Engine Coolant Temp Sensor

[Dmb408]

Going to do this item this weekend. Just wondering in advance if any of you all know if I can do it with just unbolting the air box, pulling it up to break the seal with the intake, remove the maf's and move it out of the way a little. i.e. can I do the job without dealing with taking off the front intake plumbing too, using the flexiblity of the flex piping, and not totally taking the box off? FYI, I am very skinny and have very slender hands, so I feel like I only need a little room anyway to get at the sensor. Thanks!

[Bigglezworth]

Best to have the airbox out of the way entirely as there is certain to be something that you haven't planned for occur.... I have found that you need to move the wireing harness out of the way and displacing it necessitates having the drivers side MAF out of the way. Airbox comes off in less than a couple of minutes so why not take it off?

[Dmb408]

Yea OK. Cool. Thanks.

[Turbowned]

So did this end up being fairly straightforward?

[Dmb408]

Uhhhh, no, it ended up being a saga. I'll make a real long story short. Did it myself, dropped too many c-clips so had to go under the car (so use floss tied on the clips). Get under the car and I notice unforseen oil and I start freaking out. Send the car to the indy. Turns out the indy hadn't clamped an intercooler hose enough. So they fixed both jobs. Fast forward two weeks ago and the clip decides to back off and blow the sensor while driving home, coolant, mess blah blah. This time I have to do it myself because of a vacation sandwiched in between and my indy is really far away. Second time much better. Here's my advice if this is what you're looking for.

Buy tons of clips, my local Euro place had brittle ones (I broke tons but you can't throw a fit over 50 cent parts). ECS ended up having ones in vacuum sealed bags that were definitely newer plastic. But as far as getting it on, yea you have to take it real slow and watch the clearance on each side (the one facing you and the firewall side) for the clearance of the clip and the metal top of the sensor. I had to almost work the sensor towards me (the front of the car) start that side of the clip on (so now you have a lever on that side) and then push the sensor back towards the firewall so you can push the other side of the clip over the metal top of the sensor. It was one of those jobs where you're like, God this would have taken me a lot less time next time (huge learning curve). But other than that, my old sensor unhooked, I had enough electrical wire play on mine to move it out of the way, I had enough MAF clip play to move that out of my working area, etc.

[mik15]

as always, every time you think is going to be an easy job with this car, and by all means it is with most of other cars, here it turns out into a saga :), got to love RS6 :), took me almost a week to finally find the culprit of a misfire and engine not running smooth...and it was only supposed to be a spark plugs replacement...:)

[Dmb408]

what did your issues with the misfire end up being, just curious, always looking for culprits of future issues

[mik15]

i made a short story about it here: http://www.rs6.com/showthread.php/26716-Coils-engine-wiring-harness-and-their-issues.

What it was supposed to be a simple spark plugs replacement turned out to be a "bit" more. Anyway, it does worth to pay attention to the engine wiring harness as it gets brittle with time and must be handled with care when un/plugging the connectors, it's a heads up i'd say for future issues.