Added another one to the fleet...

[turbocharged798]

Not sure what I got myself into but this is turning to a massive project. A red 99.5 GL TDI ALH 5speed popped up on craiglist for $1,000 literally down the road from me. Seller claimed that the harmonic balancer flew off and screwed the timing belt. Seller also claimed that the it had a VNT17 turbo, rocketchip tune, and an frost heater. Also has an EGR delete and I believe it also has nozzles as well.

Went down checked out the car. First glance, seller's claims were accurate, car has a VNT17, frost heater and ect. Interior is completely disgusting. heavy smoker car, dirt and crap all over. Minimal rust aside from the typical MK4 fender rot. Overall straight shell though.

Thought about it for a bit and handed over cash for the title. Seller did warn me about how he knows nothing about the car and got it in a trade. My attitude was I can fix pretty much anything. Well this came back to bite me hard...

Then this ended up in my yard.

Lovely interior.

Then I found this.

In case you can't see it, that's a big crack running down the frost heater.

Pretty much this is what I think happened, owner blew the head gasket. Owner then kept running it and limping along by dumping water into it. Owner then left it out in the cold which promptly killed everything.

So I pulled the head. Cylinder filled with water, cut in the head from the head gasket leaking.

Worst part: block is split in the back. Even more bad news, Pretty sure the VNT17 is junk. Tons of shaft play.

As a side note, this car has tdiclub stickers on it. Wonder which member it belonged to? Car was last titled in CT...

Probably going to end up putting another motor together for it. Less likely I'll just part it out.

Stay tuned.

 

[Jake_S]

Normally $1000 isn't bad for a TDI, but this one seems to be a loss. You could sell the manual bits as a complete manual swap and make your money back on it.

Jake

 

[turbocharged798]

That's what I was thinking. I have decided that this car will be resurrected from the dead and will live again. For what I paid, can't complain too much about this car. Fully expecting to dump around $3K into it to get in decent drivable condition.

I edited my original post and added pics and resized the older ones. Took a bunch of time but the result is a lot nicer.

 

[turbocharged798]

VNT17 is scrap. Shaft is broken clean in half. What a shame.

 

[Abacus]

What kind of a moron did that much damage to it? They shouldn't be allowed to have a car, much less a TDI.

 

[turbocharged798]

Head is stripped ready to go to Frank. Fingers crossed that there isn't any cracks in it that I can't see. Too bad I don't have a working printer to print the UPS label.

 

[turbocharged798]

Started to vacuum the interior and realized it was hopeless. So I'm gutting it and cleaning each part instead. Center console was so bad, it required soaking in hot soapy water to get the goo off of it. It was literally like someone was pouring coffee down it....

 

[FreshOntarioBeetle]

Wow! This will be quite a resurrection! Interested to see how you make out. Especially with the interior to be honest. Keep us posted! Definitely a shame about the Vnt17

 

[snakeye]

Cleaning the interior sounds like a lot of fun. I would remove the carpet and pressure wash it.

 

[JDSwan87]

If the seats are fake leather/vinyl/whatever its called and dirty, use fast orange hand cleaner! Put on a pair of nitrile gloves, get yourself a glob of fast orange and scrub away! Then wipe off with a towel when you're all done.

 

[turbocharged798]

Got another block! Took a few measurements and it checks out pretty good. Thinking it should be good with a hone and drop in a stock set of pistons. Its a later block with the thicker mounting ear too.

 

[turbocharged798]

Interior is somewhat back together. Ended up taking out the carpet and shampooed it several times, left it in the rain for a few days and then vacuumed it. Came out pretty decent.

Here's the final result:

I also pulled the headliner and found a mouse nest on top of it complete with dead mice(don't worry, I didn't take pictures of that....) Right now main goal is getting the motor together and running.

 

[turbocharged798]

Also found out that the heater core is busted so now the dash has to come out if I want heat in this car. Man, what a POS this car really is. If it wasn't for me it would have probably been heading for the crusher.

Owner ran this car right into the ground.

 

[turbocharged798]

Motor is apart. Complete carnage.

Nice gooey lower end. Guessing this thing hasn't seen an oil change in a few years...

Nice pile of metal in the bottom of the pan with a chunk of engine block:

#2 rod got bent from I am guessing water filling the cylinder from the blown head gasket. It bent so far that the piston hit the top of the crank and cracked the piston. It wouldn't even come out of the bore so I didn't bother. Its all scrap anyway.

 

[turbocharged798]

Crankshaft is toast, journals are scored to holly hell. Basically nothing is usable from this engine.

 

[tdidieselbobny]

Crankshaft is toast, journals are scored to holly hell. Basically nothing is usable from this engine.

You could make some paperweights......to remind you of this nightmare! Does this car have the sticky interior trim pieces,or did you luck out in that area?

 

[turbocharged798]

You mean the soft touch crap? Its actually not too bad in this car. Interior actually cleaned up pretty nicely minus the head liner which needed to be redone anyway.

 

[turbocharged798]

I know I haven't updated in a while but there really has been nothing to update. Block is at the machine shop and I have been slowly collecting parts to put an engine together. Machine shop wanted to bore the block so I ended up going with .5mm ASVs. Cost a bit more than I wanted but its worth knowing its done right.

