of the hoses to the cooler. Check out my rat look brace bar.
With it all connected up we could fill the car with oil and let it run to check for leaks and bleed the coolant system. We had a little seepage where the hoses connect to the top of the cooler, but nothing a little tightening couldn't solve.
I cut holes in the two flaps of plastic for the oil hoses to run through and ran them down the back of the bumper bar so it looks tidy. Everything's nicely hidden.
Here's the car back in one piece, you can see the oil cooler below the number plate. I know it's neglectful but my lack of cash last year means the Polo's not had a service since late 2007. It's not done massive mileage since, but the oil was pretty nasty. It's much happier now, sounds healthier and I don't get noisy tappets when I give it a good ragging. Result!
And here's the street outside my house, with my plaything for the weekend. Some old dude was staring at the Scirocco when I got back from the garage, and then nearly shot his load with excitement when I pulled up in the Polo. Weird, but flattering I guess.