Friday, December 8, 2017

VW Passat B5/ Audi A4 Differential Fluid



Easy job that everyone needs to keep on top of.  These cars leak fluid.  At least mine all have. Not sure if VW uses cheap gaskets or I have just been unlucky.  Anyone else have leaky seals. I know I should replace them.  But that would require getting whole car on jack stands.  Lots of work.  But now that I think of it.  That will be my next video.    After I replace the O2 sensor on the v6.

Thursday, September 22, 2016

Replaced Intake Manifold Gasket

I had error codes 491 and 492 and the fllowing errors on VCDS.  Replaced the gasket on the intake manifold and no more error codes. I think the gaskets get old and brittle after 15 years and they need to be replaced. This should get me better gas mileage and better engine performance. I will give an update in a month or so with the mas mileage. But I can already tell my engine has more power. The noise or hissing I heard was from air rushing in under intake manifold. The car is a 2001.5 VW Passat with 2.8 liter V6. It has approx 115k miles on it.


Friday, May 20, 2016

VW Passat/Audi A4 New Rear Shocks DIY

Here is a detailed DIY on replacing the shocks on a 1999 VW passat. 2001.5 and newer have a different design.  The newer cars require a coil compressor.   But I think everything older is of this design and are fairly easy to do. It is a 3 part video.  Just follow the links in the comments section of each video to find the other parts. Hope this helps.  Also I would encourage everyone with an older (15 years) VW to change all your shocks.  The improvement in ride is great and your tires will wear better.  I show you in video# 2 how to tell if your shocks are bad. Another suggestion is to buy new shock mounts when you  order the shocks.  My mounts were well worn and need replacing.

Saturday, February 13, 2016

VW Passat b5 Audi A4 Valve Cover Gasket

Well over time I have had to redue my valve cover gaskets a couple times.  I found it best to place gasket making material, silicon or RTV on each end of the engine and mainly on the lower side.  Here are a couple pictures.Another thing to look into if your gasket keeps blwoing out is replace your PCV system.   The PCV will get clogged and then the pressure builds up.  The weekest point is the gasket so it will cause it too leak.  According to my son you can get a oil cap that has a vent to relieve the pressure.  I have not looked into this yet.

Thursday, November 13, 2014

15 Years and 210k miles on 1999 VW Passat

Well the 1999 VW Passat was getting bad gas mileage and not very much power.  I think the turbo has gone out on her.  Then a check engine light comes on.  I run a scan with my OBD scan and it is code po422.  So I Google this and find:

On your vehicle you have at least 2 oxygen sensors, one in front of the catalytic converter and one behind it. The front O2 sensor monitors the amount of oxygen coming out of the engine and going into the cat, this regulated how much fuel the engine gets injected into it. The downstream or rear O2 sensor checks to see if the level of oxygen coming out of the cat is different than what went in.

The code you are getting shows that the 2 oxygen sensors are reading the same. This is supposed to show that the catalytic converter is bad. If you take the car to Autozone, they will tell you that you need a new catalytic converter. More than likely, you can replace the front oxygen sensor and this code will go away.

So I decide I will give her a tune up.  First to get to the front o2 sensor on the 1.8 liter you have to pull the air box.  I pull the air box and clean out the prefilter which gets the big dirt before the air filter.  The I clean of the This was 3/4 of the way full.  The I put in a new air filter and then I replaced the 02 sensor.  While I am at it I figure  I might as well replace the spark plugs.  My old plugs were Bosch Iridium.  They had 50k miles on them.  I replced them with cheap autolite copper plugs.  The copper plugs were only a buck a piece while the Iridium are $10-12 a piece.  I also prayed off the MAF mass air flow sensor.  This was actually still really clean but sprayed it anyway.  My old spark plugs were still in decent shape. They all looked to be burning fairly even.    


I put everything back together and she is running better.  The mileage meter on the dash is showing approx 10 percent improvement in MPG. But she is still a dog.  I am now more sure than ever the turbo is gone.  My 16 year old is driving this car right now so I do not mind that it is slow.  Might be for the best.

I just recently(October 2017) sold this car.  It had 225k miles and still running strong. 

Thursday, September 12, 2013

14 Years and 200k miles

Well she finally did it. We turned over 200,000 miles on the odometer. Just change the oil every 4k miles. Currently using Peak oil 10/40 with a big Microguard filter. I use to use 5 30 when the car was young. I also use to be very particular about type of oil. I mainly stuck with Castrol for the first 100k. Then I started buying whatever brand was on sale. I have mostly used Fram oil filters. But sometimes I buy whatever was on special.I read something online about Microguard being a better filter than the Fram and it is cheaper.   I have also switched between 2 different sizes of filter. There is the 2870 and then there is the 3569 filter. One filter  is bigger than the other.   Hence more filter area and fits just fine. They say the 1.8 liter turbo engine should use synthetic, but I have stuck to the old fashion oil and my car still runs just fine. I mainly stuck to the old oil to prove a point . At first i did not want to switch because Synthetic was so much more expensive. But now synthetic has really come down in price. But since I am already 200k into this experiment I figure I will stick it out to the end and keep using Dinosaur oil till the car dies. It does burn at least a quart of oil between every change. I think it burns less oil now that I switched to 10/40 but it is hard to tell. Also over the years i have had some oil leaks mainly from the oil cooler. Usually happens in winter time once that gasket gets cold and brittle then it starts leaking. So that messes up my measuring the amount of oil the car burns. hard to say how much is burned off and how much is leaked out. On all other maintenance I try to follow recommended intervals. Two things I highly recommend is changing out your radiator fluid and your brake fluid on a consistent basis.  Most people do not understand that those fluids do brake down and need to be changed.  I ended up selling this car in October 2017.  It had 225k miles on it and still running strong.