The Greenland Polo by the brit

13 minute(s) of a 249 minute read

Happy New Year everyone!

We used the Greenland Polo to go to the family Christmas gathering, which it did wonderfully on the 150 mile drive.



(yes, I really have to wash the hinges and door jams etc!)

I'm trying to get some of the many small jobs done on the car while I don't have any of the larger pieces in the country right now, and just to slowly keep wrapping up all the jobs I should have done before. New Years Resolution maybe?

The radio that installed last year has been acting funny (forgetting its memory, switching off with a pop etc). I suspected the wiring in the car, but everything is stock and tested perfectly. I had a European market, two channel stereo headunit that is in a funky limited edition style colour so I decided to install it. It's got full RDS, Traffic Announcement and the other Euro radio features.

When I plugged it in, and finally worked out how to enter the code, it brought up its old memory of German radio stations:



I then reprogrammed it to my normal local stations, and the first station it found is actually uses RDS:









The gauge cluster has always had a couple of bulbs out, but I was never happy with the diesel cluster in there although it does have the correct mileage for the body. I brought over a Seat Cordoba cluster from a mainland European petrol car, which has the funky yellow numbers, orange needles and red lights. It was a direct swap and seems to be much happier working with the correct RPMs, which would intermittently read incorrectly with the diesel tach.



I believe that correcting the mileage will require removing the EEPROM and reprogramming it manually, which is something I wouldn't mind learning from a nerd perspective. I remember visiting my dads work at a major computer supplier when I was 13 or 14 and dreaming of using their EEPROM machines to copy Sega Megadrive (Genesis) cartridges.

7/9/12

Right, catch up a little..

I'm driving the Polo whenever the mood catches me right now. It's a fun and flickable little car and is super reliable at the moment.. So I'm planning on screwing that up and actually getting around to fitting the SDI 1.9L engine to it soon, along with a diesel specific european market O2A (cable shift, hydro clutch) tranmission. I've got the engine, ECU, wiring etc all sitting here, having bought and stripped a same year Polo in Europe myself.

Tonight I'm sitting here trying to reproduce the logos and graphics that were partially removed and scratched off the bodywork when it was decommissioned. I don't want to paint the car as I'm quite happy with the dents/dings/(please let me call if patina..) and think it's a waste to paint it without fixing all of those too, which is a can of worms of course. So i've got red and white vinyl, which I'm going to try to make a inverse version of the graphics - red lettering on a white background. That will let me cover the scratches while changing up the wording slightly by adding my companies name to two of the doors as well as replicating the Greenland Contractors that I want to keep too.

I as trying to work out which font they used (the G is quite specific), so went to their site at http://www.greenlandcontractors.dk/en/pages/sitemap and checked the source code for hints ( http://www.greenlandcontractors.dk/en/style.css ), which shows they're using Verdana as their website font. Calibri is actually quite close too.

Microsoft Sans Serif is really close in terms of the stylised G with simple and centered letters for the rest of it.

If anyone's good at making vector files, I would love to recreate the G logo:



7/11/12

I'd be happy with something that looks fairly close to be honest, I mean, it's just a fun finishing piece of the car. I'd like to keep the font the same or close but I'm going to be covering over (but not removing) the only remaining original logo on the drivers door, so it's not going to be noticeable if they're different.

It does look like they ditched the stylised G from the start of their logo..

Here's a test sheet of the MS Sans Serif. The small size just doesn't work at all (as seen on the G) but at the correct 1" and bigger 1.25" it's fine. I don't like the edges of the letters though - I'm looking for crisp vertical, and it's a got weird soft and slanted verticals on the edge of the letters.



You can see the 'angled edges' at the bottom of the large size G, on the very bottom of the vertical on the bottom right.

8/18/12

The Greenland Polo is going Diesel again.

It was delivered with a 1.9D, a non-turbo 'SDI' engine, but of course I did not receive this engine and went petrol powered instead. Now it's going back.

I have imported the correct engine, from the exact same year donor car in Europe, which I've had stashed away until a good time arose. Well, there apparently is no good time, so I'm going to try and swap it this weekend and just get it done.

Photos will be updated on Instagram (xjamiexoe and here: http://web.stagram.com/n/xjamiexoe ) , but I'm going to try and hustle to get it at least installed fairly quickly to won't post too much until I stop for food and sleep.

8/20/12

Driving the petrol engine'd Polo to the warehouse. Driving it home with a diesel engine instead. 1 high five for correct guess of how many hours a engine and fuel system swap will take me.



Dirty motor is dirty. Official start time is 5pm EST. Go.



