After debuting a brand new turbo-charged engine at the opening Round of the 2014 season, VW Polo driver Michael Boaden has confirmed that he will switch back to a normally-aspirated power plant for the International Rally of Queensland.
“Since Canberra we had a good hard think about what we were trying to do and the best way forward,” said Boaden. “And in the end we decided that we weren’t going forwards, we’d just created a whole bunch of new problems for ourselves.”
The Polo’s, originally built in South Africa for their domestic Championship, and imported into Australia by former Australian Rally Champion Justin Dowel, came mated with a normally-aspirated engine.
Stresses on the engine during 2013 season, including some spectacular failures for both Boaden and Patton, prompted the pair to make drastic changes over the New Year period with Patton building a new turbo-charged package in his Canberra workshops over Christmas.
“The engine worked just fine in South Africa but for a number of reasons we just couldn’t make it reliable over here,” Boaden explained. “The biggest issue is it was built as a long stroke engine, the problem with that is long stroke engines don’t like big revs, which kind of defeats the purpose no matter which way you look at it.”
The 1.8-litre turbo engine Patton and Boaden came up with, which came standard in the Australian delivered Polo GTi, fell outside the technical regulations covering the outright category for the ECB ARC, which resulted in the turbo being fitted with a restrictor plate.
Immediately though they struck problems; “The new turbo-charged engines were overheating. Mick managed to get his through in Canberra, I wasn’t so lucky.”
Boaden elected to sit out the second Round in Western Australia, while Patton argued for a larger turbo restrictor, which he was granted with the addition of a weight penalty to his car.
“Apart from the problems that come from fitting a restrictor to that engine, I just didn’t seem effective to continue down the turbo-charged path,” continued Michael. “It’s a two-wheel drive car, you want it to be light and nimble, but with the standing weight of the car, plus the driver and co-driver, then add the extra weight being imposed and the car was ending up heavier than my old (Mitsubishi Lancer) Evo.”
“The bottom line is I was worried about spending a heap of dough and not getting anywhere with the turbo engine. So we went back to the drawing board on the normally-aspirated engine and I think we’ve come up with some good solutions.”
Boaden has developed a revised version of the 20-valve engine he ran last year in the Polo, but as he explained everything is different. “I don’t think there is anything, apart from the gearbox, that we kept as is. It’s all new!”
“I’ve had help from two guys, incredible help, to work out some of the problems. The first guy is a VW fanatic, he contacted me and said he had some ideas, then next thing I know he’s offering me three second-hand engines to help us out.”
“And then I get a text message out of nowhere from a guy who used to work for the SEAT team when they ran back in the old Formula 2 days. He’s offered me all sorts of advice that I wouldn’t have had any other way, it’s been amazing. And all either of these two guys want out of it is to see us do well, that’s it!”
The version of the engine Boaden will run in Queensland will be slightly basic compared to a second engine he’s looking to install prior to South Australia.
“This is our test engine, it’s a case of proving everything works before we get too invested. But then for SA, we’ve got a full-on race engine ready to go in, that’s when we’ll really start to see what’s possible.”
“We’ve really been hard at work on all this since Canberra,” Michael stated. “I’m confident we’re on the right path. Some day’s it feels like we’re trying to reinvent the wheel, and it often it feels like our new wheel is hexagonal not circular, but I really think it’s going to be the bees knees when we’re finished.”
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