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Tonight I successfully replaced my alternator and serpentine belt tensioner.

Pep Boys had item number 13942, which was listed as a Hitachi 120amp remanufactured alternator. I kept asking the person at the parts counter for the Bosch remanufactured alternator, but he insisted that the one he gave me was correct. Lo and behold, the alternator in the box was a Bosch remanufactured alternator! That was actually a bonus, since the Hitachi alternator was cheaper.

I guess that makes sense. I don’t think the Hitachi alternators are common, and people probably just replace their Bosch alternator with the cheapest one Pep Boys has, and the reconditioning company then reconditions the alternators that were swapped as a core piece.

This is the first time I’ve ever replaced an alternator, but the remanufactured alternator looked immaculate. The plastic molding on the back was identical to my Bosch alternator. The pulley was the only item that was different. This reman is guaranteed for life, and they stated that the warranty covered everything, including the pulley.

Now I just need to install my new suspension, and I’ll be all done with the upgrades and maintenance items.

iamstuffed Auto Alternator, Golf, VW

Tonight I attempted to replace my alternator pulley. When I removed the pulley from the alternator, I must have twisted the pulley and the shaft in the wrong directions, because I sheared off the shaft on the alternator!

Now, I have to run around tomorrow trying to get an alternator. Pep Boys has one for $179, with a $110 core charge. I’ll take my alternator with me to work tomorrow and see if they’ll take the alternator as a core. If so, it’ll only cost me $179.

The joys of screwing up…

iamstuffed Auto Alternator, Golf, TDI, VW

Today I finished repairing the drivers side radiator fan. I had to use a dremel to remove some metal on the back of the fan motor to remove the rear casing. One of the brush holders seemed to be melted a little and the brush wasn’t moving at all. The opposite side brush worked fine. I had to spray everything down with an electrical contact cleaner, and scrape some plastic off the brush holder. Eventually, I got the brush to move through its range of motion, but it still does not move as freely as the other one.

I put everything back together, used JB Weld to put the case back together, and now everything works. Not sure how long this will last, but I am receiving a brand new fan on Monday. I’ll just have to monitor the fan over the next few weeks. I should have waited until I attempted to repair the fan before ordering a new one, but the new fan was only $90 at RockAuto (Febi/Bilstein fan). At the dealer, they cost $200+ and this one is a better fan.

On Monday, I get all the other goodies for my car: serpentine belt tensioner, alternator pulley, tools to remove the alternator pulley, and a Koni coilover suspension with all new mounts, bolts, and bumpstops.

Ever since my timing belt change, I’ll randomly get ticking/clicking sounds near my serpentine belt tensioner. I know it’s coming from the tensioner area, and not the timing belt, since it stops when I put less load on the electrical system. From researching online, it seems the alternator pulley is a common point of failure.

When I fixed my front crankshaft oil seal flange, I had the tensioner in the locked position for I think a week or so. This probably overstressed the spring mechanism, so that, combined with the alternator pulley, is causing the clicking (I hope). I can replace both on Monday evening and find out for sure. If it doesn’t fix the clicking, I’ll have to do some more research and tests on my car.

The Koni coilovers should be fun to install. Unfortunately, they’ll lower the car 1″, so I’ll have to figure out what to do about the skid plate I have installed. Sometimes when I pull in or out of my driveway, the bottom scrapes. I can’t even imagine how often I’ll scrape if I lost an inch. I’ll probably order the newer aluminum skidplate from DieselGeek and sell my current plate. The difference in clearance is about .6″, so that’ll offset the drop a little.

iamstuffed Auto Golf, Koni, TDI, VW

Today I filled up my car and calculated that I got 44 miles per gallon! That’s the most I’ve ever gotten in my car.

I’m not actually sure why I’ve been getting better mileage though. I did the timing belt change, but also changed the oil I use, plus installed the DieselGeek bypass filter, and CAT fuel filter. Whatever is causing it, I’m happy.

706.2 miles on 16.038 gallons of diesel. Goooooo diesel. Diesel being much cheaper than gas is a bonus!

iamstuffed Miscellaneous Golf, TDI, VW

April 15, I got the results of an oil analysis I had performed on some used motor oil from my car.  I just took a sample prior to the oil change, mainly out of curiosity, but also to create a baseline so I could experiment with a different oil.

The high nitration results were the only measured quantity that was outside normal values.  I’m not exactly sure what a normal nitration level should be, but I searched the web for some answers.  I posted the question on two forums, asking what could cause the nitration level to be “high”. The answer I got: the cylinder head could be running too hot, my EGR valve could be stuck partially open, or something related to my turbo.

The EGR was actually stuck open, giving an error code that I cleared with VCDS (VAG-COM).  I cleaned the EGR and everything seemed fine.  This is what I thought caused the high nitration.

Today, I got around to testing my radiator fans, which should come on when the AC is running.  There are two fans, one larger fan on the driver’s side (left), and one on the passenger side (right), directly behind the radiator.  When I checked to see if both were running (they should both be on), only the passenger side fan was operating!  This may have caused the engine to run hotter than it should have, although the temperature reported in the cluster always showed 190F.  According to others, the temperature in the cluster isn’t always accurate.

I ordered a replacement fan made by Febi/Bilstein, part number 6X0959455F.  Hopefully I get it early next week, or tomorrow if I’m lucky and they ship from White Marsh again.  The removal does not look too bad, and I can probably get the old fan to work again with some cleaning.  The only reason I’m ordering a new one is the convenience of having a working fan.  The new fan was $90 after shipping.  Compare that with ~1 hour or more of messing around with a fan that may or may not work reliably again, and you can see that it all comes down to convenience.  If I can get the old fan working again, then I’ll have a spare for the future.

