- Welcome to Club G40 Forum.
Recent posts
#21
General Car Chat / Are there still any G40 specia...
Last post by goosyganger - February 16, 2025, 09:17:49 PMI want to recommission my G40 after about 10 year storage. Been garaged in dry conditions. I seem to recall there used to be a couple of garages that did charger refurbs and recons of G40s. Any recommendations?
#22
General Car Chat / Re: Polo G40 for sale
Last post by madigang40 - February 10, 2025, 07:04:01 PMcheers fella, looking forward to taking delivery of it on the 18th and giving it a good going over and getting it out once the salty roads are gone in spring.
#23
General Car Chat / Re: Polo G40 for sale
Last post by samg40 - February 10, 2025, 04:26:16 PMCongrats on the purchase, it does look a nice example. There is a PH article on it from when it first went on sale if you've not seen it. https://www.pistonheads.com/news/ph-spottedykywt/gold-dust-grade-vw-polo-g40-for-sale/46568
#24
General Car Chat / Re: Polo G40 for sale
Last post by madigang40 - February 10, 2025, 10:26:25 AMhey Pete,
Flew down to London from the north east of Scotland to view this G on the weekend, I went with a long list and intention to check every nut and bolt before contemplating buying but when the garage door opened I was SOLD! This G is coming to Scotland and I cant wait to cherish it.
A dream come true
Flew down to London from the north east of Scotland to view this G on the weekend, I went with a long list and intention to check every nut and bolt before contemplating buying but when the garage door opened I was SOLD! This G is coming to Scotland and I cant wait to cherish it.
A dream come true
#25
General Car Chat / Re: Polo G40 for sale
Last post by PeteG40 - February 08, 2025, 02:57:19 PMIt's been for sale for a long time, probably due to the price which started something like 16k.
They are still 30+ years old, so bushes, corrosion etc can still get the better of them when stored.
They are still 30+ years old, so bushes, corrosion etc can still get the better of them when stored.
#26
General Car Chat / Polo G40 for sale
Last post by madigang40 - February 04, 2025, 02:23:04 PMHey Folks,
After owning a Mk2 Polo GT for my first car I have always pined for a G40...20+ years later I see there is one for sale at a garage just south of London. Its been up for sale for a couple years so many of you may know of it? Other than the price is there a reason why this hasn't sold before now? Going to view but anxious its a rotter in a fancy dress.
any advise would help.
https://www.wheelbase.uk.com/vehicle/volkswagen-polo-13-g40-coupe-3dr-petrol-manual-113-bhp-in-surrey-815868af-c386-47bc-a24f-9644c4d49bda
After owning a Mk2 Polo GT for my first car I have always pined for a G40...20+ years later I see there is one for sale at a garage just south of London. Its been up for sale for a couple years so many of you may know of it? Other than the price is there a reason why this hasn't sold before now? Going to view but anxious its a rotter in a fancy dress.
any advise would help.
https://www.wheelbase.uk.com/vehicle/volkswagen-polo-13-g40-coupe-3dr-petrol-manual-113-bhp-in-surrey-815868af-c386-47bc-a24f-9644c4d49bda
#27
Ongoing Projects / Re: Hayesey's red G40 restorat...
Last post by sleag40 - February 02, 2025, 09:08:41 PM #28
Ongoing Projects / Re: New G40 purchase, road goi...
Last post by hayesey - January 29, 2025, 12:34:56 PMQuote from: TOMG40 on September 22, 2024, 01:55:57 PMGood advice thanks, hopefully I'll get around to doing the t belt this week
If anyone has any advice about posting pics on here,would be much appreciated. I've got a lot of pics of my old G40 from about 10 years ago I'd like to share.
you're using google photos already so it's not too hard. When you've got one of those links you posted above open in a web browser, right click the photo and select "copy image address" (that's from Chrome if you're using some other browser the wording might be slightly different). Then when making a post on here, click the "Insert an Image" icon which looks like a screen with a green circle at the bottom right. Then you can just paste in the copied address to the image and it'll appear in your post. You can put in a height & width if you want it to appear smaller.
#29
Ongoing Projects / Re: Hayesey's red G40 restorat...
