A life less Audinary. A4 gone; low-cost, big liability cometh (E39 content)

[chaseracer]

Yes!

[cort16]

I hate those clips, grrrr. They're all over newer bmw's .

 

I think you've done pretty well. I once took me 6 weeks to change a set of discs and pass on a 7 series's because of a rounded bolt . I sold it soon after and the guy who bought it broke it.

[RoadworkUK]

A long while ago you may remember I made a start on my Other car, the Boring German one. This weekend, as a few rays of milky sunshine penetrated the stratus, I thought I'd have a go at making proper inroads.

I'd spent a bunch of dollars at ECP, actually receiving a pretty handsome deal. The list of what I intended to accomplish over the weekend is thus:

• Replace Cambelt: due six months ago, last changed 2008. By me.
• Investigate / cure horrible sludgy mayonnaise scenario.
• Perform annual service (might as well while it's in bits).

Last time we saw the car it looked pretty much like this. That is to say, pretty awful. I had set about pulling off all kinds of black plastic bits which were in the way.

I drained the coolant, a process which made feel pretty queasy as that 'orrible yellow puss oozed out. There was lots of it. Bleaurgh. So I also removed the expansion tank and all the pipes and wires and nonsense that leads from it.

I've got a new radiator, so that'll be going on, the old one has received liberal doses of Radweld and is going green in several places. IN THE BIN WITH IT

This was where I stopped last time around, feeling a bit demoralised and all because of three little sodding bolts. It's the PAS pump pulley and Mr Haynes says it "can be locked by passing a metal pin (such as a drill bit) through the hole in the pulley".

THERE'S NO SUCH THING. If there ever was a hole in the pulley it has magically sealed itself. So, all manner of tomfoolery occured in fruitless persuit of holding the pulley still enough to undo the three bolts. Eventually an impact driver and a deafening war-cry combined and the bolts shifted. Hooray.

The PAS belt, which is tiny, is cracked and perished to buggery and is among the growing list of items I have forgotten to buy replacements for.

With that finally off I could continue with the demolition. First off, alternator. Then PAS pump, then water pump. I had replaced the water pump before. It failed spectacularly within 48 hrs of me driving the car home from Sweden. They're notoriously prone to failure thanks to a hopeless plastic impeller.

The replacement (now six years old) has a metal impeller, and is still pumping coolant around the system well enough. I just thought it would be rather jolly to put a shiny new one on along with the lovely new cambelt.

Hilariously, on removing the pump I found it to be somewhat fucked.

New one on left, old one on right. It's borked in two, fun ways. Firstly it's all stiff and grindy and wobbly when you turn it, secondly it's rather alarmingly corroded. IN THE BIN WITH IT. I'm very glad I made the decision to spend out on a new one. I'll put a new thermostat in while I'm at it; another item on the list of things I forgot.

How thorough of me.

[RoadworkUK]

So, with the alternator and all that out of the way:

 

 

Next thing to have a look at. This is the Oil Cooler / Heat Exchanger thingy that I'M DESPARATELY HOPING is the cause of all my hot-dog mustard build up issues. Whatever, I don't like the the look of it so IN THE BIN WITH IT.

 

I was a bit puzzled by how this thing actually attached, but found eventually that it's secured by flat a 24mm nut under hardly any torque. A bit of twisting action and it was free. It's got one hose in, one hose out and they're held in place by stupid use-once spring clips, and, guess what, I have no replacements.

 

The coolant hoses look a bit suspect to me, they're all bulgy and deformed at the input / output and, frankly I don't trust them. Looks like I'll need to make a trip to an Audi parts department as ECP don't stock these, nor the silly retaining clip things.

 

For the time being it's been left dangling hopelessly in the air while I do bits I CAN do.

 

 

CAMBELT TIME! The upper timing belt cover comes off through the manipulation of mere spring-clips. Childsplay. Smashing. The Lower timing belt cover is almost a piece of piss, but for Mr Haynes and his cruel sense of humour. There are no less than four totally different fixings, 12mm bolt, 10mm bolt, 6mm hex and, just to keep you guessing, 5mm hex.

 

The latter was a bastard as I genuinely thought It was a 6 and I'd knackered it up because my torx bit wouldn't turn it. I was about to roll up into a ball and cry when it occurred to me to try a 5mm. Shit me did it take some torque, but it came free and I could say OH HAI! to the cambelt.

 

I used my [tried 'n tested mark-it-up and count the teeth technique, having first set things to TDC just to be safe. I couldn't remember whether the there was a way of, or even a need to, lock the flywheel. I couldn't see any mention in the bit of Haynes that I was looking at, so I figured it wouldn't matter.

