DIY fuel distributor (Was: I shouldn't have tempted the Audi Gods)

[Mike Walder <miwa@premier.co.uk>]

At 06:45 22/04/97 GMT, you wrote:
>In message <199704212348.AAA14796@richmond.premier.co.uk> Mike Walder writes:
>
>> The fuel distributor seems ludicrously expensive in new or reconditioned
>> form, considering the simplicity of the internals.  Looked like a load of
>> springs and washers with a bit of metal sheet to me, worth about $75 /
>> 50ukp, plus 600 quid 'cause it's german.
>
>Have you put either of the ones you disassembled under pressure again yet?
>
>Remember this is a metal-to-metal seal holding back a very low viscosity, 
>highly flammable liquid at around 100psi.  The official repair kit provides a 
>new bit of "metal sheet" with a special coating - even the experts like BR 
>Motorsport won't consider tackling this job.
>

Experts not tackling jobs never put me off.  Do you know how easy it is to
fix the seals in a knackered Turbo?  But nobody will sell you a "repair
kit", they want the old one as an exchange unit.  Okay, so the turbines
wouldn't be perfectly balanced, and the seals would probably wear quicker,
maybe even twice the speed, but you're saving upwords of 300ukp you could
afford to change the seals 5-10 times for the same cost.  I've seen some of
the machine shops of these Turbo specialists, and often the equipment looks
so old, that they would be unlikely to balance them perfectly.  (I admit
that there are alot of good shops, with the equipment).

I didn't know that a "repair kit" is available for the fuel distributor, or
I would have purchased such a kit before replacing the distributor.  Where
could I get a replacement metal gasket for the fuel distributor?  This is
one thing that I would definately change after a rebuild, like a head
gasket, if I knew where to get it.  I torqued the bolts down quite hard,
because I feared that the gasket might not hold.

Cheers,

Mike
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82 Audi 100 5E 2144cc inj (144k - and far from perfect)
84 Mitsubishi Galant Turbo (96k and rusty will be getting some TLC over summer)
80 Rover 2600S SDI(46k head not fixed yet, the Audi's taking up all my time!)
========================================================================
Mike Walder                   | email:   miwa@premier.co.uk       
Computer Hardware Engineer    |          michael@dcs.rhbnc.ac.uk
Undergraduate Computer Science| WWW:     www.dcs.rhbnc.ac.uk:80/~michael
at The University of London.  | Fax:     01344 776677
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