Last post by hayesey - January 29, 2025, 10:50:56 AMWell, it's beyond time I should put an update on here, so here goes. To be honest progress over the last 12 months has been almost non-existent. I've had things going on in my personal life and keep taking on other projects such as mt T4 Caravelle I'm using as a basic camper/day-van that I've spent time on. But now I feel motivated to get the Polo done so am starting to make progress.
I do have some parts put on it as you can see here, new master cylinder with one port welded up and then powder coated so it has the correct number of ports on it for a polo. Servo is just refurbished and painted, steering rack is a brand new one I managed to find. The bracketry I have zinc plated and passivated (more on that in a bit...). I've had to clean my socket set so I don't get dirt on these new parts
I've been making all new brake pipes, I done this before on other cars and always used copper which is nice and easy. Here though I am using steel pipe with the dark green coating as the original ones are. It's a LOT harder to work with but once I got the hang of it, it is coming together. Stupidly, I threw away all the old pipes when I stripped the car but I have got some pipes of PeteG40 who replaced some on his to copy off.
I did find that bending the pipes without marking them and taking little bits of the green paint coating off was impossible. So in the end I just scratched the pipes and mixed up some paint to touch up the scratches which has worked very well. So much so that in hindsight I wish I'd used kunifer pipe and just painted them!
I've also been working on the fuel system to get all the pipework on. My first goal is to get the underneath of the car done and then I can put the suspension on and get it rolling.
I am re-using the original hard polyamide pipes, they've cleaned up nicely and I am getting new rubber sections swaged on as they were originally.
Nothing to show yet other than some of the pipes before removing the old rubber parts and cleaning the plastic pipework:
So the other main thing is all the zinc plating I've been doing. I decided a while ago that I would do my own zinc plating & passivating. Mostly because I just prefer to do things myself where possible rather than just paying someone else to do it and I like learning new things. But also because I knew I'd end up paying for a batch of plating to be done only to then keep finding more bits that need doing afterwards. Plus I've heard stories of commercial platers losing parts and some of these parts are not easy to find again. There's various kits and lots of info on the Internet on doing DIY zinc plating and it's not actually very hard to do, just time consuming. Most of the time is spent in cleaning and de-rusting the parts before plating them as they have to be immaculately clean.
Here's my DIY plating kit in use the other day:
It's like a production line, once parts are degreased & derusted, they start on the left in the steel pan which has a hot alkaline cleaner in it. Then they are rinsed, then they go into the acid pickle tub for just 2 minutes to be "activated", then rinsed, then into the plating tub for 30 minutes with the current on the power supply set according to the total surface area of the parts being plated which you have to calculate.
After plating, they are rinsed again and then swished in the passivate tub for just under a minute. Then they come out like this:
I have passivate chemicals for this yellow/gold finish commonly used on car parts from the 80s and 90s and also clear passivate used on many nuts & bolts.
Lastly, they are left for 24 hours for the passivate to harden before being handled. If it's cold, I bring them in the house for that as in this photo.
Here's some more batches I've done, some yellow and some clear:
The actual process here takes about an hour but you can get a production line going where you have some parts in the plating tub, some in the alkaline cleaner and some being de-rusted before that. So given a day you can run quite a lot of parts through it.
Talking about de-rusting, that's what takes the longest. My process is to degrease using brake cleaner and a toothbrush, then soak in hydrochloric acid (readily available as "brick acid") to de-rust. You can only buy this legally in 10% strength in the UK now so it does take a while (30 mins to 1 hour depending on how rusty). It is f**king nasty stuff so I do that outside and wear plenty of protective gear. After that I use a wire wheel on a bench grinder to finish cleaning and to bring parts up to a shine, they'll come out of the plating process as shiny as they go in.
I've been recommended to try using Bilt Hamber Deox-C instead of acid as parts can just be chucked in and left overnight to completely de-rust without any concern of removing good metal too so I will give that a try at some point.
