crosswalk
June 27th, 2012, 22:00
Hi everyone! Great forum with amazing knowledge base! I have an Avus silver with black interior carbon trim '6, and SE exhaust. It's about to turn 80k the transmission/TC was just replaced by the dealer and is soon going back for inter coolers, valve cover gaskets, cam, crank seals and possibly turbos. (thank you warrantee).
Anyhow, the radiator leaked slowly from passenger side lower. I followed the bumper removal procedure and carefully removed all items required to get radiator out of the car. The left side has wire snap clips holding the hoses on, very easy to remove and reinstall. The tricky part is on the driver side, the core and driver end tank is aluminum, there are two hard pipes attached with flange that have very little play, they need to be removed with radiator all the way in, important part is leaving the lower one attached to radiator and removing the fitting downstream from radiator. The difference in radiators for our cars is the additional cooling hose nipple on the lower driver side, you must remove this downstream from radiator, which is easy then pull radiator out. So.... Both lower cooling and oil lines need to remain attached to radiator and removed downstream, thankfully those are very easy to reach.
Since I had nothing to loose except $1000 for a new radiator I took it to the largest radiator shop in the bayarea. They walked me through the whole process of carefully removing passenger side plastic end cap, fitting a new gasket where the old tattered cracked one and source of leak once was, pressing the cap with a press and using special tool to carefully bend tabs back to their original position. The repaired radiator held 35 psi much more than the 13-15 psi our radiators hold. All I did to purge air was to remove the small cooling hose on upper passenger side and wait for steady stream of coolant to flow through it and it blows hot.
It's back together and no leaks, this job gave me new appreciation for these cars, all the unique parts and engineering these vehicles contain is very cool. hope this helps someone.
Will report back to the forum with any updates, oh and remember to have your ac evacuated before you start this project.
Cheers!
Anyhow, the radiator leaked slowly from passenger side lower. I followed the bumper removal procedure and carefully removed all items required to get radiator out of the car. The left side has wire snap clips holding the hoses on, very easy to remove and reinstall. The tricky part is on the driver side, the core and driver end tank is aluminum, there are two hard pipes attached with flange that have very little play, they need to be removed with radiator all the way in, important part is leaving the lower one attached to radiator and removing the fitting downstream from radiator. The difference in radiators for our cars is the additional cooling hose nipple on the lower driver side, you must remove this downstream from radiator, which is easy then pull radiator out. So.... Both lower cooling and oil lines need to remain attached to radiator and removed downstream, thankfully those are very easy to reach.
Since I had nothing to loose except $1000 for a new radiator I took it to the largest radiator shop in the bayarea. They walked me through the whole process of carefully removing passenger side plastic end cap, fitting a new gasket where the old tattered cracked one and source of leak once was, pressing the cap with a press and using special tool to carefully bend tabs back to their original position. The repaired radiator held 35 psi much more than the 13-15 psi our radiators hold. All I did to purge air was to remove the small cooling hose on upper passenger side and wait for steady stream of coolant to flow through it and it blows hot.
It's back together and no leaks, this job gave me new appreciation for these cars, all the unique parts and engineering these vehicles contain is very cool. hope this helps someone.
Will report back to the forum with any updates, oh and remember to have your ac evacuated before you start this project.
Cheers!