[Vwdiesel] Has anyone changed the clutched Alt. pulley

[Travis .]

You likely have the newer shorter tool for the Alt pulley so it will be easier in the BEW car. The ALH you need the new shorter tools or you had to pull the alt but the BEW has more room to work in that area. Where gloves because once it lets loose-it is a knuckle buster. There was one person that barrowed my tools actually broke the alt shaft trying to get it loose. I changed mine a long time ago and the alt and pulley are still going good.
 
I advise to wash the engine bay out before starting a timing belt. Although-there shouldn't be much dirt if you have the belly/side pans still on the car. 
 
I used a harbor freight engine holder (from the top) to hold the engine up while working on it from below. Things are tight-but would you want to give up AC, the double the power the rabbit engine had with basically the same engine size and through some emissions equipment on there as well. I know I can move around in the rabbit engine bay but without AC, cruise, intercooler, larger alt to handel more comforts, they are just hard to compare. I don't see many engines I can reach even one arm in more then a few inches anymore with how much they have packed things in. 
 
As you have a BEW-you NEED to check and adjust your cam torsion value (basically cam shaft timing). A little bit goes a long ways as far as moving. You loosen the 3 bolts on the cam and use a wrench on the big cam bolt to tap it one or the other ways. Affects starting, HP and MPG. Ideally should have recorded what it was before to see how the factory had it but setting to zero (when running at idle warm) is good enough with possible future tweaking for fine tuning. 
 
Travis