I have been doing some pretty incredible work on my Beetle. What I am about to share is a full engine tune-up I performed last October and November. It is now June in the following year and she is humming along. I actually put 2,000 miles on her through the winter too.
OK. So, an engine tune-up. The Beetle was at 105,000 miles and Volkswagens typically are up for an engine tune up around 60,000 miles. Whoops. In this engine tune-up I replaced both the accessory and timing belts; the tensioner, water pump, thermostat; the accessory belt tensioner; crank and camshaft seals; and the one-time-use stretch bolts for the engine mount. There were a few O-rings tossed in there too, along with the obvious coolant flush. The following write-up is my best attempt at remembering the 3-day project.
For starters, I ordered all of my parts from ECSTuning.com. This is an on-line company (oddly enough, warehoused in northern Ohio! Bonus!) that specializes in car parts for Volkswagen and Audi. They cater to the wannabe homemade mechanic, like me. I have ordered from them several times. They have a pretty searchable site where you can pick and enter your vehicle make and model; knowledgeable staff to speak to on the phone, good return service (I've used it), and reviews with good close-up pictures of the product you're about to buy. I'm pretty arrogant when it comes to the Beetle, I admit; but even this company has beat down my wall and earned my respect.
One of the perks they offer is to sell timing belt kits, or various packages of car parts you'd need to do the necessary timing belt/water pump replacement. Their site offers the 'standard,' 'ultimate' and 'ultimate plus' packages to pick from. Packages come with increasing levels of parts, fluids, and pieces. I opted for the ultimate plus, for no other explanation other than that I'm neurotic. :-)
This is what arrived on my doorstep as the Ultimate Plus package!
The package came with a replacement accessory belt, timing belt, water pump; jug of coolant, replacement crank and camshaft seals, replacement thermostat, thermostat o-ring, and even replacement bolts for all those one-time-use Stretch Bolts that the factory installs during assembly. (It also came with NGK spark plugs and ignition wires, but that's for part two of this writing...)
Not pictured: The first step in this project was to drain my coolant. That was easily done by twisting a port off the radiator at its left lower corner. The coolant had to be drained in order to remove the water pump and shaft pulleys. We were going to dive into the intestines of this engine! Moving ahead...
The accessory belt was REAL easy to remove. I just slipped an open-end wrench on the tab on the accessory tensioner to remove tension off the belt - and the belt fell off into my hands. Here is what it looked like:
See all the cracks in the belt? Original accessory belt on the Beetle, time to get tossed and a fresh one put on.
Left: new accessory belt. Right: old accessory belt.
In order to remove the other parts off the engine block, the engine mount needed to be removed next. The engine is bolted to your body in two different places: the engine mount (right side of the body) and the mission mount (left side of the body). Of course, the whole engine also nests on your subframe, which is tightened in at least 6 places (3 left, 3 right) to the underside of your car's body.
After the engine mount was removed from the side frame, the mating side mount that tightens to it off the engine block was also removed. My stockpile of Beetle parts was quickly growing along the wall of my garage:
And, my spiffy little magnetic tray I use to hold all the screws, bolts, and nuts for re-installation was also filling up! Whoo hoo!
I was also quickly entering the phase of removing my next belt: the timing belt. Again, I took photos to document how this was routed along all the pulleys on the side of the engine. This photo would be used to help me retrace my steps later:
The routing of the Beetle's timing belt.
The timing belt was removed by applying a two-pronged tool (a specialty Volkswagen one I had to rush-order from some obscure site on the internet) to the tensioner and giving it a twist. The twist coiled the tensioner inside itself, shrinking it in size and therefore creating some slack on the timing belt to pull it off. Wa-lah!
The
original timing belt (left) was removed and the new one (right) is compared next to it. See the spine starting to show, and small cracks, in
the outgoing belt?
All three of these photos are comparing timing belts. Can you tell in each photo which belt is old, and which is new? I find these comparo photos to be interesting.
The tensioner was not in bad shape at all, it had plenty of life left in it. I was impressed. The old girl was really holding her own! However, I also pulled that off the engine block (just one simple bolt through the center of it that threaded into the side of the engine) to replace it with the new one out of my kit.
New tensioner, left. Old tensioner, right.
As with most timing belt jobs, the shops recommend you replace the water pump at the same time. This is an obvious step because the water pump is RIGHT THERE for you once you remove the timing belt. And really, when else are you going to so casually have the timing belt off your car?
Day 2 started up with removing the water pump.
New water pump, left. Old water pump, right.
On the old water pump: can you believe the top spinning
part, the part that does the most of the work, was made of chinky black
plastic? It shattered as soon as I removed it from the side of the
engine block, that's how fragile it was. Glad to install a
fully-machined, more robust one in its place.
Because the water pump shattered, some of the small $%*&ing black pieces of that pulley split off and stayed inside the belly of the engine. This is a defcon-1 no-no! It was at this point I had to crawl on my hands and knees and hug right up against the Beetle, to reach my hand up in the engine and pick out each of these black pieces. The side of my face was pressed up against her bumper, and I can now say I've stuck my fingers into the innermost part of her engine. I could feel the teeth and gears all along the crankshaft, hundreds of machined surfaces and moving pieces. It was wildly creepy. I got all the black pieces! Day 2 stopped after inserting the new water pump because it was a cold night in November, and I lost feeling in my toes and feet. I may be a girl that wants to be a gearhead, but I'm also still a wuss.
