Well Yesterday was a brilliant day for me, the day before I finished off with having most the covers on and cleaning the inlet manifolds, yesterday I set about cleaning some of the intercooler pipework and fitting as much as I could, I'm currently awaiting the exhaust manifold gasket to turn up and then I can bolt that and the turbo outlet pipe, fit the air filter housing and flush the entire engine, coolant and oil to remove and crap that may have gotten into it whilst it was open, I was reluctant to fit the injectors and was going to do them last to give me a bit of space but I started to get restless yesterday as I have done all I can without the gasket and just went crazy and fitted them anyway
After being laid up for so long I had forgotten the routing of some of the stuff but luckily I had 1 picture with the cover off and I used that as a reference, luckily whilst removing stuff I left most the clips one items and that made it easier to gues its position along with the photo, once I had the vacuum lines coolant and fuel lines in place I set about putting the loom in, considering it looks quite busy once you delv in its surprisingly not too bad, got the loom done and that's when I decided I'd also fit the injectors, another stroke of luck is being piezo injectors they need to go back into the same cylinder and being ****ed off and probably tired when I took them out I just threw them into a bag, but when I fitted them I took photos of the tops in there respective cylinder for VCDS coding so they where soon back in the right place.
Right lets get some pictures up instead
This was end of play on Monday I think
A good feeling was finally putting all the locking tools back in the box as the crank pin had been in the car since July
I obviously triple checked the car by turning over by hand more than two rotations
Some pictures of caustic soda cleaned inlet manifolds and swirl flaps
End of play Tuesday saw the engine bay looking like this
Excuse the orientation of the photo but this is it all back in bar the injectors and gasket I'm still awaiting
Now the good bits
I got injector fitted and thought there's nothing stopping me firing it up just to check it's working as should be, but because it's been unstated for so long, it'll be a good idea to crank it over a few times to build oil pressure and get the oil up into the heads and turbo and bleed the fuel system of air on the HP side, so unplugged the injectors left the unions undone on the fuel lines and as you guys know one turn of the key and the car will keep turning till it fires, I made sure the starter had a rest between starts as its good practice, I was greeted by a wonderful sign though, and the puffs of smoke are just the left over oil I put in the bores to protect it and stop it from starting dry
Once I got all the air out the fuel lines I nipped the unions up, double checked everything was where it should be within reason as some stuff is still unbolted, I have to admit I felt very nervous plugging all the injectors in ready to crank the engine and let it fire for the first time, it was dry as I had emptied the coolant for the head work and only ran it for 10 seconds if that, it sounds like a drag car due to having no manifold one side and being an open straight pipe on the other, but it idled even and no smoke from cold start which was a nice healthy sign
So after that I was well chuffed, it was a little sluggish to start but only marginally and it's probably down to left over air in the injectors as they weren't bled, best news is, no more start up rattle
I have to admit i'v gone the long way round about it but I got there in the end
Now I'm just waiting for the gasket to turn up, i'v also got to get a 1/4 torque wrench as the glow plugs need nipping up on the replaced side, and as my car was fitted with ceramic plugs i'v replaced the rebuilt side with steel plugs and will remove the other side once I run the engine and burn up some of the carbon deposits, the manual States no more than 16mn of release torque iirc and I really don't want to have them snap so will do this job by the book, once they are all related I then need to have the glow plugs coded for the new voltage they need, it can be done in conjunction with a remap though
I could get the a5 injectors correctly mapped to the car as well
Sorry for the epic post but it's been a busy few days, it's the longest i'v probably ever written