Volkswagen Polo

Volkswagen Polo

The Volkswagen Polo Vivo is undoubtedlty the most popular, as well as the  best-selling car is South Africa. Looking at the top ten vehicles sold in South Africa, VW Polo Vivo takes first place, the Volkswagen Polo takes third place and the Vw Golf takes tenth place. Looking at the frequency of problems encountered with Volkswagen vehicles  in general, it appears that the VW Polo 2002-2009 models are far more reliable than the VW Polo 2010—2016 models. These models are prone to EPC problems and several Polo owners have complained that they encountered EPC problem with their cars with as little as 700km on their clocks.

The most troublesome generation 5, VW Polo seem to be the 2011 model, but the 2012 model takes the cake for the annoying knocking sounds coming from the suspension when going over speed bumps and pot holes.  But this knocking sound isn't unique to the Polo 2011 and 2012 models, it also affects the Golf Mark 7, the Volkswagen Transporter T5 and Polo GTI, etc.

It seems that somehow the strut mount bolts in the engine bay of these Volkswagens haven't been torqued properly. The rattling and knocking noise coming from the shocks occurs when driving over pot holes  or over speed humps, especially when the shock is fully extended or when driving slow.  In some cases the noise comes from coil-over assembly. These coil-overs squeek and creak at random and sometimes the rear ones squeak worse than the front ones. We found by removing the damper adjustment knob and tightening the 17 mm nut in the middle of your strut top,  and   holding the centre with a 7 mm allen key,  the noise is  somewhat reduced but is very disconcerting since these models are relatively new cars. 

Its probably best to re-torque these nut between 45-60 ft/lbs with a correctly  calibrated torque wrench. In my opinion there should have been a total recall on VW Polo 2010—2016 models for this problem.