We Bought An Engine - VW Polo Coupe - Scrap To Showcar - Episode 7 

It may be the valve stem seals, if you haven’t already pour a little engine oil into the cylinder and redo the compression test, if it’s rings the oil should seal the gap and change the compression, least you’ll know what needs to be done.

Keep thus as your next project

Looking great dan!! Strip off the polo what you need then set a date for a garage sale, find a suitable place to set up so every 1 can pop in and collect parts and all sold in one day!! 👍

Never Doubt yourself Dan problems will come but you get over them you have done it once before your do it again good luck fella 👊🏻

2:52 perfect! that thing will be rapid!

Chin up Dan, you’ll get it sorted mate. 👍

I drove a polo gti for work for 10 years, brilliant engine ,CHOCOLATE gearbox

Great episode as ever! Don’t stress over the engine. Tidy it and take it easy until the next project is a turbo install on the engine! 😊

Loving this series and it being a relatable budget! Dash swap is a great shout 👌🏻

Another great video Dan. Keep the heed up as they say in Scotland.

Gutted about the compression test .. surely it makes more sense to rebuild the motor now .. rather than installing a hurt motor , knowing it has to come out again to be repaired or replaced costing more time and money eventually? Love this series

Loads of nice GTi parts on the Polo which will make a few quid parted out.

Gutted for you on the engine. loving the project, always a bonus with a new episode on Sunday morning!

Dont apologise for not getting your video just right. The fact that you are doing this is good enough for most of us. A 6N2 will be a great source of parts. And plenty you wont use that can be sold on. Wouldn’t mind the bumpers for mine.

Love every minute of these builds mate keep the good work up 🫡🫡🫡🫡

Looking good 🎉

You’ve got it man you can still do it, thought of a rattle can paint job? The t5 looked mint

Love it mate dash is a winner 🥇

Polo project is progressing so quickly. Golf took forever! I look forward to the paint stage. Great update today.

Exhaust system you can get cerakoted mate and honestly isn’t to badly priced to do. Itl be blasted and painted in a ceramic paint that’s used on exhaust systems / weapons ect. Surely you could pull apart the engine and do a cheap ish re build on it your self like others are saying I’d just swallow pride and get it done. Budget is there to meet but that doesn’t mean you can’t go over it to show that these things just never work out 😂

As you said about offering the dash up I was thinking that would look lush in polo 😂 loving this series so far. I found you on your caddy and haven’t left yet 👍🏻 my caddy will be nice one day🎉

Easy enough to get the immobiliser removed from ecu, then you won’t need to worry about the ignition, key and immobilise box 👍 ….. compression down could be a valve rather than rings. Get a borescope in there and see if valves are fully seated

Chin up maté excellent content as always keep going brother🙌🏽

Great video as always buddy

"owned by people that crash them" 😂 shots fired

So glad you picked the 1.6 16v, great wee engines, like i said about the mk3 polo i seen at Kames gti meet way back , i think you can use the the rear stubaxels aswell and they are an upgrade for many mk2 golf owners due to them having different bairings 👍 Peace.

There's always ups and downs with projects. Keep your chin up and keep going. I've still got that mk2f if you get stuck for engine parts buddy

Its a gutter finding a problem with the engine when you’ve bought it to solve a problem but its just one of those things, i had a similar issue with my mk3 Jetta (vento) rebuild a few years back, all the stress and annoyance but it only ended up costing me a couple of hundred quid and a day or so to fix and now its all done and i know exactly what the engine is like internally so it was no biggie in the end, personally i think it would be quite nice to see you rebuild the engine too if you could find it in the budget, lovin the videos though great to watch with a brew on a Sunday morning keep up the great work 👍🏻

Well some parts. P!is weigh in the body rtf scrap metal...plus sell all you can lights etc

The Coupe is going to be a flying machine with that engine in!

I’d have definitely compression tested it on the sellers drive for a £1100 engine man. Always do that if you can.

That's the problem with budgets mate. But you sort it. Keep the faith! Will be a quick little car when its done

Hi Dan, another interesting episode mate I can see you are really down on the compression results but don't beat yourself up over it to much mate as these things happen when you are buying these older cars. As has been mentioned on here you could try a wet compression test to see if it's rings or valves, I've had a few cars with cylinders that had low compression and went ok for years like it, one was a Granada Scorpio with a V6 in it and it had a couple of cylinders that were showing low but it went fine and didn't smoke, just stick it in and see how it drives and sounds🤞🤞👍

Could just be a valve not sealing mate. Have a look down the inlet and exhaust ports to see if there’s lots of carbon build up on the back of the valves. The thick oil in the bore trick will test the rings but you don’t need a lot in there, your just looking for a difference from what you measured dry. If you don’t see a decent difference then it might be worth taking head off for a better investigation of the valves and head surface.

