tips before pulling transmission from 2002

[Zeitgeist 13]

Sheesh, that's so typical of VW.
_________________
Casey--

'89 Bluestar ALH w/12mm Waldo pump, PP764 and GT2052
'01 Weekender --> full camper
y u rune klassik?

[Zeitgeist 13]

[xavior12]

Well, what ever happened to your chain project? I think you said that the trans was going out for rebuild?
Did you get all your parts?

[markcm2]

Transmission is back. The base price was $2500 and there was a broken "gear" or something so add $1500 in parts... it ended up $4500 after tax with a 5 year warranty and they say they will pull it if it comes back for warranty.

The last timing parts arrived today with the cam holder tool. We pulled out a cam adjuster solenoid and it separated, then when tapping the valve part out of the manifold it fell to the floor and dented the end. Then when pulling one of the orings off to get a size we scuffed it only for the local shop to tell us they don't have any metric orings (WTF?). We snapped the solenoid back together and got some metric orings and it appears to work when applying power to it so we will try reusing it.

I'm not sure if we are going to pull the whole valve timing/solenoid manifold off to check the screen or not, so far the timing solenoids have been a bitch and we don't have the adjusters off the cams yet so... we may just leave that alone.

I suspect we will start putting it back together in the next few days here, I had to do PCV on my wife's A4 2.0t tonight, its been dumping oil in the intake like mad. I pulled the lower intercooler pipe off and a quart poured out (and I just dumped it less than 1k miles ago; she said it had a batmobile smoke screen effect today as well.

[markcm2]

The cam lock tool arrived and when we attempted to set the engine to TDC, things just didn't line up like expected. All the original parts look good, no signs of skipping but still ???

Note that the guides although not broken were brittle; out of curiosity it only took a little force to break one.

Proceeding to remove the cam adjusters we found that one of them appeared to be "stuck"; it didn't have any rotational movement until we worked it free. The engine ran fine before but I can't image there was any variable timing on this cam before.

The oil screen looked great. At 206k miles there is moderate carbon build up in the valve train, enough that we worried there could be some blockage but the screen was clean.

So to preceed, we'll just ignore that TDC didn't line up and assemble with the new parts following one of the guides online.

[Zeitgeist 13]

This is the procedure I used for the phasers:

[markcm2]

Thank you!

[markcm2]

We soaked the cam adjusters and oiled them, they move much better now.

We tried to removed the torx from the end of the valve adjuster solenoids but it looks like there are some tiny stakes holding them in; they would turn about 1/4 to 1/2 turn and stop so we just soaked these as well and oiled them.

When we put the engine to TDC the cam lock plate didn't line up, the cam's were off by a few degrees??? We proceeded to take it apart and figured we'd just set it all by the book when we put it back together. We found that the notch on the shaft for the intermediate gear was downward while all instructions we had seen said for it to face upward. I think that is the oil pump and not timing related so we rotated the shaft 180 degrees so that the notch was upward, locked the cam's, doubled checked the mark on the crank was aligned with the mark on the case and put it back together.

We rotated the engine four rotations and it seemed smooth with no interference.

Here's a few pic's of it going back together:

[markcm2]

For the main seal on the harmonic balancer side we had to remove the whole cover plate (which already had fresh continuous sealant) and knock the seal out. We weren't able to pull the seal out with the cover plate in place on the engine. It was a very tight fit installing the new one as well.

We put the engine back in the hole last night.

We had to take the leveler off the hoist and use a short chain between the pick points and a rope from the chain to the boom of the hoist because the fore/aft centerline of the pick points is behind the lip of the body cowl at the top of the firewall preventing us from getting the engine in far enough. You can see in the image that we connected the rope from the hoist to the chain about 3/4 of the way biased toward the driver side for balance which worked as well or better than the leveler.

We also popped off the hood struts and pulled the hood open a few more inches. That extra clearance helped with the engine hoist.

We also used a tie-down strap from the front lower of the block to the point where our lift chain connected to the hoist rope which gave us a bit more control of the tilt of the engine.

We put the passenger side engine mount on the engine very loosely and then hung the driver side mount from the body, disconnected from the engine bracket. The engine had to go in at a bit of an angle at first. Once it was close, the rope from the engine hoist still hit the cowl but we had more mobility than the chain and leveler set up. We also placed a floor jack under the block which helped maneuver the engine a bit. One of us pushed on the engine until the passenger side mount lined up with the frame while the other put nuts on it. Then we did the same for the driver side, first installing the 16mm [M8?] bolt in the top/forward part of the bracket and then the two 13mm [m6?] bolts in the bottom of the mount to bracket.

All the while, because of the interference of the hoist rope interfering with the cowl and fighting us, the transmission also bumps into the driver side suspension; these two interferences would have made this install a lot worse if doing it by yourself. Two people was a huge advantage.

This first picture shows the engine hanging from the leveler, compare this to the following pictures without the leveler and how much less interference there is over the engine; less crap to hit the cowl and fight you.

Now here is the engine going in after we removed the leveler. Notice that the rope still hits the cowel but we had much more room to work than when the leveler was on:

Here is the engine in the hole hanging from the new mounts:

[soissisc]

WOW that piece of rope is wild! Nice job. I know that cowl getting in the way is a pain getting it all pushed back in there far enough. I wish the bracket that holds the coolant ball would be removable too, that seems to get in the way.
_________________
Mark

68 Westy
92 Jetta (oh it is retired)
99 Eurovan
05 NBC
06 Audi A3
72 Westy (I am going to fix it up)

[markcm2]

[Zeitgeist 13]

Hey, do you have any pics showing how you bolted the block to the engine stand? A neighbor wants me to assemble and install a rebuilt VR6 in his Corrado, so I'll need to mount it up to my stand.
_________________
Casey--

'89 Bluestar ALH w/12mm Waldo pump, PP764 and GT2052
'01 Weekender --> full camper
y u rune klassik?

[Stripped66]

[soissisc]

Here is how I did it, I think the OP describes the same thing.

_________________
Mark

68 Westy
92 Jetta (oh it is retired)
99 Eurovan
05 NBC
06 Audi A3
72 Westy (I am going to fix it up)

[markcm2]

[soissisc]

Man your engine / trans are soooo clean. Definitely hasn't been hemorrhaging trans fluid like mine! Nice job!
_________________
Mark

68 Westy
92 Jetta (oh it is retired)
99 Eurovan
05 NBC
06 Audi A3
72 Westy (I am going to fix it up)

[Zeitgeist 13]

Thanks for the pics!
_________________
Casey--

'89 Bluestar ALH w/12mm Waldo pump, PP764 and GT2052
'01 Weekender --> full camper
y u rune klassik?

[markcm2]

[soissisc]

Yeah that is a bummer. I wondered about the life span of that bearing also. I would think a replacement bearing could be sourced, the old one pressed out and a new one pressed in. Might be worth contacting Europarts SD to see what they might know.

I forgot that you had your trans rebuilt. I cleaned mine up beautiful about 50K miles ago when I pulled the engine and trans to do the chains. I wish I would have changed that seal then, then it might be kind of clean still but it is a big mess again now.
_________________
Mark

68 Westy
92 Jetta (oh it is retired)
99 Eurovan
05 NBC
06 Audi A3
72 Westy (I am going to fix it up)

[markcm2]

My friend who owns the van is in Hawaii getting married, the rest of the installation is on hold for a few weeks. I'll update when we are back at it.