Yea I guess your right, just want to make sure he knows what hes getting into.

 

True enough. I'd like to think that no one would attempt head gaskets without knowing how involved the job is, but you never know. Milo seems to have a good grasp on it though

 

Labeling rocks! When first started to tear everything apart, I was getting more nervous by the day whether I was going to be able to put everything back together right. But, I have been taking pictures after every step. I have my nice dSLR with me and I have been labeling everything with blue tape and a silver permanent marker. If anyone ever considers doing this kind of work on their car, I would highly recommend on investing in a silver permanent marker and blue tape used to tape house windows when staining the trim. Intake: I did a lot of research on that, and if not gone about properly, you could actually be doing more damage to your car than what the original setup was. The so called “advanced air filters” can actually do harm to your car. Filters like K&N actually have big pores (if I remember correctly) and let more harm into your engine than your standard paper filter. For the moment, I am totally fine with the intake as it is, but thanks for the tip . Maybe in the future I’ll invest in something since now I know how to rip it apart. Not a long job…maybe 30 min or less.

Coolant and vacuum lines: I plan on replacing the vacuum lines for sure but the coolant lines seem okay from what I inspected…..still considering about it…but it all depends how much they cost.

Torques: I’ve got the Bentley Manual and good torque wrenches. I am all about torquing things the right way…and replacing worn bolts

Future Upgrades: Supercharger is my dream upgrade….but that will have to wait till I make some hardcore cash….haha…or maybe by that time I will switch to the 1.8L…who knows at this point.

 

I have learned that during car repair jobs (well, the ones I have been involved in), it is harder to tear everything down then it is to put everything back together. I have been at this since last week Wednesday – a couple of hours a day. So far I have invested a total of 15 hours, I believe; do to rusted parts being a pain in the *** to take down, but I hope that I will have everything replaced by Tuesday or Wednesday, and then I think it will take me one day to put everything back together. I feel pretty confident. Thinking about it now, I can see exactly in my head how everything goes back together to the detail…which makes me feel really good about this. Also, I have labeled all screws in different zip tight baggies (the ones you use for sandwiches – I have literally dozens of them with different types of screws in them) which will make my job putting things back together ever better. They are all in order…lol…I know it’s kinda crazy…so pretty much I will grab a bag with screws and the right part and put it on…and so forth…till everything is back how it was .

 

Thanks for believing in me. I figured a lot of patience, some rum (not really a beer drinker), and some time will get the job done. I’ll keep updating you guys with how the rest is coming along. I’m actually excited to post all this info on the net once I’m done. I’ll try to label all the sensors and crap on the car I came across. Pretty much, if anything breaks down in the engine bay, I kind of know how to access it which will be of huge help in the future

 

I think on google video a guy does a video to show you how to remove it, looks very easy to do.

 

Here it is 2000 A4

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...ex=0&hl=en

 

That's a pretty good resource.

 

Update on project:

So, I have gotten further. I have installed a whole bunch of new gaskets. It should cover all oil leaks for another 80,000 miles or so. I hope at least. Supposedly the gaskets I have are a new and improved design that is supposed to last longer. It’s usually like that, were they come up with better stuff for your car later down the road.

Picture One: I took off all the bearing caps (the red circled stuff). You take those off by undoing the black screws (10nm or 7 ft-pd). You do all of them except 2 and 4 (the number 2 and 4 is written on the bearing cap). I pretty much took both camshafts (I believe that is the right terminology) off at the same time with the camshaft tensioner (bottom red circle).

Picture Two: With the shafts removed, you can see the 5 valves per cylinder circled in green. The purple indicates where you would find gaskets (that I have replaced). The dark red on the top was the camshaft position sensor. That was a pain in the *** to get off but it was doable.

Picture Three: Here you can see al l the bearing caps laid out. The blue are the parts for the camshaft position sensor from earlier. The yellow is the camshaft tensioner gasket. There is another part as well but you will see the new one installed in one of the other pics.

Picture Four: The red shows the special tool used to relax the camshaft tensioner. The light green is the camshaft tensioner.

Picture Five: Here you can see the marks I made with a silver permanent marker to make sure my timing was right when I put this back. There are 16 rivets when counting from one of the yellow circled ones to the other one. This has to be exact or else you may be facing issues you don’t want to deal with…. Or at least I wouldn’t want to deal with.

Picture Six: The new gasket installed (red color). The new gasket looked much stronger and durable than the old gasket but the old gasket was quite a few years older.

Picture Seven: The camshaft tensioner gasket installed on top of the other blue half moon gasket.

The next task is to get the whole head off. Hopefully that will work out semi smoothly. I will report on that tomorrow sometime after succeeding or failing. Hopefully it will be a successful job. Then I will be able to replace the head gasket and exhaust gasket and intake manifold gaskt. I was also going to look into doing the Valve Oil Seals but I found out you need some special compression tools, so I backed off from that job. I do have the seals, and I will save them because I plan on getting those tools sometime in the future and then I'll come back and do the seals. But for now, this has been more than enough work to keep me busy...lol.

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Picture 2

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