A4 Sighs. ALMOST done... but where the bloody hell can I get these clips from?

[RoadworkUK]

I couldn't put it off any longer. My Audi has been enjoying a quiet life for several months, cocooned in my Nan's garage while I potter around in the Rover. My intention was for it to only be laid up for a few months, but time flies when you're having fun.

 

So, the Audi is due its cam-belt change, again, which means all kinds of demolition of the front end thanks to the convenient* service mode boasted by VAG cars. While I'm at it, I may as well try and determine why my cooling system is full of Primula cheese spread.

 

 

Several weeks ago there was much gnashing of teeth and enough swear words exchanged to prompt a total re-write of Roger's Profanisaurus, it took two nights and, eventually, an arc welder to remove the front bumper because it was held on with hex-drive bolts which had lost their hexiness.

 

 

So that happened, and eventually the bumper was coaxed off. It was a right bastard and should have been really easy.

 

Hmm, I wonder if that could develop into a theme?

 

 

So, at half past ten this morning this is how I started. 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.

 

First thing was to get it on axle stands. Now, I really can't explain why but I really hate doing this. It stems from my long history of doing it wrong. Today, I did it right. And all by myself.

 

 

Getting the wheels off required half an hour of looking in various cubby holes, under seats and everybloodywhere to try and find the locking wheel bolt key, it had, of course, rolled underneath a crossmember under the spare wheel. The bastard. Never mind, time to drain the rad.

 

 

Look at this shit! Have you ever seen a more revolting substance coming out of a radiator? It was like that scene in Ghostbusters II when the Magnotheric Slime came out of Sigourney Weaver's bath tap.

 

The actual antifreeze was a lovely clear green, but the gushes came intermittently, punctuated by surges of this revolting, viscous goop. After an aeon the flow had dissipated to such an extent that I could remove the radiator bottom pipe.

 

Fucker wouldn't even begin to consider shifting, and the springy metal securing clip had rusted to bits and disintegrated in contact; probably leaving the hose partially locked to the radiator stub. So I had a go at the top hose instead. Surprisingly, this was a bastard as well, but at least I could stand up to free it. After A LOT of heaving, off it popped.

 

 

Back to this little sod. That wonderful piece of creative literature the Haynes Manual mentioned in passing that the hose connection could, on older cars, become stuck and need to be worked to and fro a bit to free it. Yeah, thanks for that.

 

This bottom hose took at least three cups of tea and a plate of cheese on toast before it showed signs of shifting. I contorted myself into ever more extraordinary shapes under the car to try and get purchase on it. I'm not a weak man by any stretch, but this sodding cunting bastard of an arse didn't show any signs of shifting.

 

Now angry I decided to unleash hell on it and disappeared off to my parents place to pick up a set of pry bars. After a cup of tea I made a start, trying all four lengths of bar, all hopeless. The final bar; a bar so long and wieldy you could use it to move worlds, flexed visibly in use. I gave up. Time for a cup of tea.

 

Out with the blade. I had my mate Stanley on standby with a view towards "fuck it" and slicing the hose so it would come off with the radiator. Then I decided to give it One Last Try. I let out a Rob Roy battle cry and all the effort I could humanly apply and then, anticlimactically, the hose just released its grip sending the remaining coolant and gooey yellowness all over the garage carpet.

 

Jubilant, I went in for a cup of tea. I then came out again and removed the several dozen multi-plugs, bits of trunking and the ducting for the intercooler. Then released the seven beefy torx bolts holding the bumper to the crash cans, and the six hex-bolts holding the "lock carrier" in place and....

 

 

....after about five hours grunting I've got it into the "Service Position".

 

Bastards.

 

I'm now putting together a plan of attack for removing all the ancilliaries which have to be C U Latered to gain access to the cambelt. This is my first concern:

 

 

That's the power steering pulley (s) which are held on with more hex-bolts, and they're all rusty! I've left them soaking in WD40 just in case it makes a blind bit of difference. The PS pump, alternator and pretty much everything else has to come off for access to the timing belt; I wish I'd changed the bolts last time I did this 60k miles ago. Maybe I wasn't expecting to still have the car.

 

Tomorrow I'm planning to have a nice big pile of removed stuff and a nice accessible cambelt. I'm then going to hold off on that until I've bought the kit. Instead I'm going to strip the front panel down and remove the radiator ready to replace the leaky, corroded piece of cack.

 

I'm then going to drain the oil and have a look at whether the heat exchanger has a role to play in the whole Yellow Shit In Coolant scenario. For those of you with a strong constitution; this is what my coolant looks like:

 

 

Not very nice, is it? I don't THINK my HG is F'd because the compression is blindin' and there's no oil being burnt; the yellow cheesy shit smells exactly like emulsion paint. I considered popping the head off and glancing inside but I could be opening pandora's box.  If I put it all back together after this bout of fun and games and it still cheeses up I'll probably just sack it off.

 

Meanwhile, to reward myself for my endeavours, I'm going to take the turbocharger off because I've decided, at the age of 33 that it's time to become a boy racer. I'm going to fit a bigger one.

 

YOLO!