 

 

The cambelt kit I bought comprises an idler pulley, a tensioner pulley and a belt, but you have to reuse the tensioner piston. I must admit I wasn't expecting this because last time I changed the piston as well, but hey-ho.

 

So I slackened off the pulley bolt and with the assistance of a second pair of hands got ready to compress the piston (as stated by Mr Haynes) and insert a 2mm locking pin to put it "on safety" so to speak.

 

The springs in these pistons have enough energy in them to put man on the moon, so compressing them is a bitch. Furthermore trying to insert the pin is a proper fanny because the piston rotates while it's compressed. We were getting properly fed up with it and then BANG.

This was the last thing we expected really, so for that reason we should probably have assumed it would happen. Basically, in following the gospel of Mr Haynes we were exerting so much torque on the tensioner it physically sheared. The bit that the piston acts upon simply snapped straight off, taking a chunk of the piston housing off with it. Bloody glad it hadn't entered my person. IN THE BIN WITH IT.

And check this out: The force we had been using was SO MASSIVE that it actually broke the bearing. Look at the crack in the blurry image above. Shit! Looking at the bit that sheared off shows the casting (or forging) to have had a very crystaline structure to the core metal, who knows if this would have actually failed of its own accord if it was given a chance.

So, Game Over. For now, anyway. Need a new tensioner piston to finish the Cambelt, need a new thermostat to finish the water pump and need new hoses to finish the oil cooler.

Stay tuned for further exciting developments!

[RoadworkUK]

Did more bollocks on this today, albeit not the bollocks I was hoping to do.

 

You remember I couldn't proceed until a new cambelt tensioner was acquired, so I took the kit that ECP had served me (which came sans tensioner) and "exchanged it" for one that did. Got the kit back home, opened it up and found that IT WAS THE SAME. Looked at the paperwork and found that they'd given me the exact same part number as before. ERROR GOTO 10

 

So as to not have totally wasted my Sunday I set about replacing the "oil cooler" thingoh. It has two coolant hoses connected, one of which was recognised by the Audi parts department as £18 worth, the other of which is apparently made from strontium plated myrrh and costs ONE BILLION DOLLARS. So I bought the £18 one and figured I'd move heaven and Earth to re-use the old one.

After much high-decibel gruntage and the removal of literally all the skin off my fingers, the cooler and its hoses were free. And by Christ were they hanging.

This is my great white hope vis-a-vis oil getting into my coolant. If this hideous, oil-leaky, gunky old oil-cooler has corroded this badly at the coolant input, it follows that it could corrode internally leading to oil ejaculating where it really shouldn't. If I put the new cooler on and the gungy mayonnaise nonsense doesn't abate, I shall be most upset and will be writing angry letters to my MP in short order.

Bits of corrosion, limescale, catarrh and sputum were stuck in this hose, too, but the hose itself (this was the one which no parts department in the land actually recognised the existence of) seems pretty much intact and will be reused until it teaches me the error of my ways.

I flushed it out, it made a satisfying crunching noise as all the encrustment separated from the walls, and the resultant debris will probably earn the mobile plumber a decent drink when she calls him to unblock her utility room sink.

Next I removed the radiator:

Yeah, that's fucked. New one certainly in order and now ready to be fitted but I'll leave it until the last possible moment lest I bollocks it up.

Hopefully I can finish the cambelt on Tuesday evening ready for the great rebuild to commence.

I'm spending so much money on this bastard it had better be grateful...

[RoadworkUK]

As well as owning an interesting car, I also own one that isn't.

Actually, that's probably not entirely fair any more. On this forum, first-generation Audi A4s were generally loathed as things that you might drive if you're desperate for a premium badge but haven't got a pot to piss in. Time has taken its course now, though, and the attrition rate has seen numbers dwindle.

Thing is, because "tarted up Passat", they've never been sought-after as a driver's machine like the E36 3 Series of its age. And they do have some rather annoying design features*, such as their utterly baffling front suspension design with troublesome balljoints in strange and unsettling places.

But, in my experience of owning this old shed for WAY longer than I ever expected to, it's proven ridiculously solid and dependable. Even inert. So in reactivating this previously aborted thread, I'm offcially declaring a 21 year-old Audi A4 to be a car worth having.

Anyway. This weekend, I finally got around to finishing a job that I started seven years ago.

I've just lifted the previous couple of instalments from my (more interesting) Rover thread, but as documented above, in 2014 I set out to rid my A4 of this:

EUUUGHHH. Horrible cheesy disgustingness.

Turned out that the cooling system was absolutely full of that stuff, but my initial fear of head gasket armageddon fortunately subsided. It turned out to be, almost inevitably, the OTHER possibility; the wretched coolant-to-air oil filter heater thing that VAG insist upon. Basically, it was buggered and was allowing oil and water to very gradually mix.

