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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

The last few weeks have been an ordeal!

I installed my Dieselgeek Bypass filter kit, finally. I waited until I did my ~100k oil change (a little early because of the upcoming trip to TN) and switched to Mobil1 Turbo Diesel Truck 5w40 oil. Even though the oil is not approved by VW to use in my engine, people at tdiclub.com have been getting good oil analysis results. I even took an oil sample of the oil before I removed it, so I had a baseline to compare with the Mobil1.

My brother and I went to Tennesee so he could adopt a Boston Terrier from a rescue. I think the mileage was about 400 miles each way and I was getting close to the 100k mile mark on my odometer (timing belt change time) but we took my car anyway. It has more space, and gets better mileage than his car. On the way to TN, we averaged 46 mpg! The dog was super nice, and ended up being a well behaved dog (with the exception that he farts like a titan!).

I was a little worried about my timing belt, since I’ve read nightmare stories about people waiting too long to change the belt. When the timing belt breaks, you usually need to repair the head of the engine, and maybe some other odd bits. At the minimum, it’s an expensive process to fix the engine. At the maximum, you need a new engine! I think I calculated the miles and left a 60 mile buffer once we returned to my house.

After we got home, I parked the car and worked on it in the evenings and the weekends. During the week, I drove Andrea’s Mercedes and she drove her Aurora. Sometime after we got back from TN, I received the results of the oil analysis. The comments on the oil analysis indicated something about the nitration being high.

I researched what that could mean, and multiple sites said it could be the turbo, egr, or something else, I forget. The VCDS (VAG-COM) diagnostic software indicated an error with the EGR, so I removed it and cleaned it.

On the friday after the TN trip, I started the timing belt change.

I spread out the work between friday night and saturday. On saturday, I started in the morning, and didn’t finish working on the car until late late in the night! This was my first timing belt change, ever, and the most I’ve ever done to a car up until that point. I just followed the instructions and everything seemed to go reasonably well, until I attempted to tighten bolts without a pulley.

On Sunday, I put everything back together, and test drove the car. I actually turned the crank a couple revolutions to make sure the timing was correct, and nothing was colliding. Everything seemed perfect, and I didn’t notice anything wrong, so I put my metal skid plate, and packed everything up.

The next day, I drove my car to work, in the pouring rain. When I got to work, I got out of the car (in the rain), and noticed some rainbow spots appearing under the car. Since the rain was coming down at a pretty good rate, the rainbow spots were pretty noticeable and they kept appearing. I thought maybe I spilled some oil, or it was the oil I found on my transmission mount, so I went into my office and started working. After some time, I got more and more worried about those rainbow spots on the ground, so I went back out and noticed that they kept appearing! I even started the car and moved to a different parking spot (all while it was still raining), and the spots trailed my car. My car was definitely leaking oil, and at a good rate too! I checked the oil level (in the rain), made sure it was at the max, and drove home.

Over the next few weeks, I had the pleasure of fixing my botched re-installation of the harmonic dampener. I tightened the bolts without the pulley at one point, going past the crankshaft sprocket and cracking the oil seal flange behind it. The fix: remove the crankshaft bolt, crankshaft sprocket, the oil pan, replace the oil seal flange and the seal, and reinstall the oil pan, crankshaft sprocket, and new crankshaft bolt. Prior to that point, I had no idea how to do any of that, but I read on the interweb and figured it out!

$130 Crank Yank from MetalNerd.com:

Crankshaft bolt removed:

After removing the crankshaft sprocket, this is what I found:

I actually found a small bit of metal on the bottom of my oil pan. Hopefully there was no other damage, or no other metal bits; that piece may have been dropped there whenever I took everything apart.

Here are the rest of the photos. Removing oil pan, cleaning it, and then resealing it with silicone and reinstalling everything.

The red Dirko silicone sealant (high temp, Hylomar equivalent by Elhrig)

Seal installer and installed seal:

Oil pan:

All done:

I reinstalled the sprocket, reinstalled the harmonic dampener, and reinstalled the timing belt and serpentine belt. So far, I’ve driven about 1000 miles since I changed the timing belt, and that includes not driving my car for two weeks. Even with my expensive mistake ($110 for the flange, $10 for the seal, and $130 for the Crank Yank counterhold tool), I still paid less for the timing belt change than the dealer charges, plus I got to learn how to work on my car. I will have to admit though that there were several times when I thought I was well over my head, but rational thoughts prevailed!

Now I feel like I can fix anything.