Put some pil down no.3 bore and check again. If the compression goes up you'll know its the bottom end at fault. I could be the cheaper alternative, vales seats or head gasket?

Chin up Dan. 😊. Nothing in the rules saying you can’t put out a call for help and ask if someone can help you fix the engine for parts cost and promo on your channel is there…? Think what you’re doing is awesome and it shows exactly what’s needed to make a show car happen on a budget - and it will happen I’m very sure! 💯👌🤙👍

Think I have said before that I have a 6n2 gti engine in my workshop it was in my sons gti and the small cam belt went I bought another head and rebuilt it and fitted it but when I started it and he done some miles the engine was smoking and burning oil a bit of research told me it would more than likely be rings so took it out and replaced with a low mile engine and all was ok now cut to the chase you can have the old engine you can fit the engine you have to the project get it all done and could do the rings and other bits at your leisure as said the head is perfect and when ready just swap the engines it’s free of charge if you want it just a thought👍

A Polo breadvan has just come up for sale near me (Newcastle). If you fancy a pivot. ;-)

You should get a decent price for the gti bumpers, grill and xenon headlights to claw some money back.

Chin up buddy. That engine must still do ok. Or it might be a crap head gasket. But all the same great video more progress.

Hey Dan, not sure if you've considered/know about the hybrid version of these engines.. The 6n2 GTi AVY engine block with the 6n1 16v AFH head.. They are virtually a direct swap, and the AFH head flows way better than the AVY GTi head.. plus I personally think the cam cover on the AFH looks way way nicer in a show car than the original GTi. The AFH flowing so much better I fitted mine and had it dyno'd at 138bhp, almost a 15hp increase over the GTi head.. they are way more tunable too..loads more cams etc available.. I'm running 189bhp with cams, CBR bike carbs and a racing manifold/exhaust. You'd have to convert back to cable throttle with the AFH head. Just a possibility if you weren't aware.. and I have a spare AFH head here I'd happily bring and donate to the build you wanted.

We know that it could go in as is but it's better fixed now than later. Just have this cost listed separately. Work on the basis it wasn't done but would have been later. Great video as always

I would do a leak down test as might be a valve not seatin right .

Gutted for u with that compression test genuinely had mi fingers crossed for ya man, regardless thats gonna be a nippy little engine. Run it till it pops n cross that bridge when you get ther dude comin together now tho pal gunna be sweet!!

Great episode Dan not good on the engine compression test. You should make some money back on parts like you said not many left. It soon add up mirrors. doors. bumpers. lights 👍

Keep the 6n2 cupholder you'll need it trust me 😂😂

Good job, i follow you from France, i like your project 👍👍👍 Sorry, my language is bad

The polo gti seat are really comfortable, my back starts to hurt after 2 hours when I'm driving ,polo about 4 hours

Another nice update video dude and nice pick up with the car just a shame about the engine but at least it runs I guess.

Listen mate. Do not feel too bad for the engine. As you probably know, chances of finding a pristine used gti engine are quite low. Or, then you would have to put a lot more money to the game. Just make a separate budjet (and maybe a second playlist?) where you fund the necessary rebuild of the engine? And keep the cost of the rest of the buildbudget separate? Just so that you don’t have to put a bad engine into a car that you have worked so much on? Like you said yourself, you need to rebuilt it anyway in the near future… shoutout from Finland!👍🏻👌🏻

Nice mate did think the gti lump was a option.. there plenty available to sell off the polo to recoup some dollar back. Bumpers, tailgate, rear lights, steering wheel. Could possibly get at least half your £1100 back 🤔

Things NEVER go as planned for most of us, so seeing it here is relieving. Atleast it makes more videos/content fella. Also may give you an excse to make other changes too later on :)

Stick a borescope down cylinder 3 see if the walls are okay, i like its a newer polo saving the coupe kind of a restomod style

Cool car will work well but was hoping you was going to do a bike engine

Who's doing your loom conversion? James E Looms did the one for my T4 20v and its awesome.

Great video Dan, are you going to be selling odd bits from the 6n2?

How about rear stub axle-mod? I think You have all parts now. Its much better new style bearing.

Before you stress too much about the engine, do a cylinder leakage test, that’ll give you a very solid idea of where the issue lies.

Do a leak down test on cyl 3. It could be just a dodgy tappet or shagged cam causing insufficient lift.

Would it not of been worth diagnosing cyl3 properly before you take the engine out cause then if it's just a valve problem or head gasket or something fairly easy to solve you could do it while the engines out rather than taking all the time to swap it to then have to possibly take it out again if it's a bigger fault

Don’t be to disheartened regarding the engine compression. It could simply be a sticky old hydraulic lifter. Which is far more common than you would think 🙂

Just need to do a cylinder leakage test, you’ll know straight away where fault is.