The thing had been gradually doing its evil mixology for a number of years, until there was more Primula Cheese Spread in the system than actual coolant.

Anyway. I completely rebuilt the cooling system and flushed it out sufficiently to rid the car of all that hideousness; and to prove the point, here's the same expansion tank cap as photographed today; seven years on.

Very splendid indeed, I'm sure you'll agree.

EXCEPT: That cap is broken.

Some of you will recall that we have a Peugeot 306 in stunning Bermuda Blue in the fleet. I thought it would be a really nice idea to give the old warhorse a well-deserved spell of layup after behaving itself so beautifully, tucking it away in the garage and pressing the Audi into service. It's a bit of a lazy git these days; I'm largely working from home and invariably have company wheels to biff about in when I need to anyway. So the Pug would have a nice little rest.

Or that was the plan.

On a suitably drab Monday morning, my wife made it about 75 feet up the road before swiftly reversing back to tell me that the coolant warning light was on. So, in dressing gown and slippers, I grabbed some OAT and the kettle (I figure using pre-boiled water is a good thing but it probably makes no real difference), popped the bonnet and twisted the cap. And half of it came off.

The other half was entirely disinterested in leaving the header tank. After rescrewing and unscrewing three times, I gave up. Nicola went to work in the 306, and the Audi went back into the garage, yawned and went back to being a lazy bastard.

What it didn't realise, though, was that it had given me good reason to start fiddling with it again. You see, the one bit of the coolant system I had never got around to replacing was the header tank. I actually had a replacement knocking around, but because it hadn't arrived in time for me finishing the job when I sorted the horrible cheesy coolant emulsion episode out, it sat on my shelf for seven years.

Until today.

There's the new, sparkly one (which, bizarrely, comes without cap; I've had the bottle for seven years but only bought the cap last week), next to the old absolutely repulsive one.

The (empty) tin of chopped tomatoes would be pressed into service as a catch tank for whatever was in the bottom of the old tank or the bottom hose when I disconnected it. As it happens, the actual amount of coolant left in it was bugger all. I suspect quite a lot has been lost out of the top of the tank, via the broken cap... as well as the coolant leak that I know the car has, and that I need to fix at some point — it's at the flange between engine and bulkhead and looks a proper git to access.

As it happens, the job that I'd put off for seven years took me about half an hour. Look at my gorgeous expansion tank and the lovely clean coolant visible through its virginal, unsullied skin.

So that's it, really. I fully acknowledge that I could have simply written "I changed my car's expansion tank" in the News 24 thread, but that wouldn't have wasted everybody's time, would it?

[RoadworkUK]

A substantial factor behind my preference for old snotters is that I haven't got very much money. This accounts for one of the puns in the title of this update.

Among the snotters in my fleet is an old Audi, which for quite a while has suffered a coolant leak. This accounts for the other pun in the title of this update.

Last year, the tame mechanic who usually absorbs the work I frankly can't be arsed to tackle quoted a thaaasand paaands to deal with the leak, along with the weak engine mount that had been noticed previously. I took that to mean that they really don't want the work, thank you very much indeed.

So I ran that through my man-maths computer, and it said "If I fix the leak myself, I can spend £500, guilt free, on all manner of other crap".

I had previously stuck my head under to watch the drips and determine from whence they came, and the answer is the "coolant flange". This is a thing, possibly named by Finbar Saunders, that lives in the most inconvenient place imaginable, between cylinder head and firewall, with wires and bits of pipe going hither and thither to obstruct access.

What I didn't want to do was to stick a bottle of Radweld in it, thinking that that's a mugs game and it'll only conspire to block vital passages like automotive cholesterol.

So I phoned Audi to get some genuine parts, and they said that they genuinely don't stock it any more. So I phoned my local Jayar and it was on the shelf. Because of course it was.

So, the bit I had to get to was the thing with the blue bit sticking out. Said blue bit is the coolant temperature sensor; to the right of that is a blanking plug that fills a hole where another sensor would go in posher, more splendid versions of the same engine.

I went under the  car to see if there was better access from below, but of course there wasn't. There's far too much subframe / bodywork / gearbox / turbocharger in the way. While down there, though, I also noticed signs of dried OAT coolant on the water pump housing, which was last changed during the cambelt change documented upthread.

HMMM. Well, I'll just not think about that for a while.

So, for the next several hours I contorted my arms into shapes I had never previously imagined possible, as well as removing much of the skin from both hands. In the same process, I used every single combination of 10mm sockets, ratchets of different sizes and extensions of different lengths to get to the most wretchedly tight spots I'd ever encountered in vehicle maintenance.