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

I changed the oil in my VW Golf tonight. Yesterday, I received the Pela oil extractor from UPS. It was pretty beefy compared to my other smaller extractor, and it seems like a solid piece of hardware. The pump seems more durable, and the suction seems more powerful. Maybe it’s my imagination, but that was my initial opinion after using for the first time.

Before the oil change, I took a sample of oil from the oil pan using a vacuum pump sampler. I bought an oil analysis kit from Oil Analyzers that came with a prepaid shipping label. I filled it up with the pump, changed the oil, and will send it off tomorrow. After some positive feedback from using Mobil 1 Turbo Diesel Truck 5W40 oil in PD engines, I decided to give it a try instead of the normal VW spec 505.01. At tdiclub.com, there are more and more people having camshaft and lifter problems in their PD engines, even though they used the VW spec oil. Either the oil isn’t as good as VW claims, or the design of the engine isn’t as robust as their older diesel engines. Either way, I want to try to limit the damage the oil could have caused; I’m going to try using the Mobil 1 oil for a couple iterations, while taking samples between the 10K oil change interval to track the progress of the oil. It *should* do better than the VW oils, since the Mobil 1 oil is a better synthetic. We’ll see!

Soon, I’ll change the timing belt too. Everyone recommends that the valve cover be removed to inspect the camshaft and lifters, so I’ll be doing that as well. Hopefully my cam and lifters are okay. Even if they don’t look okay, I’m not entirely sure I’ll do anything about it. More than likely, I’ll just keep trying to minimize the future damage. A new cylinder head from metalmanparts.com costs about $1700, which would include everything I would need to replace (hopefully), should there be a problem. At least I know the approximate dollar amount of the fix for a hypothetical worst case problem.

I’ll post the lab results from the ~8100 mile sample from my car. I’m not entirely sure it’s an 8100 mile sample because I don’t remember the exact mileage of my last oil change. I know I always change it at roughly the 10,000 mile interval, but it may have been a couple hundred miles over or under the 90,000 mile mark. I’ll track the mileage a little better now, especially since I have to put the info on the labels for the lab to track.

iamstuffed Miscellaneous Diesel, Golf, Oil, TDI, VW

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”.

iamstuffed 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!

iamstuffed 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!

iamstuffed Miscellaneous 300D, Diesel, Mercedes-Benz

Last night, I changed the oil in Andrea’s car. The seller said that it had about 1000 miles left on it, but I’m glad I didn’t wait. When I checked the dipstick, I noticed the oil was super thick.

I like to use an oil extractor to change the oil on my VW Golf because it’s quick and mess free, but for Andrea’s car, it took me an hour to extract the oil. The oil was just too thick! Earlier in the day, we drove around trying to find a local store that sold an oil extractor that held more than 7L, but no luck. The extractor I currently have only holds 4L; this meant I had to stop half way to empty the extractor and continue. When I stopped half way, the tube accidentally splattered some oil on the wall. So much for mess free!

Over the next free weeks, I’m going to search for an extractor that can hold enough oil for all the cars. These are the most likely candidates:

Pela Pro 14 (14L)
Motive Power Extractor (10 Qt)
MityVac 7400 Fluid Evacuator (7.3L)

I’m leaning towards the first one, since it holds more and looks like it uses a sealed/solid container. I can’t tell from the pictures of the Motive or MityVac products if they also have a solid bottom piece.

iamstuffed Miscellaneous 300D, Diesel, Mercedes-Benz, Oil

Lately, I’ve had to debug JNI code used by my Java Web Start application. Some of the issues I’ve dealt with did not show up until the code was combined and used in the resulting application. The following was how I used GDB to debug the code.

First, start the application as usual.  I was debugging a java web start application, so my command will be slightly different, but the debugging procedure will work regardless of what java program you are running. At the command line, you can type the following to launch the jnlp file:

javaws < location of jnlp file >

The jnlp file can be local or a remote file, just as long as it references and loads the code you are debugging. After it loads, the process ID needs to be found. Usually, I’ll just look at all the java processes running and can figure out which one is the application I’m interetesd in:

pa aux | grep java

Once the process ID has been identified, gdb can be launched and attached to the running process:

gdb -p < PID >

This starts gdb and attaches to the java program. At this point, the execution blocks until you do something with it. Just type “continue” and run the program as usual. When or if the program causes a segmentation fault, the debugger will block; you can then do a backtrace and see exactly what file and what line caused the issue.

iamstuffed Programming debug, gdb, Java, jni