20v I5 Implosion

[Brett Dikeman]

At 4:46 PM -0500 3/30/03, alan page wrote:

>I realize that none of this is good, and it's probably going to cost a
>fortune to fix it, but I'm having trouble trying to piece together
>what's going on. The spark plugs and coil packs were replaced at the
>120K service 11 months ago. Even if that was done improperly, where's
>all the oil coming from?

Well, the aluminum heads are known for working their plugs loose- my
car does it all the time, I have to re-tighten them about every oil
change or so, and other 200q20v'ers have reported similar
behavior(perhaps I'm just overly paranoid about overtightening plugs
in an aluminum head and as a result don't tighten them enough.)
Andrew Duane's A6 once blew a spark plug clean out of the engine
after it had just been serviced, including plug change.

   If you haven't checked the plugs since the coilpack/plug change,
and they were not properly torqued, it's quite possible one was blown
out.  Check the others once you get the oil out(if you didn't know,
use the tire iron handle to get the plugs out, but again, remove the
oil -first- :-)

   Maybe, if you're lucky, the valve cover gasket was damaged by the
spark plug letting loose(and the coilpack trapping the pressure).  It
is, after all, just rubber.  Any sign of aluminum in the first few
threads of the plug that was spit out, or of stripped threads on the
plug?

The valve cover is going to have to come off to see what happened;
it's the only place the oil could come from.  My Wild Ass Guess is
that all the oil is from just the first plug- theory being it filled
the whole area and oil drained into the plugs, and was eventually
ejected out the back.  The bubbles are an indication that the other
plug(s) are loose as well- when my plugs are loose, I can actually
feel the spark plug wire heads vibrate up and down from the air
pressure.

The smoke was probably a good portion of the oil getting sucked into
the cylinder(now missing a plug) and burning in the exhaust and
catalytic converter- you may need new ones if a significant amount of
oil made it down-stream.  The O2 sensor is probably dead.

The valve cover is a DIY item, at least on the 200q20v; several
listers have done it and said it's "not that bad".  I think it would
be far easier on the AAN, as there is virtually nothing in the way,
right?  The 3B has a lot of stuff packed right around the head, like
the throttle, for example.

Do you have the Bentley repair manuals for the car?  If not, email
s-car-list at audifans.com and see if someone in the area is willing to
loan you theirs for a few days.

Fingers crossed,

Brett
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