In the end, I think the oil analysis was useful.  Because of a single abnormal result, I focused on possible problems that could have caused it, and found two that I would not have discovered without the analysis.  I’ll probably do the oil analysis regularly now, just to see if I can follow this trend and determine if I fixed the problem.

Now I just need to replace my alternator pulley, serpentine belt tensioner, and replace my supsension, and my car will be good to go for the summer.

iamstuffed Auto Diesel, Fan, Golf, Oil, TDI, VW

Today I received an email from Dr. Olano. I got a 93 for the class, which means I get an A for the semester. Now I just need an A in Research Skills to get a 4.0.

iamstuffed School

Today I read the rest of the research papers. Actually, near the end, I just started skimming them, reading the abstract, skimming the contents, and reading the conclusion. I’ll have to go over all the papers once more tomorrow at work.

The final exam, according to UMBC’s schedule, is at 3:30pm. That gives me plenty of time to do a couple things at work, flip through all the papers as a refresher, and head to school.

I’ve recently been obsessed with reading about wheels/tires/suspension for my car. I currently have some worn down Hankook tires on the factory 15″ rims, and am thinking about upgrading to 18″ rims, but I’m not sure if I should buy them new or used.

Why? Because. Larger rims need tires with a smaller profile (the height of the tire between the outer edge of the rim and the outer edge of the tire) to maintain the same circumference. The smaller that profile, the firmer the tire (usually), so it should result in a sportier ride. I’m also not sure if I should spend the money on upgrading my suspension instead, since I am starting to get some squeaks when I go over bumps. The squeaks are probably just the sway bar bushings, but everyone says the suspension is probably toast at 100k miles anyway.

Decisions decisions…

I need to get an A in Graphics, which means I need to do well on the final. Since I have no idea what my grade is, I need to do really really well.

iamstuffed Auto, School

I’ve read 20 research papers today. 18 more to go! The final is on Tuesday.

iamstuffed School

Tonight, after reading 17 research papers in three topic areas, I decided to change my oil and adjust the camshaft timing a little.

I found this link on tdiclub.com:
http://forums.tdiclub.com/showthread.php?t=215202

It basically lists the steps to adjust the cam timing so that it’s back in spec, and hopefully fix the idling issue most people have. On my car, the engle idling RPMs pulse at seemingly random intervals. Since I did the timing belt change myself, and I had that whole ordeal with having to replace the crankshaft flange and seal, I thought maybe the timing was slightly off.

In VCDS, the Torsion value was 2.0. According to tdiclub.com, the valid values are between -2.5 and 2.5, with 0 being ideal. I followed the directions and eventually got the value to -.5, so I called it quits after that. The first attempt must have put it out of spec because the car wouldn’t stay idling, it would just quit. After I adjusted it to -.5, I had to clear the error code (camshaft sensor out of range, or something like that) and put everything back together.

I also changed the oil. It seems like a waste to extract out the 1000 mile old Mobil1 TDT 5w40 oil, but I just want to make sure no metal bits, or extra material from the sealant or flange remained in the oil. I replaced the oil filter and put in new oil, but left the Amsoil BP90 bypass filter. That filter I won’t replace until 50,000 miles.

I’ll do another oil analysis at 10,000 miles from today. Hopefully the wear rates are better than the VW spec oil.

iamstuffed Auto Diesel, Filter, Golf, Oil, TDI, VW

This semester has been rough.

I took CMSC 601 Research Skills and CMSC 635 Advanced Computer Graphics on the suggestion of my temporary advisor, Dr. Penny Rheingans. I didn’t really want to take two classes since I have a full time job, but work has been pretty flexible, and gave me some time off for school work and projects, so it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Still, taking two classes wasn’t easy. The project I did in graphics overlapped a little with my research proposal for 601, but not enough! Writing that final research proposal took so much of my free time, just looking up references and reading the extra papers.

In the end, the Research Skills class was definitely worth it. I never knew you could log into UMBC’s library website to get access to all the journal, conference, and database sites for papers. Previously, I just searched for the papers while at work, or while at school. I also think I became a better writer, since Dr. desJardins gave really thorough feedback on everything.

Dr. Olano seemed to be more interesting when he was teaching a class in his field. I took him for architectures a few years ago, and just remember that class as being boring. Maybe it was just the subject area; how can architectures not be boring? One thing that didn’t really change though was the feedback received. In architectures, we received grades for all the assignments in a reasonable amount of time after the submission of the assignment, but no feedback on anything. All the assignments just had marks for points taken off, with no explanation. This semester, in 635, I have yet to receive a single grade and the final exam is on Tuesday. Granted, there were only two big homework assignments, and one final project, along with some ambiguously graded items like presentations, participation and questions to the assigned papers, it still seems odd that no one has a grade yet. The final exam is worth 20% of the final grade, and it would be nice to know what grade I need to get an A.

So… now I have to study like I need as much of the final exam contribution as possible. It would be awesome if I knew that I only needed a 50% on the final to get an A, but I don’t know that, so I can’t expect that. This weekend and all day Monday, I need to reread 55 papers in 10 topic areas well enough to understand the key concepts and answer some possible questions from them on the final. What fun. 55 siggraph style papers of dense, jam-packed content.

635 was very useful. I’ve applied the final project to something at work, and I have some additional ideas that I want to try at work. I think Advanced Computer Graphics and Data Visualization were the two most useful classes I’ve taken so far, just because I was able to use the concepts at work.

Tuesday evening will feel great! I’ll be done with the semester.

iamstuffed School Graphics, UMBC