Making an 82 Rabbit pick-up not suck at moving

yeah the EGR delete setup is very worthwhile on those era TDI's.  Surprisingly, that level of soot buildup is actually very common.  

Stellar progress!  nice work.  

Yeah, I'm a bit of a hippy and generally don't like removing pollution controls, but I might have to make an exception this time...

Good news, I'm off all week for Christmas and the garage fridge is stocked full of the essentials. 

Bad news, It's 20 deg. F all week and I'm sick today. 

Oh well, I can catch up on posting and the pellet stove is going to seem extra worth it tomorrow.

So back to that side engine mount. 

Here is the 1.6L's engine mount after it's date with the grinder.

It had an extra bracket hanging off the side that the Injector pump mounted to. It was too easy to modify apparently since I didn't take any pictures of the process. 

Here it is bolted up to the block. Timing belt is off and the backing plate is super easy to trim at this point. 

While the timing belt is off, may as well replace the water pump too. 

Also sprayed the block down with good old brake clean and replaced the rubber hoses that come off the water pump. 

I wanted to press in a fresh engine mount since I bought one made by FEQ, which is supposedly stronger than stock. 

Removing the old, a pain.

However, pressing the new one in was way worse. 

I thought I'd have it easy since I put the rubber bushing in the freezer and heated the engine mount in the oven.

But no luck, it got a 1/4" in, then jammed. I tried to straighten it out with the hammer, but no luck. 

In fact, after three attempts, this happened. Lucky for me, the parts broke away from me but that could have easily been a broken hand. I need to take note and make MUCH sturdier alignment blocks for the press. 

Well, back to the old BFH. 

This set-up yielded good results, even though it was a solid hour of banging.

On to paint, 

And back together.

Now I need to reinstall the timing belt, which means more special tools.

Tool number one, a tensioner wrench.

And tool number 2, a pulley lock.

All the custom tools together.

Done and done.

It's a shame the timing belt cover looks so crummy in comparison to the backing plate and bracket but oh well. It fits!

One down, two more to go

Hint for pressing in rubber parts, or any time a rubber part needs to slide over a metal part.  SOAP lots of liquid soap, it will help the rubber to slide over the metal.  It can still be a pain sometimes.

I like your project and the Volt in the background too.  I never realized a timing belt on a TDI required so many special tools!

I'm just leaving this here because it's neat. Your method is probably easier.

Clean intake soot with fire.

In reply to TED_fiestaHP :

The bushing in question has a metal ring around it.  So it's metal into metal.  No soap will help.  I like to use an old cv joint in the press to push down on the bracket over the bushing/mount.

In reply to Vigo :

I want to do that so bad.

I would have sworn it was this forum someone posted an intake the other day and said they got an intake too hot during cleaning and it melted a big ass hole in it. I was super confused, but now i understand.

In reply to Vigo :

Daaaamn... 

I definitely wish I had know that prior to cleaning it with water, when I could have been cleaning it with fire! I wonder if there is a way to do that on the head ports? 

This is the only video/ info I have found on cleaning intake ports/ valves.

http://f30.bimmerpost.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1005657

On to the driver's side engine mount. 

With the engine back in, I leveled it based on the valve cover and bolted up the front mount to hold it somewhat still.

Hopefully the valve cover should be level, It matches the oil pan so, there's that. 

Here's the gap to connect the transmission to the chassis. 

And a piece of box tubing that I had laying around that was very close to the right  width.

Step one: cut a hole in the box...

Step: two, have your brother turn a sleeve on the lathe.

Pro tip: an old house jack pipe is nearly the perfect size already.

Step Three: Drill some holes and clearance the shifter linkage. 

Step number four:

Spend way too long cutting an absolutely perfect circle out on the milling machine rather than just roughing it with an angle grinder. 

Step Five: 

Tack Weld the parts together and press the bearing in. 

Step Six:Bolt it in to place off center.

I got really lucky here since literally the first bolt I picked up fit perfectly.

Once I had it lined up, I scribed a line where the cut needs to be. 

It looks way off but that's cuz there is a 1/4" gap between the two. 

Step Number next: set yourself on fire with the grinding wheel. 

Also cut the bracket...

I checked it ws close before drilling a hole to help find the same spot on the other side.

Checking that it's close...

But wait! You know what I never checked? If the truck was level!

I have a sweatshirt with the same kind of burn hole in it.

Wow, great work.  Very impressive!

Thanks for the kind words, Android! 

Ok, so I used some wood blocks to level the truck, having all the engine weight on only one engine mount will do that, duh.

Lucky for me, that side of the truck needed to move down, not up and I could just give the mount a little trim. 

Still fits, All tacked  up. 

This sleeve is not nearly s snug as the passenger side so knocking the bushing out for final welding was a breeze. I may tap a screw into it when I'm done though, just to make sure there is no chance of it moving about.

I also added in some completely unnecessary bracing. 