The engine is such a small part in the grand scheme of things, having all the other bits to make it work makes the polo still worth buying, having a full donor means all you do need to find now is a cheap engine rather than another full car that might of brought loads of other problems with it

Good work, shame about the compression issue. Here’s hoping it’s not too pricey to sort.

6Ns are fly by wire aren't they, you might need to swap the throttle pedal assembly over too.

I thought that about the dash, would look slick! Shame on the engine though, there’ll be a way round it

It might be a leaky valve full of carbon. if the bores were knackered you would get bad compression on more than 1

I have an ongoing resto of a 6n2... are the back lights good? I guess its Reflex Silver rather than Satin?

Great Video, Who did you say you are sending the loom to?, Might be a good thing to list the names of the specialist people and their services that you use in your builds, in your description/links. 😎

It might not be as bad as you think the vale might not be seated correctly and if its not that's will make the compression drop like that just because its down on compression doesn't always mean the worst pal

Do a leak down test on it

For a budget build I would just pull the head, hone cyclinder 3, new rings and reseat the valves. Then bung it back to together.

Since you showed the interior, I've been like "Dash swap?" It was hard you to ask at the beginning...I had to wait through almodst the whole thing to see if you were already considering it. I had to force myself not to ask. lol Polo seats looked kinda cool, if you were planning to reupholster whatever seats anyway, you could use these and save a little money too.

Is it bad that I realised what car it was from the small shot of the front splitter!!!! 😬 😂

What does low compression mean just wondering as not very mechanically minded loving the vids bro

Budgets is supposed to be broken. Fix the engine and make a smashing good Polo. We love the project!

5:40 The light dropped of the ceiling due to it’s excitement. 😅

Ask for some money off the old GTI owner because what you’ve discovered. Even if it’s £100 🤔💭 Great Job so Far. (As Always) 👍

idk how it is in the uk but cant you bring the 6n2 to the scrapyard so you have 200 bucks to put back in the budget?

Keep your head up, should be able to recoup a big of cash from selling the parts and then weighing in what's left.

hello from Ukraine, I wanted to ask in your country they still sell Austin Allegro, sorry for the off-topic question

Sweet!! Do like these engines! What’s happening with the video quality? Everything around you seems blurry, but your not, even worse when your moving about!

Ad just strip engine and hone the bores new rings and put back to gether no be exspensive if do yourself

I know this goes against the idea of the build but could you not do a limited merch drop (T-shirt/sticker) to help fund an engine rebuild. Just an idea and keep up the good work 😎

Odd that it’s one cylinder, the other 3 are so strong. It could just be a burnt valve, the 16v hate being run on so lower octane unleaded - vpower or momentum only - it may just need a head rebuild. Only difference between ARC & AVY is the sump, if you still have the old Lupo engine you could get that sorted, save buying another engine.

Gonna bike carb the gti engine ?

Are you that mad Scotsman in all those Facebook clips ?

Cant you recoup some money with selling the gti body parts of the 6n2 ?

take of money for donor car scrap and scrap quarter panels and maybe sell ali wheels

Can you not sell some of the bits your not going to use to fund a rebuild on the engine? Do you know if the steering wheel will fit a T5? And as always, great video!

ignore the engine issue, it ran and drove fine, it just creates future content for a rebuild and turbo upgrade ;)

If everything went smoothly / to plan, the channel would be a lot less enjoyable and relatable. Looking forward to the build getting complete, great job so far.

Great episode, Dan. You don’t mess about tearing cars down 😂 Bummer with the engine; do you have any contacts within the industry who might be able to help? The GTI dash would look brilliant, if you can tweak it to fit. Looking forward to seeing you lay some paint down; I’m sure you will have made a sweet choice. Keep pushing, mate; this is a cool series❤️👊

The budget is tight better to rebuild the engine and go over budget

I'm enjoying this build. Also, I just looked at it's MOT history, nearside front drive shaft joint cv boot severely deteriorated. Exhaust minor leak, so look out for that if you're reusing the bits 👍

Compression could be something as silly as a sticky or coked up valve

You’d be better off fixing the engine and cutting back on a something like a stereo, expensive paint, or buying expensive seats. a stereo or interior is easier to do than an engine rebuild

Could you not keep the seats and get them re trimmed to your taste in material, to save a bit of money if your buying seats anyway. Plenty of panels on the Car that could be sold to recoup some money if you under cut anyone out there that is selling similar as you wouldn't want them hanging around, then weigh in the rest of the car that is left.

You've got to have realistic expectations buying an old car that's probably had many owners that weren't in love with it. Get the head off and have a look!

Gutted