Oil Filter Mount Gasket 021-115-359A

[Wildthings]

[Good Old Dusty]

Don’t get rid of the ball valve. Here’s why. There are two things that can go wrong with your oil system 1. Oil gets contaminated with dirt and 2. Oil stops flowing. The first is a long-term problem causing wear at the bearings, the second is immediately catastrophic resulting in engine failure. As I interpret the Type 4 design, oil flows into the area above the top of the filter from the oil pump galley entering on the side of the oil filter mount. Normally, the oil then flows through the four holes around the perimeter of the top of the filter. It proceeds through the filter medium and the fully filtered oil enters the central stack, then proceeds out of the filter through the threaded tube at the centre and goes on its merry way to the oil galleys feeding the main bearings and journal bearings. The engine hums along nicely for 200,000 miles.
There are two filter failure scenarios possible with this assembly. In one scenario where the filter is not maintained, oil flows into the filter, however, the filter media becomes blocked, the pressure builds up in the filter and the filter’s internal relief valve at the base of the stack will open (at 2.0 to 4.0 Bar+, not sure about the MANN W920/17 spec), allowing oil to flow through the central stack into the threaded outlet pipe and off to the oil galleys thus averting a catastrophic failure. In the other scenario the entire inlet space of the filter becomes blocked either due to contamination or a blockage at the four filter inlet holes and the filter relief valve cannot operate. In this case the ball valve in the filter mount housing activates, and unfiltered oil passes from the pump galley directly to the bearing galleys, thus averting sudden catastrophic failure.
Why not get rid of the ball valve? If the ball valve is just removed, the oil will by-pass the oil filter in normal operation, even with a perfectly good new filter in place. The engine will run for a while, but wear will be accelerated, and the bearings will fail prematurely. If you remove the ball and plug the port, there will be no engine protection in the event of the second filter failure scenario. Total blockage at the filter will result in immediate engine failure. Those Gnomes in Wolfsburg were logical and conservative for good reason.

[SGKent]

[Wildthings]

[SGKent]

yes - I have seen mounts where that part popped out when the staking wore out. Most likely the reason the engine was being parted out.
_________________
Canned Water - the new California approved parts cleaner (except in a drought in which case rub it with sand).

George Carlin:
"Most people don't know what they're doing, and a lot of them are really good at it."

Skills@EuroCarsPlus:
"never time to do it right but always time to do it twice"

[SGKent]

In the process of putting it back together. Chatted with Ray privately and I can see his suggestions will work the best. I got a hard rubber roller from Hobby Lobby and some Permatex MotoSeal 1 from O'Reilly Auto Parts. Chose the thinnest gasket, which is the Reinzoloid FS 53. Using a piece of blue masking tape upside down on a thick piece of glass, held on by a couple widths of tape normally on both sides, I rolled the mount side of the gasket with a really thin layer of the MotoSeal 1 and let it dry. Then I rolled a second layer on it, and made sure none was on the case side by cleaning with a little Acetone and paper towel. Then stuck it to the filter and mounted it to the case with a little torque to keep it straight. Will give it a couple hours to dry then do a primer coat on the case side of the gasket, let that dry and then a final thin coat on the mount side. Install and torque to spec. I don't anticipate any problems at all from it. Should be an outstanding seal. Thank you Ray. Exactly the kind of gasket seal I was looking for. New technique that I have learned. Will probably reuse the phenolic gaskets for the manifold too this way. The really good red ones are hard to find these days.
_________________
Canned Water - the new California approved parts cleaner (except in a drought in which case rub it with sand).

George Carlin:
"Most people don't know what they're doing, and a lot of them are really good at it."

Skills@EuroCarsPlus:
"never time to do it right but always time to do it twice"

[raygreenwood]

[wagen19]

[lil-jinx]

[raygreenwood]

Some items to think about:

SGKent said:

[SGKent]

the VR Reinzoloid with a layer of the fuel resistant RTV on it held without creeping. It shows no sign of it. I did notice that in the German printed version of the service manual, printed in English that we call the Orange manual, One of the pages that shows the engine blowup and lists oil capacities as well as torque values, differs from other pages and data.

1. The torque value is 18 ft lbs for the oil filter mount. The other page and Bentley show 14 ft lb, which I am more comfortable with. Fiat cam tower studs were M8 x 1.25 and they were 18 ft lbs. It was common to pull one right out of the aluminum at that torque after a few cycles of working on the heads.

2. The oil capacity is 3.5 quarts instead of 3.7 quarts. It is impossible to know if this is an error, meaning 3.5 liters, or if VW decided they were over filling at 3.7 quarts. The dipstick reads 1/2 to 3/4 quart high when 3.7 quarts is put in a dry engine with a new filter, and all the galleries / filter filled.

3. The photo that has both of the above also shows the gasket with the extra area that has been cut out. A few pages later the same basic photo shows the older gasket, and lower torque value.

