04 BEW Swapping out Turbo and Tandem Pump, Couple of Questions

Hey all, I have an 04 BEW with about 300k miles on it. I'm going to be doing a bit of work on it tomorrow and had a couple of questions.

First, the tandem pump is leaking diesel and I'm going to replace it. I've read a few threads on it, and was wondering if it's as straight forward as it seems? I saw that I need to be careful with the vacuum line, and then turn the cam horizontal for the install. Anything else I'm missing? Do i need to take the valve cover off? A few months ago it was leaking a good amount of oil, and I RTV'd it down. Probably not the best solution, but I had to do it. I'm hoping not to have to deal with that mess.

Secondly, I'm replacing the turbo with a VNT17 as a semi-extreme preventative maintenance. My car still has the KP39 on it and as far as I know, it's the original one. The PO gave me a bunch of receipts from when it was new, and there's nothing about the turbo in there. I drive about 350 miles one way to work, and half the time there's no cell service, so I figured I'd swap that while I'm on my off season. There's a few things I wanted to clarify:

- I saw some posts saying that it's possible to remove the turbo from the top and just wanted to verify it is? I have the EGR deleted already, so I'm not worried about that. I watched a video where the guy pulled it from the bottom, and since I don't have a lift, I'd rather not have to lay on my back to do it.

- On the car is a Stage 1.5 Malone tune, would I have to go back to my tuner to get things adjusted?

- Is this as straight forward as it seems? I replaced the cam and TB last year, and i feel comfortable doing this. Just wanted to make sure there won't be any surprises I haven't seen in the other threads. I do have the braided steel feed line, so I'm not worried about wrecking the stock one.

- And lastly, do i need to do anything to prep the new turbo for startup? I got some of that "new turbo lube" from ID parts and was just going to use that.

Sorry about the long post, I just want to make sure I have all my ducks in a row before I start this.

Thanks

You don't specifically need to rotate the cam - you just need to rotate the new tandem pump to line up with the slot in the cam. When I did mine - it took quite a while to get the air out. Cycling the key did nothing - neither did pulling on it with a vacuum. It just took a bunch of cranking (in bursts to let starter cool).

Turbo out the top is easier with no EGR on a BEW - out the bottom with all that crap.

May need to have tune adjusted, but start with setting the actuator with a vacuum pump and see how it goes. The 17 isn't that much bigger than the stock kp39. When I went from kp39 to a 17/22, I did get a new tune (1+ to a custom 3 from rocketchip) and noticed no issues in drivability.

If you take the intake off it will come out the top easily. Good time to upgrade to a one-piece PD130 intake instead of that silly twin path BEW nonsense they have from the factory.

It's been about a week or so since I've got everything done. The tandem pump was easy enough. I actually got lucky and got it lined up on the first try. The turbo was also easy enough. It took me about 5 hours, but only because I forgot to attach the steel braided feed line after I already got the intake on and torqued. It came out from the top super easy, especially since I don't have the EGR. I forgot to set the actuator, but I'll probably do that the next time I change the oil.

You were asking about lubricating the turbo before running the engine.

The way I do it is I remove the glowplugs and disconnect the electrical connector that powers the injectors (the big round connector near the tandem pump). If you don't disconnect the injectors then you'll get fuel mist everywhere.

Then I just turn the key and crank the engine for about 30 seconds. With the glowplugs out the engine spins over pretty fast so it should be enough to get some oil flowing to the turbo. Also the turbo won't be doing much, since most of the air is just going in and out through the glowplug holes.

You might have already started it, in which case this is of no use to you.

Yeah, it's already been started and driven a bunch. What I did was filled the turbo feed port with that new turbo loop from ID parts. I also filled the turbo feed line as much as I could with whatever lube I had left over. So I'm thinking if there was any time where the turbo didn't have oil, it was very minimal.