Here you go. I managed to wiggle the phone in to get a view of the bastard in question. In fact, I found the phone camera invaluable for giving me even a vague idea of where things were. Otherwise I was doing things entirely by feel.

Anyway. The coolant flange, as you can see, has an encrustment of old coolant buildup and that looks decidedly sub optimal, so I got properly stuck in. About thirty seconds before the police could turn up and drag me away for breach of the peace, I got the bugger off, having even managed to safely disconnect the worlds most inaccessible heater hose.

Naturally I went insde and ate toast to celebrate.

.

Rather gratifyingly, the old one (on the right) was thoroughly fubar'd. Not only had the o-ring that runs between it and cylinder head decomposed to the consistency of three day-old Hubba Bubba, but the plastic was fractured on the inside of the ring itself. This, I thought, was superb news.

Thoroughly gee'd up, I fitted a brand new coolant sensor and a brand new blanking plug ( a parts total of £24) and readied myself for reassembly being the reverse of disassembly. The only difference, of course, being that this time I'd be scrabbling around to find the holes that the bolts go into, rather than the bolts themselves.

So I wriggled my way back into the gap that didn't exist, through the labyrinth of awkwardness. To my roster of injuries I then added bruised and grazed shins from kneeling on very pointy bits of engine, as well as a pronounced ache in my knees from bending them the wrong way. It was around this time that I wished I was about 4'9" and slender rather than 6'5" and 16 and a half (ahem) stone. I am NOT a nimble man.

Anyway, fractions of a minute before I could be pronounced medically dead, it was done. Fitted, coolant topped refilled, all good. At this point my wife turned up from work; having had a relatively cursed day, she suggested perhaps I pop to the chippy for battered sausage and chips twice. A terrific idea to get the coolant circulating, and an opportunity that I eagerly grasped.

Here is the car parked outside the chippy.

All good. The temperature read spot on and when I arrived home the coolant level was as I left it. Or it certainly seemed that way.

Next day I woke and, as eagerly as looking for presents on Christmas day, looked for puddle below the coolant flange. There wasn't one.

There was, though, a small puddle below the water pump. Evidently, with the coolant now denied from leaving via the easy route, it had protested by finding the next easiest.

So I put a bottle of Radweld in.

Mugs game, but sod it.

 

[Vince70]

I really rate the B5 A4 I’ve had a couple and I found the earlier pre facelift to be a much better built car such as your example 

I had my green 1994 A4 for quite a few years and it never put a foot wrong but it was a low mileage example and the very early cars were more like reshelled Audi 80s and remember picking it up from Somerset after winning it on eBay for a couple of hundred because it had a broken window clip and the display bulbs had blown which was both fixed in about an hour.

I can honestly say that both were fantastic vehicles though and my little poverty spec green 1.6 was my favourite car of all time as it was so comfortable and dependable.

I also bought a posh late spec  low mileage A4  just for the stereo about a week before the old style tax disc disappeared and got that one with about 4 months tax and test for I think £140 as apparently Audi diagnosed it needing 2 grands worth of work as it didn’t go over 30 mph and on the journey home I disconnected the maf and all was well so it ended up being a £10 fix.

I’m now into E36s as I can’t find any nice low mileage A4s anymore and the E36  might be more of a drivers car but they’re not anywhere near  as well screwed together as the old  A4s as those things are built of granite and never seem to rot and the added bonus with the 1.6 was I could do an oil filter change from the top as I just pushed the expansion tank out the way.

 

[RoadworkUK]

2 hours ago, Vince70 said:

I really rate the B5 A4 I’ve had a couple and I found the earlier pre facelift to be a much better built car such as your example 

As you might imagine, I concur. Took mine in as a trade-in 13 years ago and bought it from stock because I was coming out of sales and free cars to swan around in. I only intended to keep it for six months or so but it's been so utterly impregnable that I dare not part with it. Goes well, too, I must say.

[worldofceri]

I did the coolant flange on my A4. I didn’t think it was that tricky to be honest. Possibly not the same engine.

Of course, it failed the mot miserably about 5 minutes later, so it was still a waste of effort.

 I concur with the assessments above though; mine had been viciously abused (not by me*) and was utterly fecked, but still felt nice to drive.
 

 

*actually, I did once,  in the dark and the rain, accidentally slam it over a massive kerb. I thought the front suspension would be smashed to pieces - my fillings certainly were. But no, the Audi remained unphased.

[RoadworkUK]

Update on this:

This morning, the telephone rang and it was my wife. It's always rather ominous when that happens; it usually means something has gone wrong with the car and she's marooned.

"Something's gone wrong with the car", said she. 