We are dealing with their inability to fully document what they were doing.
_________________
Canned Water - the new California approved parts cleaner (except in a drought in which case rub it with sand).

George Carlin:
"Most people don't know what they're doing, and a lot of them are really good at it."

Skills@EuroCarsPlus:
"never time to do it right but always time to do it twice"

[Wildthings]

[raygreenwood]

[SGKent]

Ray - There is a Dealer German Service Manual printed in English for the transporters. We call it the Orange book. It was printed for the dealers on European sized paper, and has supplements that were sent to the dealers for it as engines and features changed. The publisher is Volkswagenwerk Aktiengesellschaft, 1976. The Bentley manual is an American copy of that book but it is laid out just a tad bit different. The photos and much of the wording is the same other than the technical specs in the German factory book are thru out the pages where as Bentley tended to put it at the end. The copies of the Orange Book and rarer 2nd edition are ones that used book dealers bought from VW dealers when they wanted to get rid of excess copies of service manuals. The ones for earlier microbuses were hard bound in binders. These are paper bound, and often have some form of protective cover on them. Below is a photo of the rare second edition, they are a couple hundred dollars when one can find them. This photo is for one that is listed for sale in Australia on Ebay.

_________________
Canned Water - the new California approved parts cleaner (except in a drought in which case rub it with sand).

George Carlin:
"Most people don't know what they're doing, and a lot of them are really good at it."

Skills@EuroCarsPlus:
"never time to do it right but always time to do it twice"

[raygreenwood]

[SGKent]

makes sense.

They aren't the only one. I had to repair three or four Lenovo (formerly IBM) laptops about 10 years ago. State bought about 100 of them. Same PO, same specs, same model number, same shipment, same master crates when unboxed. I'd call and give their support the model and serial, then tell them the defective part and the troubleshooting steps, or sometimes just my name, they'd look me up and say what do you need. Anyway, then they would want a whole slew of other numbers off the laptop to figure out who the sub-suppliers were that provided parts on that one laptop. Then they could send the part that fit it. Subtle differences in internal connectors, voltages etc.. Yet on the outside everyone of them looked identical. I just hate the way things are built that way today. It makes it very hard to repair things once they are a few years old. Then one adds to it the software servicing equipment that constantly changes to where if you take a 10 year old car in to the dealer, they will spend half the day looking for the correct harness to plug it into their system, and another couple hours researching the correct version of software to load onto it. I have read that the John Deere machine owners have it even worse when they have software errors. We see some podcasts occasionally where someone has a hybrid battery error and the dealer wants $25,000 to replace a whole slew of electronic parts, all that need factory programming for that VIN. Then some shop with a software guru figures out how to do it for $2500 using some part from Digikey, a soldering kit, and a programming kit. Depotting, repair and repotting has become an industry to itself on 10 - 15 year old car electronics. At least with a gasket I can make one with an exacto knife and some gasket material.
_________________
Canned Water - the new California approved parts cleaner (except in a drought in which case rub it with sand).

George Carlin:
"Most people don't know what they're doing, and a lot of them are really good at it."

Skills@EuroCarsPlus:
"never time to do it right but always time to do it twice"

[raygreenwood]

[SGKent]

hopefully Trump will sign the CRA that forces 50 state compliance, and the monster CARB will end its attack on humans.
_________________
Canned Water - the new California approved parts cleaner (except in a drought in which case rub it with sand).

George Carlin:
"Most people don't know what they're doing, and a lot of them are really good at it."

Skills@EuroCarsPlus:
"never time to do it right but always time to do it twice"

[Wildthings]

[SGKent]

Mike - the current technology in 49 state cars takes care of that. California cars now aren't any cleaner than the other state cars. In fact, because they cost more, and parts are more expensive, people have less money to maintain them. Most of the used and off lease cars sold here anyway come from out of state. Not to be rude, but you are off base about this issue. We are at a point where the pollutants in the dust blowing off of dry lakebeds left by all the pools and golf courses in LA is more unhealthy than all the modern cars driving around here. The forest fires that grow in size yearly as the environmentalists want to see nature take its course have put out more pollutants and CO2 out than all the efforts the US has taken to reduce emissions over the last 25 or so years. When we have fires now, they burn for months, and the sky is like Mordor. Look what happened during the wet season this year. They didn't even bother to maintain the fire hydrants or keep water in the reservoirs that supplied them. CARB sat around and let it happen. To many of us, we see them as a money generating machine for specific donors at this point. Kudos for doing their job in years past, but it was done 20 years ago.
_________________
Canned Water - the new California approved parts cleaner (except in a drought in which case rub it with sand).

George Carlin:
"Most people don't know what they're doing, and a lot of them are really good at it."

Skills@EuroCarsPlus:
"never time to do it right but always time to do it twice"