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building up replacement AAA engine, swap manifolds, throttle bodies, and try to work out which plug is which on the engine loom :)

Excellent, thanks, pianowire. :salute:

bump.. anyone? Any help appreciated, cheers :)

Hi all, I've sourced a AAA engine from a Sharan to replace my shot ABV -- got it home and noticed this part attached to the front of the engine just under the inlet manifolds. Does anyone know what it is and what it's for? The ABV head doesn't appear to have a hole for it. I'm hoping I can just blank off the hole on the AAA head and get rid of this bit. Cheers, Tom climatronic wiring-Golf from May 01.pdf05042009014.jpg[/attachment:19n2rz5d] 2.8l 24v Climatronic system.pdf05042009013.jpg[/attachment:19n2rz5d] 05042009012.jpg[/attachment:19n2rz5d]

The scrappy I called earlier in the week now has a Mk4 golf 4motion -- any ideas on a reasonable price for just the engine? Not sure of the mileage just yet but he wants £750 excluding gearbox etc... Cheers Tom

Just phoned a local scrappy and they also have a V6 sharan in that starts & drives so I may go & take a look at it.. He says he wants £400 for the engine only which seems pretty steep. Yes. :) I would much prefer to get a nice R32 in there but funds simply don't allow it at present. :( Currently I just wanna get the car back on the road so I can drive it this summer, rather than the ropey old Fiesta I have at present... Tom

Just wondered if anyone has had any experience buying engines from eBay? I'm pondering getting a 2nd hand AAA to replace my shot ABV unit. There's always a few up for around £250 or so - is that a reasonable price or is it eBay markup? Any info about a reliable place to get decent second hand engines (or who has an AAA for sale!) much appreciated! :D Cheers Tom

If the bolt has a raised head you could try cutting a slot in it with a hacksaw and using a big screwdriver, this worked for me when I rounded out a hex key bolt holding the upper timing chain cover on to my vr6...

I wonder if anyone has any recommendations for a reputable machine shop in the Manchester area, somewhere that'll do block reboring and hot-tanking etc...? Cheers Tom

That's great, thanks for the advice. Trouble is my garage hasn't got quite enough room to get the engine out of the car at the front and still shut the garage door at the back, so looks like I'm gonna have to shift the car around a bit. Cheers Tom

Just a quick naive question -- If I take the engine out of my VR6, can I then take the car off the stands and push it around on the wheels or will the suspension fall apart?

I think some material definitely got into the cylinder, there's quite a bit of melted metal on the flat surface of the valve and I found lots of crumbs in the inlet manifold (see prev post) The cylinder wall seems a bit rougher than the others but there's no obvious deep scoring...

Finally got the head off today and the exhaust valve on cyl 5 appears to have exploded?! See photo... That'll explain the crumbs of metal kicking around the inlet manifold, and the total lack of compression on that cylinder... and I'm guessing the bits will have pretty much ruined the cylinder wall -- I haven't measured them but cyl5 seemed more rough than the others. :sad: 29122008092.jpg[/attachment:1x9zlt82]

If you've got a multimeter you can check the battery by measuring the voltage on the terminals -- a good battery should show around 12.8V if it's fully charged. If you leave the car overnight after a long-ish drive and it's showing less than 12.5 or so then something is wrong, either it's not being charged properly, or being discharged too fast by some dodgy wiring, or its just really old and knackered and hence not holding it's charge any more. While the engine is running the battery voltage should be around 13.8V if I recall correctly, this shows it's being charged.