For the plating itself you have to set the current on the power supply correctly. To help with that (and also to teach myself a mew web programming framework) I made a simple web application to work out the area of various shapes of parts and then the current need to end up with the correct thickness of zinc plate:
I put this online for anyone to use as well: https://plating.hayesey.co.uk
The basics of the plating kit I use (chemicals, tubs, heaters etc...) came from https://www.gaterosplating.co.uk/
You don't want the plating tub or the passivate tub to be too cold so I use fish tank heaters in them to get them up to about 20 degrees when it's cold. I also use a fish tank pump in the bottom of the plating tub to agitate the electrolyte to get good plating coverage.
Worth pointing out that high-tensile bolts can suffer hydrogen embrittlement from this process so if you are going to do bolts more than 8.8 tensile strength, you need to cook off the hydrogen in an oven for several hours after plating and before passivating. Since an oven costs a fair bit to run for hours these days, it's best to just not bother and buy new high tensile bolts so that's what I'm doing.
I do have some parts put on it as you can see here, new master cylinder with one port welded up and then powder coated so it has the correct number of ports on it for a polo. Servo is just refurbished and painted, steering rack is a brand new one I managed to find. The bracketry I have zinc plated and passivated (more on that in a bit...). I've had to clean my socket set so I don't get dirt on these new parts
I've been making all new brake pipes, I done this before on other cars and always used copper which is nice and easy. Here though I am using steel pipe with the dark green coating as the original ones are. It's a LOT harder to work with but once I got the hang of it, it is coming together. Stupidly, I threw away all the old pipes when I stripped the car but I have got some pipes of PeteG40 who replaced some on his to copy off.
I did find that bending the pipes without marking them and taking little bits of the green paint coating off was impossible. So in the end I just scratched the pipes and mixed up some paint to touch up the scratches which has worked very well. So much so that in hindsight I wish I'd used kunifer pipe and just painted them!
I've also been working on the fuel system to get all the pipework on. My first goal is to get the underneath of the car done and then I can put the suspension on and get it rolling.
I am re-using the original hard polyamide pipes, they've cleaned up nicely and I am getting new rubber sections swaged on as they were originally.
Nothing to show yet other than some of the pipes before removing the old rubber parts and cleaning the plastic pipework:
So the other main thing is all the zinc plating I've been doing. I decided a while ago that I would do my own zinc plating & passivating. Mostly because I just prefer to do things myself where possible rather than just paying someone else to do it and I like learning new things. But also because I knew I'd end up paying for a batch of plating to be done only to then keep finding more bits that need doing afterwards. Plus I've heard stories of commercial platers losing parts and some of these parts are not easy to find again. There's various kits and lots of info on the Internet on doing DIY zinc plating and it's not actually very hard to do, just time consuming. Most of the time is spent in cleaning and de-rusting the parts before plating them as they have to be immaculately clean.
Here's my DIY plating kit in use the other day:
It's like a production line, once parts are degreased & derusted, they start on the left in the steel pan which has a hot alkaline cleaner in it. Then they are rinsed, then they go into the acid pickle tub for just 2 minutes to be "activated", then rinsed, then into the plating tub for 30 minutes with the current on the power supply set according to the total surface area of the parts being plated which you have to calculate.
After plating, they are rinsed again and then swished in the passivate tub for just under a minute. Then they come out like this:
I have passivate chemicals for this yellow/gold finish commonly used on car parts from the 80s and 90s and also clear passivate used on many nuts & bolts.
Lastly, they are left for 24 hours for the passivate to harden before being handled. If it's cold, I bring them in the house for that as in this photo.
Here's some more batches I've done, some yellow and some clear:
The actual process here takes about an hour but you can get a production line going where you have some parts in the plating tub, some in the alkaline cleaner and some being de-rusted before that. So given a day you can run quite a lot of parts through it.
Talking about de-rusting, that's what takes the longest. My process is to degrease using brake cleaner and a toothbrush, then soak in hydrochloric acid (readily available as "brick acid") to de-rust. You can only buy this legally in 10% strength in the UK now so it does take a while (30 mins to 1 hour depending on how rusty). It is f**king nasty stuff so I do that outside and wear plenty of protective gear. After that I use a wire wheel on a bench grinder to finish cleaning and to bring parts up to a shine, they'll come out of the plating process as shiny as they go in.