 

[turbocharged798]

Block is back from the machine shop.(only took a month and a half ) Came out real nice though. Nothing like freshly machined parts.

Weight matching the ASV pistons and ALH rods. Basically I put the heaviest piston with the lightest rod and so on. Then I took the lightest and heaviest rod/piston and put them in the #1 and #4 spot. This should give the best balance without actually having to remove material. Ended up being within 1.5grams difference for the entire assembly. I think this is a critical step that many people overlook. If you put the heaviest rod with the heaviest piston, you would probably be looking at a 5 gram difference. Not good.

 

[turbocharged798]

Pistons are in! Doesn't it look great?

Plastiguaged the mains and rods bearings and everything was bang within spec.
Crank is in, and everything torqued to spec. I mark them when I torque them because of past mistakes. Bolts are not cheap and nothing like forgetting which are torqued and having to replace them all.

 

[Abacus]

Damn, that is sexy.

 

[turbocharged798]

Nearly had an serious issue with the head alignment dowel. When I pulled the motor apart I noticed it had only one dowel in the center like AHUs. Thought it was weird but didn't think much of it. Apparently only real early ALH engines have this as most ALH's have two pins. I looked at the rebuilt head and it only has a spot for one pin. Then I remembered the block I was using was an 03 block which by dumb luck that VW decided to bore all three back head bolts holes and not just the two ones that were used. At least that's what it appears like. I would like to use two alignment pins but there is no provision for it in the head. Ugh...gotta love working on a 99.5 car...

Another thing is that it has a single mass flywheel in it. It appears to be a G60/VR6 but not sure. The disk is shot but I would like to reuse the flywheel. The weird part is that the ring gear is loose(like falls right off), not a tight fit like all the ones I have seen. It gets sandwiched between the pressure plate but it doesn't make me feel any better. Anybody know if a loose ring gear is normal on a SMF?

 

[turbocharged798]

Bunch of parts scavanged from gasser cars. After looking over ETKA, I realized that the 2.slo and TDI use the same oil pump, front cover, and other parts. Since 2.slo's are so plentiful, this made getting decent used parts easy.

Windage tray was one of a few parts that I was able to use from the old short block.

Got this hybred pan off ebay for a screaming deal of $40 to replace the one that was rusting out on the car. Problem was a forgot that it was for a 1.8t so I had to spend more time making a block off plate for the turbo return line.

 

[turbocharged798]

The metal coolant pipe turned to a total PITA. The one that was on the car was rusted pretty bad from the PO using plain water in the engine so I found an aftermarket for $40. Didn't fit worth a crap and ended having to cut the mount bracket off of it and reweld it back on in the correct position. It also hit the block in spots and I had to heat and massage it a bit. Should have just bought an OEM one instead.

 

[mrrhtuner]

Very cool progress build. Good work Turbocharged!

 

[turbocharged798]

Had an issue with the head gasket, apparently the real early ALHs had only one dowel pin in the center of the head like the AHU. Didn't think too much of it until I went to put a head gasket on and it didn't fit. Guess what, the real early oddball ALH uses a different head gasket than the other 99%. Confirmed in ETKA that there is in fact a different PN for the head gasket. Problem was nobody was making it in the aftermarket and I wasn't about to drive an hour to the dealer and have to special order this unicorn head gasket. After talking with frank for a while(big thanks to Franko6!) we decided the best way out was to simply enlarge the center hole with a die-grinder. Ended up working very well.

Franko6 rebuilt head on and torqued the first two stages:

Timing belt, turbo(stock VNT15), and IP installed. Easiest timing bet job ever. Hope that IP is good, we'll see.

Looks like it had a mark and pray TB change at some point. It also had the original IP stretch bolts.

 

[turbocharged798]

New Valeo clutch disk. It had a G60/VR6 installed at some point but the old disk was toast. The flywheel was a bit hot-spotted but the budget is blown at this point and I don't plan on putting too much power though it so I think it should be OK for now.

 

[gforce1108]

Had an issue with the head gasket, apparently the real early ALHs had only one dowel pin in the center of the head like the AHU. Didn't think too much of it until I went to put a head gasket on and it didn't fit. Guess what, the real early oddball ALH uses a different head gasket than the other 99%. Confirmed in ETKA that there is in fact a different PN for the head gasket. Problem was nobody was making it in the aftermarket and I wasn't about to drive an hour to the dealer and have to special order this unicorn head gasket. After talking with frank for a while(big thanks to Franko6!) we decided the best way out was to simply enlarge the center hole with a die-grinder. Ended up working very well.

I vaguely remember running into the same problem when I rebuilt my ex's 98 Beetle.
http://forums.tdiclub.com/showthread.php?t=213677
I may have been in the opposite situation. Early block and later head. Frank couldn't repair my head while his welder wasn't working so he sent me a different one - guessing newer (couldn't get much older!). I just don't remember what I did, but I'm guessing it was the same. I know I ordered everything from Frank and didn't go buy a second headgasket... Here's what it looked like for comparison:

 

[turbocharged798]

Its going in!

 

[turbocharged798]

It's in, engine hoist didn't work too well in the grass but I managed to get it in working by myself.

Just a bit of wiring. I actually cleaned it up and fixed a few ripped/broken/chaffed wires.