VW Polo 9N3 GTI, 1.8T BJX Engine - Timing Belt Replacement Guide

A major service was due for my MY06 9N3 Polo GTI, which recently ticked over 90,000km.

I ended up changing the Timing Belt, Timing Belt Tensioning Pulley, Water Pump, Accessory Belt and Thermostat as preventative maintenance.

This is the very compact engine bay, where VW managed to cram the 1.8T engine from the outgoing Mark IV Golf (unfortunately detuned) into the facelifted Polo. It is a great feat of engineering tessellation, but it bites when you need to do major servicing.

Stock Bin

I use a metal bin to organise the medium-length bits of stock in my shop. These are all the odds and ends that aren't long enough to make it onto the stock rack. It was an old vegetable oil can in a previous life. I filled it with paper mailing tubes to try give it some organisation. I recently added some wheels to make it mobile (something that is increasingly necessary in the continually diminishing amount of shop space).

Tapping Guides

A set of tapping guides helps keep your tap straight when threading, and makes starting the thread a lot easier.

I made some simple ones using a piece of hex bar, drilled out to the relevant diameter. 

The thickness is three times the hole diameter. Each was stamped with its size with a punch. 

Here it is being used to retap handles for the Electronics Bench.

Milling Machine Drawbar

I made a metric M12 draw bar for my mill, as the original one was 7/16" and not suitable for the majority of my tooling. It consists of a long piece of 12mm CRS, threaded with a die on one side.

Lathe Bench

My lathe bench is in it's second iteration. The first was made with random pieces of steel welded together poorly with a cheap arc welder. 

The second iteration (/attempt) is made primarily from welded 50x50x3mm steel Rolled Hollow Section (RHS) and is on heavy duty castor wheels. It also doubles as storage space for raw materials. 

(Note, the pedestal where the lathe sits does not match the lathe. This is because I upgraded the previous lathe to a Hare and Forbes AL-250G, which is a vastly superior machine, but unfortunately with slightly different feet spacing.)

As an increasing assortment of stock accumulates, I needed a better way to organise it, so I could actually find what I needed. The original design had two drawers for storing lathe accessories, and two shelves for storing stock. I have cleared out the lower shelf in the photo below. This area will be replaced with four drawers. This area was chosen as it has more space than the upper shelf, and allows the drawers to be of identical size to the top ones.

Engineering Fails

This page is a collection of engineering fails that I have seen or experienced.

Cracked nuts 

These were found inside the the wiring box for a small 3 phase motor. I guess this is what happens when you over-tighten poor quality nuts!

Engineering Hacks

This page is a collection of various engineering hacks that I have done: 

Emergency Thong Repair

My workshop foot protection (/thong) broke. But it was New Years Day, no shops were open, and I couldn't be bothered looking for another pair... 

The person who invented cable ties deserves a pat on the back every time one is used to solve a problem. 

Note: I do not condone wearing thongs in workshops unless you are prepared to take the risk. 

Electronics Workbench

This is the third iteration of my electronics bench. The first was a small shelf in my bedroom. The second was an old sewing machine bench. This iteration uses a custom-made, electric height-adjustable table with two Linak linear actuators. 

Bench space is approximately 1000x700mm. The height adjustment also makes it useful for many other types of work. 

Garden Trellis

A garden trellis is a lattice structure used to support climbing plants as they grow. I recently bought a passionfruit plant, and needed a trellis to grow it on. I was keen on trying to reuse as much scrap material as possible, as it was going into the garden anyway. I also did not want to use the pine lattices available at Bunnings / Masters, as they are made from Copper-Chrome-Arsensate (CCA) treated pine.

Floating Floor

I had two packs of 1.5m^2 Mahogany Floating Floorboards. These are "engineered" floors, which consist of tongue-and-groove boards with a plywood substrate and a 3mm Mahogany veneer. I bought them purely because they were 75% off at Bunnings, thinking that they could potentially make some nice storage boxes.

After being stored for years, I decided that they would make a good floating floor under my bed - it would make it easier to store things there (especially if I got some boxes with wheels). It also would be a good area to store plywood sheets flat - as this minimises amount of warpage compared to when stored upright.