Plenum Manifold removal 4.2tdi
 

Since I've got some holiday lined up and can't go anywhere I've been working on the car, has anyone removed the air plenum manifold before on the 4.2tdi? going to replace the manifold with a nice clean one, any tips for removing the fuel rail line linking the 2 rails, is it pressured? bit scare of starting to dismantle things, I've attached a photo of what I'm on about for reference

Got this job done last weekend, its not too bad. loads of egr and pcv deposits in the manifold, that won't happen again now :D swapped over with a porsche cayenne manifold that i ported the inlet all good

Tell us more

Well apart from being quite a mucky job I thought it was well worth it, I knew the upper inlet manifold was dirty as sin after cleaning my anti shudders. So I decided to fit a nice clean upper manifold and port it a little at the same time. Sourced a upper intake manifold off ebay off a 2014 porsche cayenne, basically the same part which was a lot cleaner than mine. Used jeyes bbq cleaner and a pressure washer to get all the gunk off great stuff btw. Next step was to port the inlet ports on the manifold after the antishudders with a draper multitool. I didnt take too much off just so the casting had gone and was smooth, then washed. Next part was fitting, egrs are closed and mapped out so I had gaskets ready and egrs blank plates from darkside developments (theres no documentation of this I just had to take measurements and compare with what they had on they're site). I removed the manifold and fitted the new one with the egr plates and plated the egr outlet port under the manifold. Then fitted the manifold and bolted back together. Once refitted feels a lot better knowing that theres only going to be pcv going through the manifold now. Took a little bit of prep work but id say it's worth it.

I'm doing a second part to this job if anyone is remotely interested and has nothing better to do in lockdown :D now the egrs are closed and blanked next job is the swirl flaps, got a delete kit from poland company called tafmet, looks to be of decent quality and has the limiter brackets which should stop any errors which would pop up. When I replaced the top manifold the lower mainfold was all carboned up I'm going to tackle it at the same time found jeyes bbq and power washer gets rid of the lifetime build up of crud. I'm undecided whether to remove the egr cooler and use some barbed connectors to marry up the feed and return lines, probably best leave where it is just in case, but will be fitting the swirl flap removal kit soon

Onto the next step I've had these lying around for some time just waiting on a good day to fit. Intake manifolds with swirl flaps removed cleaned and blanked ready to go in along with actuator limiting brackets, from memory actuators fully open flaps at 2krpm so minimal impact on perfomance if anything it'll be better as looks like marmite in there at current

Hi @jonnypym123, I'm about to do swirl flaps delete tomorrow just like you did it. Can you please tell me your experience? How does the car behaves, do you feel the difference? Anything in particular that I should be paying attention?