Took the inlet manifold off -- inlet to cyl5 had a few cc of a whitish mayonnaise-like substance in the bottom of the tube... the worrying thing was it also had lots of little 'crumbs' of blackish metal spread around in there as well :( Seems like some important piece of metal may have disintegrated at some point :pale: Next step -- I think I'll remove the cams and see if there's anything obviously wrong with the tappets or the tops of the valves.. 17112008067.jpg[/attachment:moyrl333] Regarding engine swaps, the previous owner did actually rebuild this engine about 10,000 miles ago.. It's a 2.8 block rebored to 2.9, and the head was skimmed, valve stem seals were replaced and the valves were lapped back in. The original pistons were reused with new rings. So... given that this has happened to a 12v VR6 in that length of time, I wouldn't really want to swap it with another relatively high mileage engine of the same type -- if I'm gonna swap engines I think I may go the whole hog and get a 24v... an R32 lump sounds like a brilliant plan to me :D cheers Tom

Just done another compression test. The first figure is the dry test, the second is the wet test, both in PSI. Cyl1: 111, 120 Cyl2: 122, 143 Cyl3: 110, 129 Cyl4: 125, 147 Cyl5: 0, 0 Cyl6: 120, 138 So it seems like I have some bore wear across most of the cylinders, and some still unknown problem with cylinder 5. :scratch:

The engine was pretty warm when I did the test, the oil temp was showing around 60C and water temp a little lower... The thing is I'm not losing any coolant and the cooling system doesn't appear to be getting unduly pressurised... main other symptoms are massive oil consumption and smoky exhaust. Just off out to the garage now, gonna do another compression test, this time I'll do a wet test as well. Then I think I'm gonna strip it down to the point of taking the cam cover off and see what's what... Cheers for the advice & info as always :) Tom

Just did a dry compression test, here's the results: Cyl1: 110psi Cyl2: 120psi Cyl3: 110psi Cyl4: 120psi Cyl5: 0psi Cyl6: 117psi No, that's not a typo, cylinder 5 showed no compression whatsoever, didn't even move the gauge! I think I've found the cause of the misfire -- now I'm wondering what on earth could cause it to have no compression at all...? I guess either a valve stuck open (is that possible?) or completely shot piston rings. I didn't get round to doing a wet comp. test, didn't have any spare oil around, so will see if I can do that at the weekend. Also I noticed a loud tapping sound coming from somewhere near the throttle body, which increased in rate with engine rpm, got a bit quieter with higher rpm as well... i've never noticed it before...

Took the bonnet off, removed the LHS headlight, radiator grille and spent about 2hrs trying to get the RHS headlight out with no success -- bl**dy recessed screw has rusted solid and I've managed to completely bugger the head... grrrr

Well I've finally got the car into the garage and started taking the engine apart. So far I've removed the battery, headlights, grill, (with a view to removing the slam panel -- is this a good idea as I'm gonna have to take the intake manifold off?) spark plugs & leads, and the engine covers. It seems like there's a fair bit of oil that's dripped down the back of the block, not sure if this is from a leaky head-cover gasket or just from spills when topping up... Next stage is to remove the intake manifold and the head cover and have a gander at the cams... if there's nothing obviously wrong (not sure if I could actually tell by that stage?) then I guess it's head-off time... took a photo to remind me where all the wires go -- u can see the head bolt on the bottom right is full of oil... 21102008019.jpg[/attachment:2mx5tmps] Tom

Tom, that's a very inspiring story, glad I read it as I'm just about to embark on some probably rather expensive and time consuming repairs to my VR's engine... Tom P.S. You have a very cool name :salute:

No, not got it sorted yet unfortunately. :( Gonna take the head off in the next couple of weeks and see if I can spot the problem, just waiting to get the car into the garage that the landlord has been promising he'll clear out for the last 6 weeks or so :bad-words:

I've just got the folks' mighty P-reg 1.3 Fiesta for a runabout whilst I get the VR sorted. It's a terrible car in just about every way -- except economy (£37 for a tank that does 350 miles!) If only somehow the VR would do that!! Really need to get the VR sorted now, it's been sitting on the drive for nearly 6 weeks now looking rather sorry :(. Should be starting the work next weekend once I get the garage cleared though :clap:

I love the "previous customer" quote: ... so it does 4mpg and produces just under 100bhp then...? :scratch: :lol:

Really nice car -- and if only we had scenery and roads like that in the UK!