I was troubleshooting coolant leaks for a few months before I finally said screw it and did the full timing service (kind of unsuccessfully mind you, see my thread). So I've taken the engine bay apart about 5 times now recently. The most annoying part is absolutely disconnecting the radiator. Not only do you have the coolant to catch and deal with, you have transmission fluid as well as the radiator also acts as trans cooler. At least on an auto, not sure about manual. My strategy has been to disconnect the lower radiator hose, allow that to drain completely. Then disconnect the transmission cooler hard lines and quickly cap them with vacuum caps. You don't want to lose a lot of trans fluid as filling it again is kind of a bitch that requires hopping in and out of the car, filing and then running through gears all while your transmission is below a certain temp that you need to monitor with VCDS. It also helps if you can cap the hard line connections on the radiator itself to maintain as much fluid as possible there.
Once that's dealt with, there's nothing too hard involved in removing the front clip completely. Aside from unseating the A/C condenser and power steering cooling loop, the rest of it can come out as one whole unit after all the electrical connections are disconnected. It really helps if you have a pair of very long shoulder bolts to use on the crash supports that will allow the front clip to slide out a little bit while you disconnect everything.
Word of warning on the radiator, depending on how long it's been since it was last disconnected and how hot your engine bay usually is, the connections may not separate freely. It's plastic on plastic and over time they can fuse together. This happened to me on the top connection. It wasn't a big deal since the original problem with the car was that the plastic end cap of that radiator was busted so I needed to replace it anyway, but if these connections break on you, you'll have to replace your radiator and/or the hoses as well.
As for the timing service itself, you really need those three tools: camshaft lock bar, crank lock pin, timing tensioner lock pin. And something to pull at least one of the camshaft pulleys, either an appropriate side two-jaw or three-jaw puller or the actual T40001 tool. The latter will save you some annoyance probably. Heed the advice of others out there in that your pulleys should be free in order to properly tension the belt. This is probably where I went astray.
You probably want to do more than just those three components while you're there, at minimum the tensioner roller and the tensioner itself. Doing the front main seal wouldn't hurt either. It's relatively easy to do, again with the right tool. But the torque spec on the crank sprocket suuucccks and apparently it's possible to mess up the keyway on the sprocket or crank if you're not careful. I had no issue at all, but Blauparts has a whole page on how people have messed this up.
You set everything to TDC and put the crank lock pin in. Then do all the work like that. The camshaft lock comes on and off a few times depending. I used Blaupart's write up (as I bought their kit).
https://www.blauparts.com/install_instructions/147.pdf
Lastly, I'd recommend not doing it yourself unless you have VCDS. It's extremely helpful in order to recover from any potential mistakes you might make. Primarily troubleshooting timing issues or the aforementioned transmission fill should you lose too much fluid.
Reply With Quote
The tensioner and tensioner roller are included in the kit so I plan to do those. Guess I'll buy the cam lock bar and lock pin also. Or I borrow it from someone. I do have VCDS. Maybe I should find a cheap barely working car to do this on first lol. I know a mechanic that I used to work with. Maybe I should ask him if we can do it together
Originally Posted by mr_dave
)
Easiest way to drain coolant is to remove the lower radiator hose no?
Bookmarks