Also in hind site, I should have left the front side of the tube intact so I could just weld it across the other tube instead of adding this piece, but makes no difference now. 

Man, you forget how easy it is to weld clean, thick metal when you haven't done it for a while.

A little clean up

And re-installed!

I left little, also unnecessary, weep holes at the bottom since it's boxed in.

3 down, 1 to go!

Nice work.   One thing to check, not sure if you are checking the axle fit....   The engine assembly needs to be centered left to right, it's centered based on how the two axles fit, you don't want one CV joint to bbe bottomed out.  I made that mistake, when I made mounts for a race car, one axle was binding and that didn't work very well.

In reply to TED_fiestaHP :

Funny you should mention that, Making the axles fit is what I'm working on currently. I didn't do it first because the passenger side mount I installed first is "stock" so the side to side placement is already correct...hopefully.

Typically the inner CV allows for some axle movement, lengthwise.  With the axles installed, pull the CV boots back and you should be able to see if you are near centered.  There is some room for error, but I had one axle bound up tight, and that didn't work so well.  Worked much better after I got it centered....

Really nice job on the mounts, and on all the rust repair.  Should be a great little truck when your done.

I can't tell you how many time I have set myself on fire, when you see a flash of light not coming from the weld, good time to stop and see what is happening.  Grinding is sometimes more adventure than planed on....

BirgerBuilder said:

In reply to TED_fiestaHP :

Funny you should mention that, Making the axles fit is what I'm working on currently. I didn't do it first because the passenger side mount I installed first is "stock" so the side to side placement is already correct...hopefully.

My experience has taught me to be very distrustful of that kind of logic. Although, I don't know these cars at all. 

Nice work. I too, have the same hole in several shirts as I set myself on fire more than once working on the frame modifications.  Guess that is one way to keep warm this winter in the garage, I had to bring in projects to work on in the basement as it is too cold even for the space heater right now.

Yeah, it's been a bit chilly here...

 Since I was off work all last week, I kept the pellet stove on 8 hours a day and the garage stayed around a comfy 50-60F.

Ok, now on to axles and to see whether my gamble payed off. 

I had tried to install them earlier however...

Now don't start your "I told you so"s just yet. 

When I bought the engine, the PO had been planning a similar swap and I thought he had told me these were the correct axles. 

Not so, these are stock Jetta axles. Cruzing the TDI forums I found 16V scirocco axles will work, but I don't have those, and they are not super common. The other option is to Frankenstein the two together. That sounds... cost effective. 

Top: is the old 1.6L axle, inner already removed and bottom are the 90's Jetta axles. 

It's not easy to tell but the center axle is a good bit longer. 

Here's the catch.

Above: is the 90's axle. Below: the 80's axle. Spot the difference? 

Now you may notice, the second picture was taken while installed in a lathe. Best 800$ I ever spent.

For some reason, this took me over an hour to turn down. I just couldn't find the right tooling and when I did it was dull as hell and I had to resharpen it. Oh well, the other side should go much faster.

One side done. 

Now I was going to swap the outers as well since they looked newer and sturdier. However the ends are also different and far more difficult to modify. 

Here's a question though,is this discoloration from heat normal? When I first saw it, I thought the old outers were fubar, but then I noticed similar marks on the 90's outer. Is it just a defect left over from manufacturing? 

It's hard to see in the pictures, here's another angle.

Happy New Year!

Well I'm back at work now so I was only able to sneak out to the garage for an hour or so today. But that gave me time to pull the driver's side axles apart. 

The last set were a bit of a pain so I set this up. 

The outers don't have circle clips on them, just these little spring clips inside. 

So the manual says to hit them with a soft hammer. I couldn't find mine so this worked pretty well. 

Just lift the axle up and pull through like a slide hammer. Worked after about 4 good hits. 

Now I still have to machine the axle ends, but I made notes last time.

Also as a completely unrelated aside. Everyone should buy a box of these for their garage!

You write on them with a regular pen and then 4 years later when you pull the part out of storage you're not looking at a blank grease soaked piece of tape wondering what it used to say. 

That's all for now.

That heat discoloration looks too uniform. I'd imagine it's part of the heat treatment. Plus, if it were from heat in the assembly during use, all of your grease would be cooked and chunky before it got hot enough to discolor the metal. 

If it doesn't smell burned I wouldn't worry about it. 

nice work!  There's a 16V scirocco in the pick-n-pull near me.  The car is roached, but likely a good donor for some hard parts.  These certainly are getting harder to find spares for.  

Discoloration is normal, even new right outta the box.

This thread is awesome! Any chance you could post a few overall shots of the car/project/shop so we can put it on our homepage?

fasted58 said:

Discoloration is normal, even new right outta the box.

(and to Crackers)

Thanks, that's what I thought. Just thought I would check with the hive mind. 

In reply to Tom Suddard :

I'd Love too, I'll be sure to get some decent pictures of everything next time I'm out there.