Fitting 2.0 Liter MP9 into my VW Polo.

By Clinton HulleyVW Polo Classic Project Car
VW 2E Engine
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After I had my Polo for a few months the bug bit me. I wanted to make the polo go faster. There were a few Polo‘s running around with 2-liter conversions and they were running really well. I started doing some research. The 2E long block Volkswagen engines were more reliable than the short block engines. I eventually found a donor sub-assembly that I could use for the polo. I also had to look for an MP9 head for the new engine. The plan was to take the 1.4-liter engine out of the car without stripping the engine. If I ever needed to go back for some reason it was an easy changeover.


Stopping the car!

One thing the really bothered me about the car was the brakes that were on the 1.4-liter polo. It was really small discs and the car did not stop that well. So I was off to the scrapyard to go look at what I could find. It turned out I needed the calipers and the complete hubs. There was a big difference between the 1.4-liter polo and 1.6-liter polo hubs. I went to the shops and bought everything I need.

New pads (Ferodo) and new discs that went together with the 1.6-liter brake assemblies. A few hours later the 1.6-liter brake setup was installed on the car. This made a huge difference in braking distance. My next step was to source disc brakes for the back. This proved to be a bit more difficult as this wasn’t that easy to come by. While I was searching for the rear brakes I started to look at the engine…

I’m a what?

At this stage, I found out that I am a petrol head. Between me and my friend, we would eat, drink and sleep cars. Every weekend we would get together for a barbecue and work on somebody’s car.


I like doing stuff myself. A friend helped me to take the MP9 head apart. Using a drill with some cutting bits and some flapper wheels we ported and flowed the head our self’s. I sent the head to the engineering shop. They fitted new seats and bigger valves into the head. All the fancy stuff was done to the valves. They swirled the back of the valves to create turbulence over the valves and the valves had a 3 angle seat cut on it for better sealing.

Do I fit a modified cam?

At this stage, I found a nice 272deg cam for the head. I have never really driven a car with a modified cam so I didn’t want to go too aggressive. All my friends were running 288 deg cams on the MK1 golfs but they were also running Weber Side drafts. Side draft Weber is something out of the stone age compared to the technology of today.

I was now so into cars, I was always looking at what else can be done. We took the 2E long block apart. The engineering shop bored the block from 82.5 millimeters(STD) to 84 millimeters. The conrods got shot-peened and the crank was knife-edged. All the small little things to make the car go faster. The 84mm pistons we used was a flat top piston. The compression ratio turned out to be like 11 to 1. We took the standard engine out on a Friday evening and started to fit the new engine into the car. The next afternoon we got to start the car and the car was running really well.

Getting the right map on the car.

The Monday morning we towed the Polo to the tuning shop. I had to get a modified Polo MP9 ECU with the 2l maps on it. The car went onto the dyno but the tuner had issues getting the car to run properly. The compression on the engine was too high and we kept on running into knock issues. As the car was a day to day road car this was no good as I could not run on octane boosters or run higher octane fuel.


The fix was to take the head off again and lower the compression. We ended up buying a new multilayers steel Volkswagen head gasket and taking the gasket apart, we also took the steel gasket apart that came out of the engine for the spacer shim. We sprayed the spacer shim with SPANJAARD copper gasket sealant and then assembled the new gasket with the extra spacer. This way the compression was lowered again and I could take the car back to the tuner.

The Polo went back on the dyno and ended up with 98kW and 194Nm Torque. The car drove really well and pulled strong. It was good for a few months but then I saw a picture of something and I had to have it…….


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