My initial suspicion was that my repairs hadn't held and all the coolant had been vomited out and the head had been cooked and armageddon was taking place, but no. She'd lost drive. She put me on speakerphone so I could listen to the racket when she tried to engage a forward or reverse gear, and it was pretty agonising to listen to.

SO. With me 20 miles away, and unable to do anything other than point at it while sucking air between my teeth if I did head out to "rescue" her, the RAC was called.

My immediate assumption was that, after 145k and fairly frequent bouts of "making good progress", the clutch or flywheel had disintegrated, and the replacement of either / or would be a £££ situation.

Shows what I know. RAC man diagnosed a stuffed nearside driveshaft, which immediately had me going "aha, of course!"

Car was dragged to the tame garage that looks after all my old snotters when I CBA, and I got on with my mundane afternoon's sub-editing. At 16:30 I headed out to pick my wife up from work – it had broken down literally half a mile from her office. No sooner had she put her seatbelt on than the phone rang. It was the garage to tell me that I could collect my FRESHLY MENDED Audi.

Remarkable, really. £204 for a new driveshaft fitted. Strikes me as reasonable – even if I had the right tools and the part, it would have been a weekend's work (because I'm a hopeless bungling amateur).

So it's back on the drive. Look:

See, I'm not making this shit up.

IN OTHER NEWS:

After getting the car home tonight, I thought I'd check the coolant level. It looked to have gone down a bit. But then, when I loosened the cap and depressurised the system, it returned to the full mark.

I'm tentatively declaring RESULT.

[Skizzer]

This is excellent news.

I really liked my B5 A4 1.8T, which was the same year and lovely blue colour as yours. Beige leather and wood inside, full pensioner spec, which greatly appealed even to the 30-year-old version of me.

Drove it all over Europe and loved it. Would gladly have another.

[Supernaut]

You's can all sod off with the B5 A4 praise.

I owned a 1999 1.8T Quattro Sport for 2 years. What an utter bastard every single job on it was. It also drove like a lump of pudding. Absolutely zero feel and utterly stupid 225/45/17 tyres that knackered any resemblance of ride or comfort.

Admittedly, the interior was very comfortable and the Bose 10-speaker sound system was good fun.

It was also a really silly colour:

There's a distinct possibility that it was just a bad example, thus tarnishing my opinion of them. Either way, it got written off 6 months after I sold it. The new owner had an HGV change lane into them, and the HGV driver claimed they "didn't see them". I call bullshit, just look at that colour!

I prefer E36s now. They may be smaller / less refined / whatever other criticisms people seem to be levelling at them, but I find them just fine. Still refined enough to do long distances, drive far nicer, and you can actually work on them!

[NorfolkNWeigh]

Thank you for the 7 year routine service item story . It’s saved me about £1500 today.

My brother called to tell me about a 2.8 V6 Quattro A4 that he’d heard about.

” It’s basically an S4 with no turbos, can’t go wrong at that price” he texted.

my reply will now be “ Fuck off and stop bothering me”

[RoadworkUK]

11 hours ago, Skizzer said:

Drove it all over Europe and loved it. Would gladly have another.

About a month after I got it, mine took a friend and I on a ludicrous voyage around Europe, working our way up to Gothenburg having first driven to the South of France. Covered about 4,000 miles in ten days.

The day after I arrived home, the water pump packed in. I'm somewhat glad that it didn't let go in Sweden.

Must say, based on the reports of others, I reckon the 1.8Ts are the sweet spot, and are probably best off without four-wheel drive to keep things simple. The V6s are probably fun, but aren't an order of magnitude more powerful and I can't imagine them being much fun to work on.

[Unlucky Alf]

49 minutes ago, RoadworkUK said:

About a month after I got it, mine took a friend and I on a ludicrous voyage around Europe, working our way up to Gothenburg having first driven to the South of France. Covered about 4,000 miles in ten days.

The day after I arrived home, the water pump packed in. I'm somewhat glad that it didn't let go in Sweden.

Must say, based on the reports of others, I reckon the 1.8Ts are the sweet spot, and are probably best off without four-wheel drive to keep things simple. The V6s are probably fun, but aren't an order of magnitude more powerful and I can't imagine them being much fun to work on.

