Sunday morning and I started with some nice easy jobs.
Front bracket on, along with PAS pump and alternator. Also the oil filter housing and breather pipes:
The coolant hard pipe washer was looking a little manky:
Thankfully, Big Bad Dad had given me this set, so a replacement was easily found
Next up was the new master cylinder, I'd snapped a bleed nipple off on mine back at Castle Combe and I hadn't been able to drill it out successfully. 30% discount code at ECP last weekend was handy.
Fitted:
Next up I started removing the tfsi adapter plate from the old (dead) head.
First job was to remove the studs.
A few came out, but most didn't want to know. So I soaked it all on wd40 and decided to change plans whilst I let the wd soak in.
Instead, I pushed the a3 outside (getting quite used to pushing these things around), and drove the BMW into the garage.
After last weekend fails on the BMW, I'd picked up a complete gearbox in the week which Luke, Sam and I fitted on Thursday evening.
I'm glad to report the BM is now back to full health and going great.
We'd filled the new box with fresh oil on Thursday, but I was keen to drop it one further time to make sure it's really clean in there.
This was the inside of the sump after dropping the oil today:
And this was the condition of the magnet in the new box:
Compared to this in the old box for comparison:
It's safe to say this is in much better health!
Sump cleaned:
And back along, along with a new filter, a tube of Shudder Fix, and 6litres of Dexron 3.
Whilst under there, I fitted new drop links, and aside from the MOT on Tuesday, that's the BMW done with for a while hopefully!
Back to the a3, and the studs had had some time to soak, so I started removing those.
Most wound out ok, although this one needed some heat:
Now for the sh*t part.....
2 years ago, one of the studs snapped on situ whilst replacing the turbo. It left enough thread to get a nut on still, so I decided I'd deal with it when I was forced to.
That time was now.
This lovely short stud did NOT want to come out. It was too short for my stud extractor, so I tried welding a nut to the end:
Max power, concentrated on the centre. And I have no idea why, but the welder absolutely would NOT penetrate onto the stud
I tried EIGHT times, and only one of those stuck enough to try and Undo the stud:
That one time. The ******* thing just snapped off lower down!
So there we go!
I've got the adapter off, but the angled thread has a stud stuck in there, and I myself cannot get it out.
I'm sure it's a simple enough job for an engineering shop to drill it out, but with the tools I've got I've tried and I just can't get it out.
Buying a new adapter is out of the question, especially when I KNOW this can be sorted, but until such time as its sorted, the car is once again on hold