Turboluvr
December 23rd, 2009, 06:26
Howdy All,
I've been working my 35K maintenance for the past few weeks. I know it shouldn't take that long, even though its a bitch of a job for a maintenance procedure, but I had to go to AFRICOM in Stuttgart GE for a conference...and there was that bad snow storm here on the east coast. OK so there's my excuses, my problem arose from a lack of detailed information on the tensioning procedures of the timing belt once you have it installed. I had numerous methods of how to accomplish this and they were just different enough, some radically, to spark my concern. I don't want to take any chances on this engine when its under warranty. Yes I called Fidelity and they are good with owner maintenance of the timing belt as long as they can't say that you screwed up the engine because of it. Now I've built lots of engines from Chevy to Porsche and restore cars as a hobby, so I consider myself a graduate shade tree mechanic. Even so I still got lots of eyebrows raised, from Audi dealer techs, when they found out I was doing this. After going through the process for the first time, I will agree that this is not the job for the novice. But if you are mechanically competent, AND HAVE A GOOD SERVICE MANUAL, you can pull this off.
Most of the easily available manuals are based on a teardown of an A6 (The Bentley, the Blauparts instructions, etc). The problem is that our cars are significantly different enough to give the non-Audi tech trained individual cause for concern. The solution is get the factory RS6 manual, this isn't actually a printed document, as far as I can tell, but a program called elsaWin that is expensive and hard to come by. Yes I have seen the torrent procedures and detailed processes that are involved in obtaining a second hand copy of the software. I tried that route and gave up because my computer isn't that fast and I'm not that smart with the Interweb. I've also considered the eBay offerings but have read the stories of DVDs that don't work and lack of tech support. What I did come across is erWin which is available through Audi, all of us in the US must go through AoA, we're blocked from the parent Audi site.
https://erwin.audiusa.com/erwin/showHome.do
erWin is a portal where, for a fee of $35 a day, you can download all the RS6 factory manuals you want. You have to download a digital rights management program from Oracle to keep you from copying anything and you need Adobe 6.0-9.1. Note that Adobe is currently at version 9.2, so if you are on automatic update, like me, you'll have to remove the new program and install an old version. Anyway this site helped me get all the RS6 specific manuals, just have lots of paper and printer ink on hand, I recommend it.
For parts I went with Blauparts, good quality and great people, just don't have the depth of experiance on our cars. You can rent the tools from them, I ended up getting the wrong thermostat in my order, which slowed everything down. But they backed their product, and didn't charge me for the extra tool time. I went ahead and bought the tools that I needed to complete the job and I suggest this as it gives you time to complete the job at your leasure and the essential stuff is only about $120. What you really need is:
The cam locking bar (T40005)
The crank locking bolt (3242)
The eccentric tool (T40009)
And some generic tools like a 3-arm gear puller, 1/4' and 3/8' torque wrenches, a full set of Torx bits, a 5mm drill bit or allen key, and all the standard equipment you would expect in a mechanics garage, wrenches, sockets, floor jack, jack stands, buckets, drip pans, hose clamps, 1/2' breaker bar, etc. The whole front end of the car has to come forward and rotate down. You do not have to completely remove it, there is flex built into all the lines that allow them to move enough to get at the front of the engine. I didn't think so, but with careful inspection and small movements it was possible.
I was going to do a detailed how-to of the timing belt but the service manuals pretty much cover it. So I'll just add some pictures of my tear down and some gratuitous pics from the Porsche museum in Stuttgart. If anyone has any specific questions, I know Dave and crew are planning a mass maintenance at the end of the month, drop a line and I'll help how I can.
I finaly got my camera back form the repair shop and took some pics. I tried a cheap digital from wally world but the pics are horrible quality so I scrapped most of them.
I've been working my 35K maintenance for the past few weeks. I know it shouldn't take that long, even though its a bitch of a job for a maintenance procedure, but I had to go to AFRICOM in Stuttgart GE for a conference...and there was that bad snow storm here on the east coast. OK so there's my excuses, my problem arose from a lack of detailed information on the tensioning procedures of the timing belt once you have it installed. I had numerous methods of how to accomplish this and they were just different enough, some radically, to spark my concern. I don't want to take any chances on this engine when its under warranty. Yes I called Fidelity and they are good with owner maintenance of the timing belt as long as they can't say that you screwed up the engine because of it. Now I've built lots of engines from Chevy to Porsche and restore cars as a hobby, so I consider myself a graduate shade tree mechanic. Even so I still got lots of eyebrows raised, from Audi dealer techs, when they found out I was doing this. After going through the process for the first time, I will agree that this is not the job for the novice. But if you are mechanically competent, AND HAVE A GOOD SERVICE MANUAL, you can pull this off.
Most of the easily available manuals are based on a teardown of an A6 (The Bentley, the Blauparts instructions, etc). The problem is that our cars are significantly different enough to give the non-Audi tech trained individual cause for concern. The solution is get the factory RS6 manual, this isn't actually a printed document, as far as I can tell, but a program called elsaWin that is expensive and hard to come by. Yes I have seen the torrent procedures and detailed processes that are involved in obtaining a second hand copy of the software. I tried that route and gave up because my computer isn't that fast and I'm not that smart with the Interweb. I've also considered the eBay offerings but have read the stories of DVDs that don't work and lack of tech support. What I did come across is erWin which is available through Audi, all of us in the US must go through AoA, we're blocked from the parent Audi site.
https://erwin.audiusa.com/erwin/showHome.do
erWin is a portal where, for a fee of $35 a day, you can download all the RS6 factory manuals you want. You have to download a digital rights management program from Oracle to keep you from copying anything and you need Adobe 6.0-9.1. Note that Adobe is currently at version 9.2, so if you are on automatic update, like me, you'll have to remove the new program and install an old version. Anyway this site helped me get all the RS6 specific manuals, just have lots of paper and printer ink on hand, I recommend it.
For parts I went with Blauparts, good quality and great people, just don't have the depth of experiance on our cars. You can rent the tools from them, I ended up getting the wrong thermostat in my order, which slowed everything down. But they backed their product, and didn't charge me for the extra tool time. I went ahead and bought the tools that I needed to complete the job and I suggest this as it gives you time to complete the job at your leasure and the essential stuff is only about $120. What you really need is:
The cam locking bar (T40005)
The crank locking bolt (3242)
The eccentric tool (T40009)
And some generic tools like a 3-arm gear puller, 1/4' and 3/8' torque wrenches, a full set of Torx bits, a 5mm drill bit or allen key, and all the standard equipment you would expect in a mechanics garage, wrenches, sockets, floor jack, jack stands, buckets, drip pans, hose clamps, 1/2' breaker bar, etc. The whole front end of the car has to come forward and rotate down. You do not have to completely remove it, there is flex built into all the lines that allow them to move enough to get at the front of the engine. I didn't think so, but with careful inspection and small movements it was possible.
I was going to do a detailed how-to of the timing belt but the service manuals pretty much cover it. So I'll just add some pictures of my tear down and some gratuitous pics from the Porsche museum in Stuttgart. If anyone has any specific questions, I know Dave and crew are planning a mass maintenance at the end of the month, drop a line and I'll help how I can.
I finaly got my camera back form the repair shop and took some pics. I tried a cheap digital from wally world but the pics are horrible quality so I scrapped most of them.