16 minutes. Front end off, wiring disconnected, about to drain coolant.



61 minutes. Downpipe and axles to disconnect still but everything else removed. Also remove ABF alternator setup to install on diesel engine. Prepping that engine now.



1.9SDI diesel engine



10 gallons of fuel slowing us down. Trixie the mk2 Jetta gets her first fill up in about 3-4 years..



3 hours 4 minutes. Old engine out, petrol out, now to swap clutches and transmissions.



4 hours, 37 minutes. New Trans and clutch and alternator installed, all mounts installed on diesel and ready to be put in the engine bay. Roll Polo back inside and bolt it up...



Bolted in, axles on, that's it for tonight. 5 hours including snacks and new clutch, Trans etc. More tomorrow..



Yah, what fun! SDI wiring with euro Immob.. Å’ really needs to partner with a US company to offer immob defeats on these weird ECUs.



8/26/12



So myself, AJ, ben got some more work done on Saturday afternoon, which was basically a lot of the smaller things on the engine swap. Connecting up the wiring after I modified the loom slightly, installing a new fuel filter, connecting the lines/transmission shifter/sensors etc, swapping out the fuel pickup etc. AJ did a great job plugging in the wiring in about 5 minutes while I wasn't looking, which was super impressive.

I kept the European immobilizer that the Diesel ECU came with, but it wasn't deactivating so we left for the day with it firing, but then not running for more than about a second. I went back on my own today, reset the Immob using Vagcom and taadaa, it ran perfectly first time. I simply had to reset the old immob unit to the new ECU in the end.

After that today I hooked up most of the coolant lines, finalised the fuel lines, reinstalled the radiator, headlights, slam panel and all that wiring, and then started to clean things a bit more. There's more work to do under the dashboard and a couple of lines in the engine bay such as the vacuum for the brake booster and coolant overflow return. I also have the connect the downpipe as it's not right now, and therefore is pretty loud!

9/22/12

So.. The correct 1.9L SDI Diesel engine is now installed and running.

First full diesel fillup in a long time!



As it's now got the original diesel fuel sender and fuel level sender, the fuel gauge now works spot on (hopefully).

Yesterday I dropped the car off at a awesome local shop (J&H Automotive) to have the SDI exhaust downpipe connected to the original SDI system that I had on the car - they added the connecting piece, and also did the safety inspection for the next year too. Having new brakes etc on the car coupled with it's low mileage means this shouldn't be hard to pass for quite a while hopefully.

Because my car was a funny year with a O2O transmission with a hydro clutch pedal, when I started the project I decided to switch to a O2A tranmission at the same time, so I could retain the hydro clutch pedal and have the nicer trans at the same time. When we swapped out the petrol for the diesel car, I also swapped out the 4 cylinder petrol O2A for a European diesel O2A, so the gearing is more suited for the car. I have the SDI cable clutch transmission too, but don't mind losing the originality in this case.

The wiring is almost all sorted, just a couple of single connector wires left to do. These things always drive me nuts - I guess I haven't learnt the secret, or haven't learnt them all off by heart yet.

If any of the wiring gurus/nerds can help identify these I would really appreciate it please!





This final one is the diagnostic port (I think it's the T44 item on the similar year wiring diagrams). I think the grey/white side is for the ECU / Immob / ABS? (??) wires, while I'm guessing the yellow is for the airbags diag. I currently cannot connect to the airbag module, but do not know which wire comes from the airbag module and connects to this block. On a late mk3 Golf/Jetta it should be a grey/black wire to T44, then a grey/white wire to the OBD port. This throws off my yellow wire=airbag theory though. I have been unable to find a wiring diagram for the airbag setup on a 6KV polo yet, which would probably help.



After the wiring is locked down, I've got a few jobs ahead of the H2Oi show next week:
Replace gauge cluster bulbs.
Radio has stopped turning on.
Vaccum interior, wash exterior.
Replace decals and stickers on exterior.
Test fit new wheels.
Mount tires on new wheels.
Alignment?

And it's back together.. Thank goodness. Pedal clusters and fuse panels etc being removed gives me nightmares. Engines, etc I don't mind, but dashboards and especially pedal clusters I do not like.



10/8/12

The car performed wonderfully on the drive to H2Oi and back to PA, and then took a trip to New York City (Manhattan and then Newark Airport) for good measure.

The SDI 1.9L is actually proving to be delightful, it's easily fast enough for north american roads - I've yet to get a accurate fuel economy reading yet due to the speedo/odo being intermittent still. I did have to downshift on one highway hill while overtaking, with four people and luggage in the Polo.