Did mine the clean way. Got an exchange manifold. Lot of dealers have that. Give them your old cruddy one and for $85 you get a nice shiney clean one. Beats getting greasy from all that crud....nasty stuff tracking that all over the place.
This tutorial was a tremendous help to me the past few weeks. I just completed an 2005 Jetta Wagon (A4/BEW) 115k miles and I took some pictures to show some differences I found so maybe someone else can benefit. Overall the process was not that bad as I am getting better at being a home mechanic. I shudder at the numbers of hours others posted here. I am sad to say this job took me 15-20 hours overall. Most of that was in dis-assembly/assembly since my manifold was not very dirty at all. Maybe 3/4 cup of soot total. Very little gunk. I estimated anywhere from 15-30 minutes per each of 12 poorly located bolt coming and going.
My preferences/observations:
1. I removed and reinstalled the air intake pipe from the top but secured the lower pipe connection from under the car.
2. Metal connecting pipe to the EGR cooler I disconnected from the EGR cooler from under the car.
3. This is a picture of the EGR cooler on these cars tied back.
4. The EGR cooler is connected to the intake manifold by 4 bolts. There are the 3 described by DeafBug and another that runs through the bypass flap assembly into the intake manifold. (there are faint green lines pointing to things in this picture)
5. The intake manifold on this car is actually in two pieces which makes cleaning it easier. The kit from idParts included the additional gasket.
No big change in performance because of lack of gunk I guess, but it did give me a chance to fix the turbo hose to EGR that likes to loosen up. If nothing else it sounds better.
You're welcome.Jaysin - That looks like the route I'm going to take - thanks for posting the pics!
In my case I live in the woods and have regular burn piles so I just tossed the soot and gunk onto a nice hot burn pile and done. I know that our local dump has a clean used oil tank but they also have a "mixed" automotive chemical/oil tank as well and if I had not burned it in a fire I would have just brought it to my dump. It is really mostly carbon with a bit of oil and unburned hydrocarbons so I don't really see a problem with throwing it in the normal trash either.WOW! Some awesome info above! Really great stuff. I am wondering what you did with the gunk and soot, those who cleaned it out manually. Can I just put it in regular garbage or am I supposed to take it someplace? I haven't had time to clean mine out yet. I have been way swamped with work and school at the same time, but I'm hoping to get on this this spring along with a couple other small things I wanted to do. Also, how much did you guys pay for your gasket sets, kind of ballpark number. Thanks.
I wouldnt. They sell those if you need to replace them because of breaking. I used to fight them all the time, replacing intake filters and such, but then i got vice grips and it's no longer an issue. Get those and you can just put em back when youre done. I've seen a lot of people using hosecalmps, but they usually end up being too tight and may crack or squish things too much.just bought my "new" 01 golf tdi and read a lot about this. having never wrenched on a VW engine before this was a great starting point.
1 quick thing, hopefully someone can tell me if im on a destructive path or not.
the clamps holding on the air intake is a major pain in the ass and i'd like to swap em out for hose clamps. is there a chance the clamp could wiggle loose from the engine vibration?
heres what i want to replace:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/94625433@N07/8616286599/
thanks for the img and manual DeafBug!