Volkswagenist
Ok so the fluttery high pitched sound I was chasing ended up being the turbo to dump pipe junction. Its only re torqued at the moment but made the sound go away. It only did it under load/boost and didn't seem to draw air at all as my fuel trims still looked ok. Because it had a flutter to it, for all money it sounded rotational and considering that I'd just done the hydraulic to manual cam belt tensioner conversion of course I thought it was something to do with the tensioner roller or idler. A lot of people had said that overtightened manual tensioners tell you that you've stuffed up with the tensioning by being very noisy and because I'd just done that job I obviously assumed it was that. Why the leak appeared right after I did the job I don't know but it definitely took me down the garden path to the tune of two re tensioning jobs on the roller and lots of induction pipe checking. I even got a torque wrench out on the plugs thinking I'd left one loose. I was lucky to do a cold start one day and in the brief minute before it all gets hot ran my hand over everything on the exhaust side and found the leak.
So feeling better now. What I have noticed with the manual tensioner is that you get cold vs hot variations in cam belt tension. These are obviously taken up by the OEM hydraulic tensioner or the ABF 2.0L 16V sprung automatic tensioner would do the same if you used it. If I hadn't found that leak/noise when I did, I was planning on removing the KR manual tensioner and fitting the ABF, but as itstands the tensioner is in the clear, its tensioned as per IE recommendations so now I'm just going to enjoy the sucker and get ready for the next event. I'm sorted for my front pair of tyres now so the next event will most likely be the Huntley hillclimb where i'll run 215/50/15 medium fronts and 195/55/15 soft rears. I've lost a bit of front track width to get the 215's to fit but overall it'll be a net gain I hope.
Volkswagen Enthusiast
well that's good news - might have cracked the seal or wiggled the bolts with the engine up/down when you removed the engine mount...
The hot/cold tension change is an odd one, wouldn't expect a lot of change like that. It's not just the belt being more twisty when it's warm is it?
Volkswagenist
Yeah thats what I'm thinking. You need to have the dog bone out and then up and down to get the engine side bracket off so it may have popped the gasket then. Nut wasnt loose really, but getting another bit on it made the whistle go away so I'm happy.
No its tighter when hot. Its harder to twist when hot eg 70 degrees at the same effort level and much less deflection when pressed with your thumb than cold. You'd think a hot belt would get looser if anything. Since its all fixed position tensioning, the only way the belt can get tighter is thermal expansion of the head. I asked IE about it. They said you will see variations and variations across seasons (but they are talking big year round temp drops), but they didnt really confirm if head expansion is the culprit, but I can very definitely say that there is a difference.
Volkswagenist
holy f*&^k my hands hurt. Making up AN fittings is a bitch on hands already destroyed after a week of work. Regretting going for steel armoured hose now. Don't have a bench or a vice for that matter so basically leaning up against a wooden wall. If it leaks I will break things and swear lots.
Volkswagen Enthusiast
hahaha... what are the hoses for?Originally Posted by sambb
Volkswagenist
wife away so abe to get the car into bits for a couple of days. I'm fitting the oil thermostat sandwich plate, deleting the heat exchanger and I've fitted the oil cooler inside the fender where the side mount IC used to be. I'd bought it from Louis19 but his lines were made up for mounting the cooler above his front mount. The SEAT fmic sits much higher though so the cooler had to go to the fender and so I'm making up longer steel armoured lines for that. With it mounted there I'll be able to blank off the cooler for normal driving and hillclimbs and then open it up to air flow when I get out on the track. I did a bit of logging of how the oil and water temps rise from cold in normal commuter driving. Its my hope that with the cooler blanked off that the oil will still get up to 90 around town as quickly as before. The oil thermostat is an 85 degree. I guess if its too slow to bring the oil up I think you can get higher temp thermstats for theses plates and that that might rectify it. If worse comes to worse I can refit the heat exchanger and stack them all (will have to go to a stubby filter though). But yep getting the hose/sheath through the gland of the AN fittings is nigh on impossible but you get there in the end. Going to do a couple of hours before F1 qualy tonight and hopefully be running around on Monday...…..without leaks!