The V6 are very nice and fun. The main problem I had was watching the right foot not get me into trouble.  It could cruise incredibly well at motorway speed  and could be  license loosing fast. It did however look rather “normal” or even boring. Bit of a wolf in sheep’s clothing  

 

lots of room for radios and Nokia phone kits

 

 

 

[Ghosty]

I agree with the early B5s being basically reskinned 80s - dad had an N-reg 2.6 quattro that he gave me as he didn't need a car any more. It was a lot better put together than the later ones I experienced. 
It was the most cramped and uncomfortable car I'd ever been in - I flat out didn't fit in the back, and I was short of space in the front, both for my head and my legs. Wherever I sat, my back was in agony.  I'm 6' and skinny... 
The clutch release bearing was whining and my dad wouldn't drive it faster than about 55 as one of the propshaft mounts or a UJ or something was fucked, so I sold it without driving it, and bought a Volvo 740. 
I view B5 A4s as 2+2 Audi TTs. 

[RoadworkUK]

It was the most cramped and uncomfortable car I'd ever been in

I'm 6' and skinny... 

I view B5 A4s as 2+2 Audi TTs. 

I concur that the back seats are next to useless with anybody tall in the front. Oddly, though, I'm 6'5" with most of my height in my legs, and although my driving position in it is a bit Donkey Kong, I have no trouble on longer journeys. The "sports" seats are GR12, too, and there's loads more footwell space than in the 800.

Bit of Marmite in the air, isn't there!

[Supernaut]

2 hours ago, RoadworkUK said:

 

 

I concur that the back seats are next to useless with anybody tall in the front. Oddly, though, I'm 6'5" with most of my height in my legs, and although my driving position in it is a bit Donkey Kong, I have no trouble on longer journeys. The "sports" seats are GR12, too, and there's loads more footwell space than in the 800.

Bit of Marmite in the air, isn't there!

 

I'll admit I was harsh about mine in my previous post.

It had the sports interior, and it was supremely comfortable, but I'm a short-arse at about 5'7".

It was generally a very nice place to sit and the interior build quality felt very solid. It was just so uninspiring to drive. It had steamroller tyres and the engine slung way out beyond the front wheels. It would grip, grip, grip, then understeer catastrophically. I also found it had no steering feel while also nearly breaking my back on uneven surfaces (lots of those in NE Scotland) due to the afore-mentioned steamroller tyres.

As already mentioned, it was also an utter sod to maintain and repair. I'm fairly sure MC Escher was involved in the suspension design. Also the oil filter location on the 1.8T in these is downright hilarious / depressing.

Perhaps a FWD non-sporty model would be nice, but I haven't tried one, so can't pass judgement.

 

I'll keep my 4-cylinder E36 and my Saab 9000, thanks. Lots of space in both of those engine bays.

[RoadworkUK]

Dunno if you remember me being all cock-a-hoop about the fact that this fabulous conveyance was finally watertight, in as much as the coolant was remaining within the cooling circuit, rather than cascading into the world without?

Yeah. Turns out that was bollocks.

So, once again I find myself in this situation:

Yeah. So, when I did my annual swapover between the Audi and the Rover, after reversing the Audi into the garage I noticed a nice trail of pink fluid up the drive, and a smallish lake of the stuff on the road itself. Yes, the water pump was borked. So, being that the Audi is going into layup for the summer while I use the Rover (and any other handy automobiles that come my way via work), I figured I might replace the water pump.

And, while I'm at it, I might as well do the cam belt, which is due within six months or so anyway.

In for a penny, in for a pound.

This time, though, I'd be all wise and professional about things, and do things the way a Qualified Audi Technician would. No removing the entire front end for me — I'd use the actual, proper Service Position.

So, Laser's version of Audi's official Special Tool was procured at great expense, so I eagerly put the kit to use.

To whit:

That, ladies and gentlemen, is the service position. It's rubbish.

From above it offers all of four inches of extra working space. For somebody as impressively cackhanded and abnormally proportioned as I, that's not a lot of room for accessing awkward, stubborn bolts and heaving off bulky components. So I decided that the service position could get in the sea where it belongs, and elected to drain the coolant (what was left of it) and pull the whole front end off again, in time-honoured tradition.

So the usual teardown commenced, and after several hours (spread over two days) I got to a point where the water pump and timing belt were both off.

The water pump was utterly, utterly ronnied. There's about 3mm of slack/ play in the shaft and it rotates as smoothly as a paddle in a bucket of Duplo. Slightly astonishing that it's only been on the car for five years or so. Grim.

One of the most gittish parts of the water pump swapover is the fact that, when reassembling, there isn't a single bolt that fixes the pump itself to the cylinder block. Instead, it's sandwiched in place by the power steering pump bracket, with four through-bolts that pass through the pump housing, and a further four for the main bracket just for shits and giggles. And all of them are in really awkward positions, which would have been hellish with the 'service position' set. Also, the rubber o-ring doesn't defy gravity very well when you're trying to line the pump up with where it should go — so I glued the o-ring to the pump using some instant gasket.

After quite a lot of swearing, the pump was in place and secured. So that's that bit sorted, hopefully.

