Replaced the turbocharger yesterday and today. Yeah, yeah, I've said it before and I'll say it again. I'm slow.
Anyway, there are some interesting details that I did not research and was stuck with, in addition to not having time to do anything official (read: buy the right parts before you need them) before I take a trip.
Item 1: the oil supply line. The fitting on the turbocharger is a flare type, and it is about as tight as it can get without welding. Sheesh. To get it off you basically have to destroy that cheapie hard pipe VW is so freaking proud of. And with the bends in the tube and the arrangement of the exhaust manifold, you have no choice. Rats. Well, no time to order one from ID parts and I'm out of work so the available funds reserve is rather constrained. Good thing I bought a steel braid supply line lo those many months ago. The only thing I didn't like about it is that it is barely long enough. You don't have much choice in the routing, so you need to make sure you are prepared for the problem of a rough steel braid that could eat right through one or more of the several coolant, electrical, and vacuum lines that are crowded on the left side of the engine. I did get the replacement in place. Eventually. I've got a few strategically placed pieces of "strong" duct tape in place. I'll have to be checking them frequently to see how they are holding up. I really don't want to be in the middle of nowhere with phantom electrical problems or having all my coolant bleeding out on the ground.
Item 2: If you re-use your axle nuts multiple times, you will eventually find that when trying to torque it to the axle stub it won't hold torque. I was worried because it seemed that it wasn't working well, and I was afraid that the axle stub threads were shearing off. But after some consideration (overnight - I needed to clear my thoughts) I realized that the nut will quit before the axle stub threads will. So I replaced the nut on that side where I had removed the axle to get more room to play with the turbocharger. The lesson to me is that while I think you really can re-use the nut, it would not be a good idea to do it more than twice. YMMV. (And let the flames begin! Not that I'm going to listen to them...
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Item 3: My turbocharger was the OEM unit from when the car was built in July 1999. It did pretty well, working nearly flawlessly for 283k miles. OK, maybe not so flawlessly - the boost had tapered off so gradually that I never was sure my problem was due to the turbo. But I digress. It was the old style. The difference is that the bottom brace bracket is 90 degrees off from later units. While the new (and much shorter) drain hose was on the replacement turbo, the new style brace was not. Oops. I ended up using my original one anyway (as if I had a choice) and did some back alley work on it to bend it to fit. There was a small penalty to pay in trimming a bit from the CV boot heat shield to make everything fit, but in the end it works, which is the operative verb here. I also retained the original drain hose. It just looks interesting.
Item 4: Since the lug that bolts to the frame on my weird pancake pipe fell off, my replacement needed a new turbo outlet hose. That is the one that caused me such a headache with the band clamp not wanting to play with the rest of the equipment. Well, the joint there with the new pancake pipe won't hold boost. Never had nearly instantaneous underboost limp mode since I found an intake pipe not fastened into place properly last New Year's at the Ho5G party. And that was my first time. I've tried a couple of times to make really really sure that joint is set in place correctly, but boost blows it apart. Like I said above, I don't have time. I'm going to find some super-duper silicone and glue that bleeping joint so I can go on my trip. I'm just ticked that VW wouldn't fix that joint. It's a pretty good idea, but it won't last and is too easy to come apart if some little thing like bending the retaining wire wrong, or even just a bit of wear from normal vibrations of a running diesel will make it fail completely. Poor design.
I'd be fixing this last item right now, but it finally rained (the driest summer I've seen up here in the 12 years I've lived in NH) so everything is wet. Ugh.
Cheers,
PH