I've been recommended to try using Bilt Hamber Deox-C instead of acid as parts can just be chucked in and left overnight to completely de-rust without any concern of removing good metal too so I will give that a try at some point.
For the plating itself you have to set the current on the power supply correctly. To help with that (and also to teach myself a mew web programming framework) I made a simple web application to work out the area of various shapes of parts and then the current need to end up with the correct thickness of zinc plate:
I put this online for anyone to use as well: https://plating.hayesey.co.uk
The basics of the plating kit I use (chemicals, tubs, heaters etc...) came from https://www.gaterosplating.co.uk/
You don't want the plating tub or the passivate tub to be too cold so I use fish tank heaters in them to get them up to about 20 degrees when it's cold. I also use a fish tank pump in the bottom of the plating tub to agitate the electrolyte to get good plating coverage.
Worth pointing out that high-tensile bolts can suffer hydrogen embrittlement from this process so if you are going to do bolts more than 8.8 tensile strength, you need to cook off the hydrogen in an oven for several hours after plating and before passivating. Since an oven costs a fair bit to run for hours these days, it's best to just not bother and buy new high tensile bolts so that's what I'm doing.
#30
Cars for sale / 1988 Volkswagen Polo MK2 Saloo...
Last post by bradderss - November 04, 2024, 06:23:51 PMReluctant sale due to changing commitments and no longer having the time or a garage to continue.
This car has been a labour of love for the past 10 years I have owned it has had no expense spared in all the work over the years.
As per the title, the car needs some work and TLC after being in storage over covid to return to its former glory and will need to be trailered away.
Have listed the main points below however far too much to list. Have various photos and videos starting from the conversion in 2016 and stacks of receipts from Jabba etc.
Perfect opportunity to go to an enthusiast owner to restore to its full glory and would be a shame to sell for parts as is a truly rare and unique car for a variety of reasons.
Would estimate the car has had upwards of £10,000 spent over the years and open to sensible offers considering some work required.
Full G40 engine conversion from donor vehicle - originally 1.3 carb.
G45 supercharger from Germany - based on G40 but bored to allow more airflow
65mm toothed pulley
1341cc block with forged pistons and 250cc green injectors
Custom Jabba Sport ECU map running c. 180bhp with print-out
Straight-through Decat exhaust system (CAT exempt due to age of vehicle)
BBS Alloys on lowered suspension (cannot recall the mm but not extreme)
PPP sub-frame and exhaust manifold
De-wedged throttle body
Private plate will be removed from the vehicle and replaced with original (F29 OFA)
Located in Hendon, London NW9
My number is 07749 530911 - please text or Whatsapp before so that I know to answer and can discuss in more detail and provide further information.
Thanks
https://www.flickr.com/gp/201741054@N02/9PtTSy9weH
This car has been a labour of love for the past 10 years I have owned it has had no expense spared in all the work over the years.
As per the title, the car needs some work and TLC after being in storage over covid to return to its former glory and will need to be trailered away.
Have listed the main points below however far too much to list. Have various photos and videos starting from the conversion in 2016 and stacks of receipts from Jabba etc.
Perfect opportunity to go to an enthusiast owner to restore to its full glory and would be a shame to sell for parts as is a truly rare and unique car for a variety of reasons.
Would estimate the car has had upwards of £10,000 spent over the years and open to sensible offers considering some work required.
Full G40 engine conversion from donor vehicle - originally 1.3 carb.
G45 supercharger from Germany - based on G40 but bored to allow more airflow
65mm toothed pulley
1341cc block with forged pistons and 250cc green injectors
Custom Jabba Sport ECU map running c. 180bhp with print-out
Straight-through Decat exhaust system (CAT exempt due to age of vehicle)
BBS Alloys on lowered suspension (cannot recall the mm but not extreme)
PPP sub-frame and exhaust manifold
De-wedged throttle body
Private plate will be removed from the vehicle and replaced with original (F29 OFA)
Located in Hendon, London NW9
My number is 07749 530911 - please text or Whatsapp before so that I know to answer and can discuss in more detail and provide further information.
Thanks
https://www.flickr.com/gp/201741054@N02/9PtTSy9weH