[Vwdiesel] Coincidence, and a minor revelation

[George Allison]

Yep, that's a good time/frustration saver.  I often find it easiest to
thread the bolt back into the insert a short ways and give a couple taps
with a hammer -- moves it enough to make installation easy without
requiring much effort.

Way better than fighting it back in with those inserts still trying to
squeeze the bracket.


On Sat, Oct 26, 2013 at 11:34 AM, Dave Cook <davevw at yahoo.com> wrote:

> About two years ago, I did very similar jobs on two different Jettas, a
> friend's '01 TDI and a co-worker's '00 1.8T.  The job was the
> same--headgasket and timing belt, though the cause was different.  On the
> TDI, the headgasket had actually developed a (rare) leak from the cylinder
> to coolant passages.  On the 1.8T, the timing belt failed when it had
> 104,700 miles (original change interval was 105,000...)
>
> Recently, both cars developed a coolant leak.  On both, it appeared that
> the leak was from the plastic flange on the side of the head, over the
> transmission.
>
> So I replaced both today.  Sure enough, on the inside of the plastic
> flange, a chunk of the lip that holds the o-ring had cracked off and
> disappeared, thus the leak. Same failure on both cars.
>
> Neither were replaced at the time the head was off, but now it is clear
> that this is a part to throw away any time it needs to be removed for some
> reason.  Cost for each was around $20 including o-rings, the clip for the
> temp sensor, and shipping.
>
> Stupid VW and their stupid plastic crappy parts.
>
> The minor revelation was that I didn't realize that when you remove the
> alternator, you can press the metal bushings that the bolts thread into
> back a bit to make re installation significantly easier.  The bolts pull
> the bushings tight to the bracket when you tighten them up.  I always
> cussed at how tight things were and how difficult it was to get things
> lined up prior to this.
>
> Dave Cook
> _______________________________________________
> Vwdiesel mailing list
> Vwdiesel at vwfans.com
> http://www.audifans.com/mailman/listinfo/vwdiesel
>