Winter Car Problems and Audi Work
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Car Problems
Hey! I've been slow about providing blog updates, but I've run into a number of problems with my fleet. It seems that everything always seems to go wrong at the same time! I know that this happens to many people and it's part of life in a fallen world. When this happens, do what I'm learning to: Keep your chin up, thank God for the blessings you have, and press onwards! Here's what came up in the last two weeks:
My son's 2002 Audi A4 Quattro started dumping about a quart of oil daily, so we dug in and found out that the head gasket was leaking. Compression is still good, but the head needed to come off! This "cheap" Audi isn't so cheap, anymore!
The old 2001 MkIV Jetta TDI is having glow plug circuit issues and we can pretty much forget about driving it in subzero weather until I can troubleshoot that system.
My son was driving my 2005 B5.5 Passat TDI and wound up getting it jump-started one subzero morning. I had to replace that battery. I found out the old one had been in there since 2012 (before I owned it)!
Now I have a new oil slick on the floor where I've been parking the 2007 Mercedes R320 CDI. It's just left of the centerline and toward the rear of the engine...so I need to dig into it and replace the dreaded OM642 oil cooler seal!
Audi Quattro Head Gasket
I've pulled the head from the engine. The photos that follow simply document the process I've made this weekend. Today I'll clean up the valve cover and intake manifold to paint them up and make them pretty. When my Amazon Prime valve spring compressor tool shows up in two days I'll replace the valve stem seals.
I've removed the head from the 1.8T, and you can see the top of the engine block. I've checked the deck surface with a good straightedge and a flashlight. No light was leaking under the straightedge anywhere. The deck looks perfect! I'll just clean it up good before I get it all back together.
Check out the 1.8T's head. These engines are very common. They are found in a lot of VW and Audi vehicles. They are surprisingly exotic, with five valves per cylinder! That explains how it spools so smoothly. That's also why there's so much horsepower potential in these little engines.
I pulled the camshafts to check on things and replace the valve stem seals. Might as well, while I have the head off. The tensioner is in the background in this photo. Be sure you buy a tensioner compressor before attempting this job! It would be very difficult without this tool.
The Audi 1.8T's bearing journals are lined up here. Note that they've all been marked so that they go back into their proper locations.
Here is the head with the cams removed. The valves are buried deep down in this head, so I've ordered a better valve spring compressor tool.
I cleaned up the mating surface on the head, checking it with a straightedge and a flashlight. When I do this I put the flashlight behind the straightedge and look to see if light leaks through anywhere, indicating warpage. I didn't find any on the head or the engine block's deck. So, I'm not sure why the head gasket started leaking oil. I suppose being 15 years old and having 180,000+ miles might have something to do with it. Perhaps the head bolts should have been retorqued at some point. I'm counting our blessings that we don't have to go to the machine shop on this effort!
At this point, you've probably noticed that everything in this engine has a brownish color from varnish that has built up. I'm not going to go to crazy cleaning a high mileage engine on a "cheap" car, but it's apparent that previous owners weren't using synthetics and/or didn't change the oil often enough. Well, thankfully the compression is still very good, so we'll just keep some good synthetic oil in there (we use LiquiMoly in our VW and Audi vehicles) and it will probably clean itself up over time.
I'll provide more updates as I work through this effort and the others that are on my TO DO list.
May God bless you and keep you running on all cylinders!