[Lankytim]

Could it be a leaky oil cooler?

[HH-R]

I flippin' hate those quick release POS connectors on radiators, quick release my arse.

 

What's wrong with a jubilee clip?

[Lacquer Peel]

I've thought about using an old VAG oil cooler as a heat exchanger in my veg oil setup in the van, there's an adapter to fit them to the Bosch fuel filter head, but don't fancy feeding the IP a coolant/veg oil mix.

[RoadworkUK]

Could it be a leaky oil cooler?

 

That's what I'm hoping (I called it a heat exchanger inn the write-up cos it sounds flash)

[brickwall]

At least the work is undertray....I mean underway.

 

YOLO!

 

 

 

Not a Buddhist then?

[steve_earwig]

Lots of short journeys not allowing the oil to heat up & boil off condensation?

 

Nothing in the oil then?

 

I have an SDS drill that, once the labels fell off, was impossible to tell at a glance which way up it was. After spilling all the bits out of it for the nth time I painted "TOP" and "NOT TOP" on it.

[RoadworkUK]

Lots of short journeys not allowing the oil to heat up & boil off condensation?

 

Nothing in the oil then?

 

I have an SDS drill that, once the labels fell off, was impossible to tell at a glance which way up it was. After spilling all the bits out of it for the nth time I painted "TOP" and "NOT TOP" on it.

 

Very seldom does short journeys; usually 18 miles each way to work. No sludge on oil filler or dipstick. Oil seems clean. Black, obvs, but not hideous.

 

And I WILL be marking up my tool kit. I'll probably put TOOLS on one side and DICKS on the other.

[tooSavvy]

So, at half past ten this morning this is how I started. 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.

 

 

Yes, Yes.... &thrice Yes.  You are now our anointed son....

 

Have oilstained T-shirt M8 

 

TS

[Vince70]

I notice that the earlier A4s have proper jubilee clips I guess it's a cost cutting exercise by Audi to fit those horrible not so quick release clips..

Good luck finding the root to all that horrible funky gunk.

 

My two A4s are going up for sale if you need a spare lol.

[chaseracer]

My Halfords Professional 300 piece tool kit (the signature of somebody with all the gear but no idea)

 

This hypothesis is proved beyond all doubt by my possession of similar equipment...

[Taff]

best bet with your tools is to spread quarter of an inch* of instant gasket over them, that way they stick to the bottom of the box and won't fall out.

 

* only works with imperial spanners. for metric, use 6mm of instant gasket instead

[stuboy]

birds custard instead of coolant nice idea..

[DavidB]

Search for Vauxhall V6 oil heat exchanger leaking and it's the same!

BTW, the heat exchanger warms the oil up as the coolant warms up, it doesn't cool it, in case you didn't know.

I just looped the pipe together and 'deleted' the heat exchanger all together.

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

I notice that the earlier A4s have proper jubilee clips I guess it's a cost cutting exercise by Audi to fit those horrible not so quick release clips...

BMW didthe same in 1998 with the first E46's and revised E39. They are fucking horrid, designed to save money and production time.

[HillmanImp]

Thats is a splendid write up. Its exactly like it is when I work on cars. At least up to this point:

 

I opened it upside down so everything all fell out.

 

Which is when I normally just kick all the bits back into the garage and fuck off to the pub hoping that the car will sort itself out.

 

What are the hoses made out of? Looks like plastic rather than rubber?

 

 

It does look like it would not have much give in it. Like you I would normally brew a cup of tea and would then pour the remaining water in the kettle over the hose but would that work with these? It does not look like it would expand.

 

It looks like it would go brittle in the winter.

[ruffgeezer]

Looks good, but inevitable progress. I'm sure we didn't remove the front end entirely when we last did one, just slid it forward a few inches.

 

if you get stuck on the pas bolts, try hammering a slightly too big torx bit into them instead.

[Asimo]

Another car type added to the "Avoid at all costs" list.

 

Nice story though, probably the most interesting Audi A4 article ever.

[AlabamaShrimp]

I thought this was going to be something about paper....

[twosmoke300]

Useless fact time. You can rethread the end of 2 Rover k series head bolts and use them to slide the front panel forward on the these. Then use 2 pairs of mole grips on the bolts to hold it forward.

[RoadworkUK]

Looks good, but inevitable progress. I'm sure we didn't remove the front end entirely when we last did one, just slid it forward a few inches.

 

if you get stuck on the pas bolts, try hammering a slightly too big torx bit into them instead.

 

Yeah, the official "service mode" only pulls the front panel forwards a few inches, but to be honest I thought

it would be less hassle to take the whole thing off in its entirety. Only additional work is draining the coolant (which I needed to do anyway) and disconnecting the intercooler hoses.

 

THX M8 on the PAS. I'll probably hammer a bigger Ford Granada over it.

[RoadworkUK]

Thanks everybody. Yeah, the bits at the end of the hoses onto the rad actually are plastic, they're on the end of the rubber hoses; you see there's a T junction in there as well. I fully expect it to break up in the manner of an Austin Rover polycarbonate bumper before too long.

