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steveo29

strip and clean hydraulic tappets ..quick how to

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id heard before you can strip and clean the hydraulic tappets found on most later vw's , its nearly always the reason they tick

 

1, take your tappet and slam it onto some wood as hard as you can , might take a few goes for the center to fall out

 

tappets.jpg

 

tappets3.jpg

 

2, work over a sheet of white paper as the parts are tiny , the small cap on the left simply pops off with some pliers to reveal a spring and a ball bearing , take some time to clean all this up and reassemble with some clean engine oil , the center take a good shove to click back in place

 

 

tappets2.jpg

 

 

might help some of you that cant afford new ones , or worth doing while the engine is in bits

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do they actually wear at all then? I've seen talk of stripping these on Club GTI, I replaced all 16 on my valver (ouch) when having the head ported and wondered if it was one of those things like replacing wishbone bushes, where most garages haven't got the time to piddle around and just change the whole wishbone as the labour would be more than the parts.

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im certainly no engineer but all i can see failing is the spings breaking or going weak

 

these were just a bit gummy from old oil , really easy to do if you have the brains to get the tappets out you can do this , so worth a bash

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may well have a play as my 8v engine is pretty tappety and I've got a shrick cam lying about I wanted to try too :)

I'd rather play with cleaning tappets individually than putting cleaner through the whole engine, I've got visions of it springing leaks all over the place :lol:

Apparently if you are quick enough stripping a cam cover off and getting the cam out from a warm engine you can check tappets by seeing which have drained down, although this might be for checking fully collapsed ones rather than just slightly sticky ones?

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yeah apparently a dud will be soft while the others are hard

 

once theyre out its like 5 mins per tappet , plus any soaking time if you want to remove the burnt on oil , i just soaked the worst off with celly thinners and air lined then clean

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i spent time dismantling and cleaning all of mine when i rebuilt my cyl head in May, despite this they were still noisy, although not as bad as they were, so i replaced them with new last week which are quieter again but still not perfect.

 

that slamming action to remove the centre doesn't work at all, you need to grip the cente piece very very tight and pull them out, and i couldn't help but think this may lead to very slight distortion.

 

personally i wouldn't bother doing them again, it takes a long time to dismantle, clean and reassemble them.

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yeah no doubt brand new vag ones are the way to go if you have funds ..i just figured its worth a clean out if ever theyre out for whatever reason

 

you do need to belt em like a ginger step child , no gentle taps , all mine came out that way , but yeah you can use pliers as the bit you pull on doesnt need to be unmarked if the pliers nick it

Edited by steveo29

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you do need to belt em like a ginger step child

 

:lol: funniest line i've read in a while.

Edited by davidwort

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