Hooray.

Rather less hoorayful, though, is this:

What that is, is some of the cam belt tensioner.

The hydraulic damper (basically an extremely poweful spring that acts on the tensioner pulley) is held in place with two bolts, which are torqued to the block at 7lb ft. The tensioner idler pulley is attached to the same tensioner assembly by a third bolt, which The Internet seems to have pegged at 15lb ft. Note the idler pulley bolt doesn't pass into the block, just into the tensioner. So I attached it to the tensioner, and started to torque it up. But it just didn't seem to be getting any tighter.

I was getting nowhere near 15lb ft — in itself not exactly a huge amount of torque. So I unscrewed it, and away came half the thread. Fucksticks.

On a second attempt, I couldn't get it anything much more than finger-tight. Clearly no good whatsoever for something that's got to put up with thousands of RPM acting against it.

So that's put me in something of a black mood.

My choices are: Say "What the hell. If it lets go, it lets go".  This approach seems tantamount to a death sentence, so I'm disinclined to follow it.

Re-use the previous one, which has been on the car for five and a bit years. This is probably doable. But it involves re-compressing it, and forcing it in the reverse of its usual direction, under colossal pressure and after five years.

Or, buy another tensioner. Pretty sure I can't return the one whose thread has stripped. I mean, yeah, maybe it shouldn't have stripped, but maybe it was my heavyhandedness that caused that to happen? Plus I no longer have the packaging, and it came as part of a kit anyway.

So I've ordered another tensioner (£65) on the basis that lightning won't strike twice.

Work will recommence in a fortnight. And I'll be reading up on how the hell people actually fit these bloody tensioners and get them torqued properly without bad things happening.

[Skizzer]

‘Like’ doesn’t seem quite the right response but think of it as a supportive blokish punch on the shoulder.

Re-reading the debate supra about the merits and otherwise of these, I readily concede that there is no rear legroom (I don’t care, passengers are not something I want to encourage) and the steering isn’t the most involving.

I also farmed out all maintenance on mine because for much of the period when I owned it I didn’t actually have a home, much less a driveway or garage.  It never broke down on me, but it wasn’t an old car back then.

[Isaac Hunt]

 

On 12/10/2014 at 7:31 PM, RoadworkUK said:

 My Halfords Professional 300 piece tool kit (the signature of somebody with all the gear but no idea) all present and correct; naturally I opened it upside down so everything all fell out.

 

WADTS, the bastuds at Halfrauds “we need a box for our socket sets that every fekker always opens upside down”.

 Every time, without fail.   I attacked mine with one of those paint stick pens, it is now got top, Up and up arrows all over it.  I made sure I didn’t buy the paint pen from Halfrauds just to make me feel a bit better.

[theshadow]

your not putting on them shite circoili waterpump are you,they are really really shite..

[RoadworkUK]

47 minutes ago, theshadow said:

your not putting on them shite circoili waterpump are you,they are really really shite..

This is a First Line item. Probably awful, too.

[RoadworkUK]

Yo yo yo. MAJOR progress on this today — I'll do a proper write up soon.

BUT FIRST

Right. The above pic is the closest I can find to what I'm trying to describe.

Basically, the Audi has six or so S-shaped clips that hold the fan wiring in place. O is about 5mm or so, enough to take two strands of thickish cable; A is about 1mm and grabs onto the thin plastic outer ridge of the fan shroud.

All six clips, which were once made from steel, have now degraded to wafer-like levels of robustness, and simply crumble away when I try use them.

,Does anybody know what the hell these clips are actually called? I've put any number of combinations of AUDI VW CABLE CLIP RETAINER WIRING FAN SECURE HARNESS WIRE MOUNT AEB B5 etc but to no avail. Replacing them is pretty much all that stands between me and getting this muvva back together for good.

Cheers!

[Jenson Velcro]

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/321565035980
 

is the sort of thing

[RoadworkUK]

Hmm. Cheers, could be... a bit hard to tell from the pic!

[RoadworkUK]

Anyway. A long story short. The A4 was reassembled and performed absolutely impeccably for the next three years.

En route, I finally got around to changing the valve cover gasket. This had been leaking oil for years and years, making the kind of hot oil smell after every journey that one might previously have associated with an old banger. And that's very definitely not what this 26-year old A4 is. It's a job I'd been putting off in case it was hard.

So this happened:

.... and that's the only pic I took during the process, for some reason.

At any rate, it transpired that that the job wasn't hard at all, really. So I got it all back together and that was that. This was in May.

Since then, events transpired. 