 

Work continued yesterday morning. I spent a lot of my time umming and arring over what direction to go next. There was no real point in having the cambelt exposed 'cos I haven't got the new one yet so I decided to just pull more stuff off.

 

My telephone had decided to be a Samsung Galaxy Note again and has refused to save any of the photos I took, so have this instead:

 

 

You can see here that the viscous fan unit is held in place by an 8mm allen bolt which, again, had rounded out a bit. What I really needed was an 8mm hex-drive because trying to use an allen key with a breaker bar was just asking for trouble. But for whatever reason my PROFESSIONAL tool kit doesn't have one.

 

 

More pressingly, this better illustrates the problems I'm having with the poxy PAS pump. Haynes quotes "Lock the pump from behind with a screwdriver before withdrawing the bolts". OK, I've seen before when there has been little channels cast in to indicate where to ram a screwdriver to jam things up, but theres absolutely nothing here. No hole in the pulley, either (despite several entries in the HBOL swearing down that there is).

 

I spent several cups of tea jamming random things between the pulley and the pump to try and hold it still enough, to no avail.

 

I've decided to forget all about it until I'm ready with the cambelt kit. So I moved onto clearing a path to the oil cooler/heater thing.

 

 

This meant removing the expansion tank which was held on with three rusty posidrive screws, which crumbled away nicely. After disconnecting the hoses and the multiplug I took it inside to try and wash it out. It turned out to be absolutely disgusting, full of that horrid cholesterol emulsion stuff. So I'm going to try and clean it out with thinners or something, and then probably go throw it away and get a new one.

 

Apologies here to my Nan for the state of her utility room sink.

 

With that out of the way and various hoses removed (hooray for actual, proper jubilee clips!) I can now more or less access the oil cooler / heater thing, which according to HBOL my car doesn't have. In fact nor does any A4. There is no mention whatsoever of anything to do with the damn thing in the entire work of literature.

 

I therefore have no idea whether the actual square thing that I suspect is leaking internally, to which the oil filter screws onto, can be replaced separately or whether it comes as part of an assembly so vast you have to remove the rear seats to access it. I'm hoping for the former.

 

 

So I turned my attention to the turbo and assessing how difficult removal would be. Verdict: probz a bastard but I'll have a go. I pulled off more pipes, then found that something called the Turbocharger Support Bracket needed to be removed. OK, fine, but where's that, then? I've had it before in a HBOL where something innocuous sounding, say "alternator mounting" turns out to be a massive bastard with four or five other things attached to it and an etire chapter of the book devoted to it. There were no pictures or anything helpful.

 

I carried out an exhaustive search and eventually found this spindly, pathetic metal finger bolted to the side of the block and heading diagonally to the turbo. With the loudest AHA of all time I pounced into action... only to find that I needed an 8mm Hex-drive.

 

Smeg. I wandered back to my toolkit for the nth time, heavy hearted and wondering why on earth Halfords had chosen to make such a lunatic omission. Then, suddenly, where the 6mm one should have been I FOUND THE BASTARD. Turns out some knobhead had opened it upside down and then put everything back in the wrong place.

 

So, in a sudden rush of enthusiasm I immediately dealt with everything I had found with an 8mm hex drive, making more progress in ten minutes than I previously had in two hours. I also found that a trolley-jack handle makes a fantastic breaker bar.

 

 

Having removed that support bracket I found that the next step; removing the oil return line from either the turbocharger or the sump, (I chose the former as it meant not having to drain the oil) had one bolt which is nice and easy, and one which there's literally no way to access that I can see. Fucknose how they built this thing.

 

So I had a cup of tea and then went home.

 

EDIT: Have found that the oil cooler thingy can be replaced individually, or even upgraded with a bit of fiddling. Since I'm expecting 700HP AT THE WHEELZ I might well do that.

[Luckythirteen]

Train the rabbit up as spanner monkey? Or chief tea maker maybe. "Yo rabbit dude: thirteen mill spanner shizzle fo sho". Boss.

 

We've had problems with wire clips and such on mine, they go in the bin, and a nice Jubilee clip goes in place.

What you need to look like a proper pro, is some Plus Gas, or that shock + unlock stuff. Gets rusty fasteners off quick smart, and transforms a Halfords toolkit into an F1 garage kit. Honest*. Works for me.

[barefoot]

The most interesting 'take a car to bits' pics I've seen in an age!

[Uncle Jimmy]

Respect due.

[beko1987]

Fucking lol!

[worldofceri]

This is exactly what happens whenever I attempt to tinker, except that I normally bottle it vis-a-vis taking random bits off long before you.

 

Can't wait for the next update.

 

This is rivalling the award winning Mr_Bo11ox tat blog for grippingness.

[Grundig]

A proper real world write up of proper real world fixin up of proper real world shite - BRILL

 

       We have those radiators in our house, exact same  - Stelrad I think 

[chaseracer]

Just wait until FPB7 and I start on the 300E.

 

Actually no, that'll be really boring.  Andy will have welded it, fixed it and have it running like a dream while I'm inside making the first round of tea.

 

Sorry, chaps.

 

[Inspector Morose]

What do you think I am? Some kind of shite magician?!