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This weekend, I did a lot of maintenance items for my car: new rear rotors and brake pads, new brake fluid, and a new CAT fuel filter.

I should have taken more pics of the brake pads and rotor replacement procedure, but I was getting frustrated by how long it took me to do these things. I first had to jack the jar up onto four jack stands and take all the wheels off. After looking at the brake pads on the front wheels (which I was planning on replacing as well), I was surprised to find that the rear brakes were worse than the front! Normally, the front brakes wear faster than the rear brakes, since when you brake, most of the weight of the car transfers to the front. This is also the reason some car companies skimp on the rear brakes and have front disc with rear drum brakes.

After some reading on tdiclub.com, the rear brake pads are small and soft, and VW designed them that way. The rear calipers have a piston that needs to be turned while pushing to reset them back to their initial position. I used a Metal Nerd brake capiler reset tool and it worked fine. Since this was the first time I replaced brakes, I made sure to take my time. After the calipers were reset, and the brake pads and rotors were installed, I changed the brake fluid.

Changing the brake fluid is pretty easy, but time consuming. At each wheel, there’s a bleeder nipple thingy that you connect a tube to, and direct to a drain bottle of some time. Using a pressure bleeder attached to the brake fluid reservoir, pressure is applied to the system. You just loosen the bleeder screw a little and fluid drains from the bleeder screw into the drain bottle. I also bled the fluid for the clutch, which uses the same fluid from the same reservoir. The only issue I had was making sure the brake fluid reservoir did not go below the min level. On my car, the reservoir was opaque! I had to keep using a flashlight and opening the cap to make sure the level did not go too low. When it got to the min level, I filled it back up. In the end, I used two 12oz bottles.

I’m not entirely sure I replaced all the fluid, but I’m going to replace it all again in a few months using a different colored brake fluid (Blue). Using a different color just makes it easier to tell when the fluid is new. The old fluid I drained was pretty dark, but after some time, the fluid gradually got lighter. I don’t know if I stopped too early or too late. Hopefully the color change will help that out.

Today I replaced my OEM fuel filter with a CAT fuel filter kit. The installation was similar to a regular fuel filter change, but required some minor modifications. I must have let air into the line going to the engine, because I couldn’t start it after a few minutes. When I first tried starting the car, it started fine and ran for a few minutes. Eventually, it started sputtering and died. After cycling the ignition a few times, I just kept attempting to start the car, letting the starter rest for 30 seconds between attempts. After the first five attempts, I started getting nervous, but it started right up after the sixth time.

Now all I have to do is install my DieselGeek bypass filter kit. While working on my brakes, I noticed that I had some oil on the backside of the engine and on the dogbone mount, directly above my metal skidplate. I guess that’ll be my next troubleshooting sessions. I don’t really notice exessive oil consumption, although I have had to add a quart or so between oil changes. I’ll first try replacing the oil filler cap gasket (the lower one), then the tandem pump gasket. Next weekend, I need to take the valve cover to inspect my camshaft and lifters anyway, so when I reinstall it, I’ll make sure to tighten the bolts to the correct torque values. Hopefully one of those fixes the issue. VW calls it “sweating”.

Auto Brakes, CAT, Golf, TDI, VW

Today I finally got around to installing some things I’ve been neglecting. When I first purchased my car, I bought a couple items: OEM HID lights, various switches, a Neuspeed 28mm rear sway bar, and a DieselGeek short shifter. It took me a year before I installed the HID lights.

Tonight, I installed both the short shifter and Neuspeed sway bar. For the past year, I’ve had issues with shifting into first gear. I’ve just gotten used to shifting into second, then into first before releasing the clutch, since it went into first smoothly that way. Since I had spare time and I had a short shifter waiting to be installed, I decided to do both installations.

The short shifter install was pretty easy (I forgot to take a picture of the short shifter kit):

I just followed the instructions that came with the shifter. I had some issues with adjusting the shifter cable, but for the most part, I think I have it figured out. Shifting into first gear is much better!  It takes noticeably more effort to shift into the gears, but the distance needed to move the lever is much less, and it seems firmer.  I definitely liked what I’ve tried so far.

The Nuespeed sway bar installation didn’t go so smoothly.  I read several directions online detailing how to install the sway bar and thought it would be straightforward.  It actually would have been very easy, if the two brackets would have snapped into place like they should have!  I spent probably two hours trying to get those damn brackets in place.  For my first attempt, I picked up some C-clamps from K-Mart to try to force the bracket to lock into place.  That didn’t work.  I searched online for a little bit and found a post at vwvortex describing the use of a plumber’s pipe wrench and a jack, so I bought a big pipe wrench from K-Mart.

If I had known about the pipe wrench and jack trick prior to starting the installation, I could have finished in less than 30 minutes.  Instead, after three separate attempts throughout the night, it took me about 3.5 hours.  I used anti-seize on all the threads, and selected the middle hole for the sway bar (medium firmness).  Andrea and I drove around for a little bit after I finished putting tools away, but I couldn’t make tight turns because of the snow.

Here are the sway bar install pics:

Now the snow just needs to clear so I can test out my upgrades!

Auto Golf, Neuspeed, Short Shifter, TDI, VW

This past week, I’ve spent a lot of time researching solutions to some problems we were having with Andrea’s car. After the seller tried fixing the vacuum issues affecting the turbo, he disconnected the vacuum line to the turbo wastegate actuator, created a mini vacuum on that line, and plugged it so the turbo actuator was partially closed. He checked the max boost by flooring it in several gears, and the max boost displayed as 15psi. I guess this is at the top end of what is “safe” for the turbo.

Afterwards, everytime the car shifted, it made a loud noise (clunk) and shifted hard. Some intense reading at mercedesshop.com and a few days later, I decided to fix the shifting by diagnosing the vacuum lines going to the transmission. Using a MityVac, I found that the vacuum line going from the vacuum pump to the valves for the turbo/EGT were leaking like crazy, so little or no vacuum was reaching the transmission. I solved this by plugging the line that was leaking. Since that particular line was for the turbo/EGT and the seller plugged the line to the turbo, the line was useless anyway.

With the line plugged, the shifting got much smoother. In fact, the shifting became too soft! Whenever it shifted into higher gears, it would rev a little before dropping rpms. After some more reading, I fixed this new problem by adjusting the vacuum control valve(VCV). The MityVac showed that the transmission was getting approximately 12″ of vacuum and when I revved the engine by pulling on the throttle linkage, it would drop to 5″ or so. I untighted two 10mm bolts on the VCV, turned it clockwise, and retightened. I’m not entirely sure what the twisting of the VCV does, but I’m glad it worked.

Eventually I’ll post a pictures of what I modified and adjusted and update this post.

We filled up Andrea’s car. 391.7 miles and 14.457 gallons = 27.1 mpg. I think the next fill up should give us the true mpgs of her car; this time, I filled up the car until I could see the fuel in the filler tube. Go diesel!

Miscellaneous 300D, Diesel, Mercedes-Benz