My grandmother has gone into care, which meant her house being put on the market. Selfishly, though, what it meant to me was not only the loss of a nice double garage for fixing cars in., but also the fact that the car that said garage was sheltering for me – more of which later – would need to join my fleet properly and take a slot on the drive.

So, I have the Rover (which is never going anywhere, come what may), and the A4, and my wife has the 306 (which she will part with when hell freezes over), plus I have my company car, which does all the routine mundane mileage accumulation of life. In the interest of matrimonial bliss, the deal is "You can have any car you like, but it's one in, one out".

To whit, the A4 needed a new home.

So, as it happened, the A4 had never been healthier. For several weeks, it was doing daily duty for my wife while I tackled the head gasket on the 306 (I'll update that thread at some point), but the time finally came – after the 306 made it through this year's MOT – that the A4 became unemployed and I could work on finding it a home.

So, sprucing up was necessary.  I gave it a bit of a tidy-up underbonnet:

From...

...to

Okay, probably not concours-ready, but an improvement.

Also performed was the biggest two-bucket wrongun sessions the car had ever been subjected to.

Scrubbed up pretty well for a 26 year-old, I'd say.

I actually always liked how the B5 A4s looked, especially with these tail-lights, and in pre-facelift format. Plus I always thought the scrappage scheme-sourced AMG wheels suited it quite well, too – not everybody agrees. 

Plus the A4's interior was / is, in my mind, one of the all-time greats.

Bring back triple dash vents.

Finding the A4 a home was easy, it turned out. A chap on Twitter had previously registered an interest in the A4, should I ever need to move it on. I pinged him a note, told him the fairly modest quantity of cash I wanted for it, and a fortnight later, off she went.

In actual fact, I sold it for basically what I paid for it back in 2008. Sixteen years of reliable and enjoyable (though not exhilarating) motoring for the (fairly minimal) cost of maintenance, fuel, tax and insurance. What an amazing car.

Meanwhile, the Rover is now MOT'd, taxed and insured for the first time in 18 months, and is a going concern. And that meant I was able to drive it to Frinton-on-Sea and the now-sold former residence of my grandmother, to collect the A4's replacement.

I'm really, really going to miss that garage:

There may be a small clue in this pic as to the A4's replacement.

Yes. It's an E39 BMW 540i Sport, with an automatic gearbox, and it's always been destined to be mine; back in August 2006, when I was working in sales at BMW of Ipswich, I took it in as part exchange against a nearly-new BMW X3. After bringing it back to the dealership, I thought my dad might rather like it, so I took it home and gave him a thorough demonstration. 

He decided that it would be a worthy successor to his Mk1 Mondeo Ghia X 24v, so I brokered a deal whereby he'd buy the car, fully warranted, from me, for trade plus warranty – plus my commission. Everyone's a winner; he gets a great deal on an awesome car (which, before delivery, had a thorough work-through, actioning any fixes that could be conducted under factory warranty) , I make a drink on it, the dealership notches up another used sale. Bish bash bosh etc.

The 540i actually ended up being the one car that my dad owned for longer than anything else – he was driving it for sixteen years, and probably would have continued, were it not for his making the disastrous decision to buy a caravan.

Having done so, he decided that a diesel might be rather more sensible for towing, plus he thought it was a bit cruel treating the BMW that way. So it was laid up on SORN. And, of course, it wasn't going anywhere except to me.

And that brings us up to date. Today, I gave the BMW a desultory wash and hoovering, to make it presentable for the MOT man on Tuesday.

Since that pic was taken, I've given the non-painted plastics a good rubbing with boiled linseed oil, and it's made a fair difference.

I also thought I'd have a go at seeing what effect T-Cut might have on the cloudy headlight lenses (not obviously cloudy in the above pic, but not pretty, close up. Turns out it actually does a reasonable job:

Before...

.....after:

There's more to do, but that was about 10 minutes' work, so I'll have another session in the fullness of time.

Assuming all goes well at the MOT, I'll be putting a bit more shoulder into cleaning it properly next weekend, venturing into such adventures as using snowfoam, a clay bar etc like a proper pervert. Basically, I really want this to look as good as it can, and the bones of this E39 are good ones.

I will then give it some exercise. I plan to commute to Twickenham a few times (it's ULEZ compliant, rather wonderfully), and generally enjoy driving it around making naughty V8 noises.

Plus, I can smugly bask in the enviable situation of owning the best and worst large executive cars you could buy in 1998, in the shape of an E39 5 Series and a Rover 800.

 

[Brodders]

Like that a lot, lovely spec and pretty late for an E39.

Don't know who in their right mind would have traded that in for an X3 (but their loss was yours and your dad's gain though.)

[mercedade]

That 540 is lovely. Never really floated my boat before, but that's a proper car.