[V6-12v] Resetting Valve Timing, etc.

[James4ihl at aol.com]

Tom and Clive --

Yeah, I did consider that they may have lifted out the cams with the 
sprockets intact, and you're totally right, they may have done. I've decided to buy 
the special tools and re-set the valve timing anyway, for the price of the tools 
and a little time, it's not worth having the timing out.

As for the tappets, yeah, I think on balance, since I do use my car daily, 
I'm gonna leave that to the pros and get it done in a day. My mech says he 
doesn't want to touch that until I've run a decent flush through the system though, 
as apparently that can often unstick sticky valves and tappets. It's due in 
for an oil change this thursday anyway, so I bought a flush and we'll go from 
there.

By the way, I can't recall whether it was you who suggested it, but I renewed 
all the vaccum connectors on the intake manifold and it's near as dammit 
cured that hesitation. While I was doing it, I noticed that that the big moulded 
black plastic part that goes between the big intake hose and the throttle body 
is loose on one side! That'll produce a load of un-metered air, I thought, and 
set about tightening it up. Then I found that what I thought were bolts 
holding it onto the back of the throttle body were not bolts at all, but just 
locating pins! So there's nothing holding such an important seal in place except a 
couple of bolts on top of the intake manifold which don't tighten enough to 
really pull it into place... I went into my local Audi dealership to see if they 
could at least get a replacement rubber seal for inside there (and to get a 
sneaky look at the ETKA diagram to see if I'd missed anything). Guess what? 
That whole plastic part was discontinued and the replacement part has... guess 
what... bolts instead of locating pins! I'm going to try and replace the pins 
with some bolts of my own of an appropriate size when I do the seal, but do you 
know how you get the pins out?

I've copied this reply into the group so that anyone can help me who may 
know...

Thanks for all your help, as usual!
James