Hi, I recently bought a '97 1.6 8v Polo and it has a very very loud clicking/tapping sound coming from the head ......... which I assume is the tappets full of gunk. Its there ALL the time even when at full temp and after a run on the motorway !!! I did a search on here and found that a lot of people use ATF in the oil to clean out the crap. I drained off some of the oil and put in 1L of ATF yesterday. Ive now just done 100 miles and planned on keeping it in for about another 100. The ticking hasnt gotten any better so I thought id take the rocker cover off and have a look Now thats a lot of crap !!!! lol The prev owner lost the service history and its just done 82K. The service history didnt really bother me because I got the car really really cheap ....... 4k was spent on the car only 6 weeks ago inc new suspension / full respray / leather interior etc etc and I got it for less than 500 Is the ATF trick going to sort this out or does anyone have any suggestions ?? Cheers J
Even after about 300 miles on my digi with atf it was still pretty crappy, I removed and cleaned the rocker cover then ran atf again for another 200+ miles then changed oil and filter and it was fine.
atf works better with clean oil too. make up some mix of diesel engine oil and atf it will clean. my head was quite varnished when i got it and a bit tappy. after some aft its bare metal now and still dont tap 190k haha
Cheers guys, The oil and ATF mix have been in for just over 200miles today so ive checked under the rocker and its the same lol The tappets are still really loud all of the time (although my g/f says im just listening out for it now !!!) Ive drained of the oil and its really thin ..... like water !! Ive got some 10-40 diesel oil, new filter and 1L of ATF that im going to put in this afternoon. Ill leave that in for 200+ and change to decent oil. Lets see if that works J
that is severly messy. will be intersting to see if this can save it haha one previous lady owner eh?
Ive just cleaned up the rocker cover and its come up like new. The gunk inside it was really bad !!!! Really easy to come off though
Might be worth spraying a can of carb cleaner over it before you dump the oil, to dissolve some of the gunk and run it into the sump. It'll save you doing too many oil changes with ATF to clean it up!
Update !! I put the ATF and diesel engine oil mix in and ran the car (gently) for about 300 miles. I checked under the rocker cover and was still black but not as gunked up ...... just kind of baked on black lol I drained that off over night and put some fresh Fuchs 10-40 in with a new filter. The problem now is that ive noticed on starting the car it sounds fine with no tapping but when it warms up the tapping starts again .... just as bad as when I started this !!! I did have tapping from staring it up before though. Any reason for this ??