Volkswagenist
Progress report on the oil cooler fit up. Sorry forgot to rotate the images so you'll have to rotate your heads. So I fitted it vertically angled forward at the bottom. There wasn't much reasoning to that other than so it would fit but it does so happen that angled coolers cool better apparently because if the air that is ducted too it is forced to bend through the fins than it slows the air down so that it can pick up more heat on its way through - well that's what the F! technical sites tell me anyway. I did deliberately try to get it inboard a bit though so that if I have a shunt the cooler is a little way in from the guards. I had some angled and slotted steel so I used combinations of those hung off the old SMIC pick up points to mount it.
The feed from the sandwich plate will go to the bottom of the cooler so that as the cooler fills it will not get air pockets. It also means that when I do a thorough oil change or change oil type and need to evacuate the oil that will stay in the cooler, I can take off the bottom hose fitting and get the oil out easy enough.
The heat exchanger came out after I sourced the 27mm socket to get its nut off the spigot. Its coolant hose come out with it and you'll need the pictured hose to put in the bypass. The hose was down a Supercheap. So I tore the sticker off it but it is shaped like this and goes straight in without cutting. To make way for the sandwich plate, the spigot then has to be removed from the oil filter housing. I couldn't see any other way to do it really so vice grips got it out easily once I came to terms with the fact that the spigot would be sacrificed in the process, so i'll need a spare one of them if its ever to go back how it was.
The most time consuming part of all of it is deciding on the routing path of the oil lines, making up the AN fittings and fitting them up at the right angles with the sandwich plate so that the lines (very abrasive with the steel armour on them) aren't rubbing on anything or too close temperature wise to anything sensitive.
I'll be priming the cooler soon and starting her up so if she leaks anywhere i'll be gutted because its been quite a bit of work on a very cold garage floor.
Last edited by sambb; 03-09-2018 at 10:44 AM.
Volkswagenist
So all done. The pics are pretty self explanatory. The line that goes under the IC pipe is the oil outward bound from the engine and goes to the bottom of the cooler. The top line out of the cooler goes back to the sandwich plate, through the filter and into the engine. I had some 2.75in silicon pipe on hand which has now been wrapped around that part of the IC pipe so that no inadvertent rubbing can happen. I've also got some aeroflow hose bridges to hold the two pipes alongside one another in a way that they wont rub.
Before start up I used a pump pack to fill the oil cooler with oil from its top take off. What I didn't expect was that it would prime it so well that oil would start coming out the oil filter spigot. Bit of a mess to clean after that but atleast I new the engine woulnt be gulping air at start up. Filter primed too. I cranked the car for a bit with the coils disconnected and fuel pump fuse out to make double sure everything was oily and it warmed up aok with no oil leaks. Did a bit of running around this arvo - had to get more oil because the extra capacity of the lines and cooler meant that I needed a shade over 5 litres. As per usual with me I had a heart attack moment when I came out to the car (raining for the first time in weeks in Sydney today) and found an oil slick under it. Turned out to be just some dropped oil from another car. So far so good - i'll log the temp rises from cold start tomorrow morning and hopefully they'll be in step with the stock heat exchanger setup when the oil cooler is blanked off. Part of the reason I oriented the sandwich plate the way I did, was so that the sandwich plates oil thermostat is accessible so that it can be swapped out for a higher temp one if this doesn't work out. I could piggy back everything and run the exchanger again but the problem would be that the oil lines would be pushed too low and probably rub on things so they'd need to be redone - not something I'm keen on doing any time soon.
Volkswagenist
oh and ducting to come. Will need some way of trying to keep the air feed to the brakes discs that I've been running, while still getting air through that core. Intitially I was going to run the coolers air exit (hot) out the vented guard I'd used when I had a water sprayed side mount intercooler. But a fair bit of crap still was getting thrown into there from the tyres, plus I don't like the idea of a potential oil leak throwing oil directly onto the tyre the moment something lets go. So I'll get air in through the fog light facia and run the coolers hot exit air along the inside of the wheel well to re join behind the engine in the engine bay like the stock side mount does.
Volkswagenist
Good stuff Sam!
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