Day 3 picked up with removing the crankshaft pulley to start doing preventive maintenance on it. The crankshaft is the main shaft that runs along the bottom of your engine; the camshaft is the main shaft that runs along the top of your engine block.
The four crankshaft bolts were a bitch to take off! The insides of the bolts rounded off worse than a fat kid engorging in cupcakes! I refused to tighten these back into the Beetle, so an emergency phone call was put into my local Columbus VW dealership to order a fresh set of these:
With the little punky bolts removed, the next one to come off was the main crankshaft bolt. This was a 12-pointed head bolt, very large. I had to go to my local Sears to buy a socket to fit this fella. It also had some pretty incredible torque. It was a knuckle-buster to pop it loose! But here it is:
New crankshaft bolt, left. Old crankshaft bolt, right. See the rust and cracked flange on the bolt head? Bye bye.
The crankshaft seal had to be tapped back in around the end of the crankshaft very carefully. It needed to be tapped in slowly, and in an even fashion about the whole face of the circle of the seal. If the top half were tapped in faster than the bottom half, it could have resulted in a pinched or rolled seal, which is not good and allows leakage. I used a BAG socket (that's Big Ass Socket to you) and placed it over the seal. Then I used a mallet and gingerly tapped on the back of the socket and let the socket do all the work with walking the seal evenly into the side of the engine around the crankshaft. Score!
OK, so at this point the crankshaft was taken care of, and the same needed to be applied to the camshaft seal at the top of the engine. Before the camshaft could be removed though, we had to mark the timing for the engine. If the crank and cam shafts are out of sync by more than one tooth (really I didn't even prefer more than a half a degree!), it makes your engine cylinders fire out of sync, and when the pistons fire unevenly inside and peak at the wrong time, you can fatally damage them and bend the valves. This will seize your engine and blow it! Again, an A-rank item you need to nail right on the head!
I did not capture any pictures of this portion, mostly because I had sweaty palms and I was involved in eyeballing the markings at the top of the engine, then the bottom, and then back up to the top again. We got it right, put a breaker bar on the crankshaft down below to hold it in place, and broke loose the center bolt holding the camshaft pulley on. We removed that pulley. I fished the old camshaft seal out, and tapped in the new seal. Again, no pictures on this portion, sorry.
So far in the process: water pump? Check. Seals? Check. Tensioner? Check. Belts? Check. One other little item was a new thermostat. These are usually A-OK and could last the whole life of a vehicle, but again, it came in my kit so it was good practice to just swap it out. This piece did not bolt on to the engine at all; it just snapped in place and sealed with an O-ring. See here:
The original thermostat (left) is removed and the new one (right) is about to go in.
I rounded the bend and was in full-reassemble mode now. A lot of this was re-tracing steps. The timing belt was fit back over the cam and crank shafts, the water pump, and the tensioner. The accessory belt was next.
Just playing with the accessory tensioner in my hands (spinning the black pulley like an absent-minded kid), I realized it was making a whirring, grinding noise. It should be silent! The bearings were fading on it. In the here and now, it was causing my engine to have a light chirping noise, but mostly only when the car was first turned on and cold.
Spinning this black piece in my hand, I found it to have a whirring, grinding noise. No good! In time and if not replaced, the bearings would completely blow
and the black pulley would no longer turn, seizing my accessory belt. Harumph. This needed to be replaced.
Again, an emergency-order in to my Columus VW dealer to order a whole-new accessory tensioner. (Do you see a trend developing here?)
Once it arrived the last stretch of re-assembling the Beetle went very quickly. I can prove it!
The second-to-last-step: re-installing the engine mount!
The finishing touches! The Beetle is back on four wheels...
The end of Day 3: re-filling her with that jug of coolant and she is DONE!
I felt like a million bucks after this project was completed. Yes, it was more than an 8-hour job, but I didn't mind my own labor. 1) I saved a lot of money instead of paying a "stealership" to do the job for me. 2) I knew the attention to detail I carry, so I am pleased with how well the job got done. No shortcuts taken. 3) I felt like the Beetle got a new lease on life. She came out of a pretty extensive maintenance job, and now she is ready to ride off into the sunset for the second chapter of her life. This is my baby girl and I love her so much!
I do think this project is tied for first place as the Most Extensive Beetle Project ever. (Tied with the radiator replacement in May 2009.) It's so neat, but in so many ways, working on this car helped bring me back to center, too. I brought her back to life after letting her sit parked in neglect for most of the year 2012 while I was also hating the world. But, I felt so triumphant...so accomplished...by braving a big ogre of a task as replacing the timing belt. In return, I had new breath for myself. I find my identity through this car. We have a lot of history together and I really respect that. I didn't want to neglect her like that, and I learned I didn't need to be neglecting myself like that either. I felt like a badass once this was finished, like I was taking back control of my life and wanting to be active with it. I was hooked. What a symbolic project!
This project opened the door to many other 'Beetlejuice' projects, as I am now on a roll and this has become an outlet for me. The projects will all be showing up here eventually. Stay tuned. Thanks for reading my geekiness!
No comments:
Post a Comment