Doing a plenum pull at the moment with the engine in the car, its a TT and i cant seem to get at the EGR pipes under the plenum. Any advice greatly welcomed and needed!
they are just a pain the the ass nick, patience and perseverance is what you need here, slowly but surely with a 10mm spanner
I'm gonna bend an expendable spanner today at work and have another crack at it this afternoon. I am apatient guy but it had me stumped last night!
Hey Nick, I had a look at it today on my TT, and came up with a few ideas... It's a bitch of a job, and my engine has the plenum side braces (solenoid mounts) removed... but it certainly is do-able with a bit of perseverence. Tools I used were: -- 10mm offset ring spanner (to break it all loose) -- 10mm Flex-head ratecheting ring spanner (to get it out faster than 1/8th turn at a time...) Get it started with the offset ring spanner (not sure if they use thread sealant from factory, i nunderstand this is your first plenum pull) Get a few turns in on the ratchet spanner (or the standard box wrench) for undoing the fastener. A bit of penetrating oil down the top exposed thread section may help (see the exposed thread to the left of the spanner) On the passenger side, its tighter quarters with the TPS and the Idle air pipe. Removing much of this is easy and will make working on this side easier. TPS will need to be reset (make a mark between TPS and the throttle body to get it into the ball park first before the final fine tune...) If it's a real pain in the ass, replace the stock bolts with some of those that have the washer shoulder on them, so they dont fall thru the spanner during re-installation. Putting them back in is a pain in the ass. But if a EGR delete is happening, this is all done before the plenum is re fitted. If you are putting the egr pipes back on, and time is a problem, seriously consider removing the turbo hard pipes to get better room. It seems like a step in the wrong direction, but will save some time in the long run.
its an evil job, but they are doable, i found it helpfull to remove the accordian pipes to the turbo inlet for more access........ a ratchet spanner as pictured above makes life 10 times easier, but ive never bought one, i just make do with a normal basic tool set..... if you are deleting egr altogether, then just hack through the pipe with a hacksaw or a dremel something, and remove when the plenum is off
I think I had trouble too, the trick was that these bolts are screwed upwards therefore you have to turn clockwise to undo ie move spanner from right to left as you look at the bolt from over the side of the car, instead of the usual anticlockwise ..... give it a go but the pics posted above and that tool look like the best option
"Righty-tighty, Lefty Loosie" ...Has served me well so far. However it did fail me once when reinstalling the gas bottle on the BBQ (damn left hand threads). Still doesn't help the fact that this is an absolute bugger of a bolt to undo and tighten. Damn Japanese and their tiny hands. BTW nick, if you want to borrow my ratech spanners for the plenum pull, give me a yell and I'll bring them to the drags on wed night
i tried spanners of all sorts and found they wouldnt get into position and ones that would fouled and i couldnt get them on the head of the bolt. I ground and bent a spanner and was able to undo the drivers side, which worked out well as the passanger side still would not go but i had plenty of room to cut the pipe near where the battery normaly sits. And yes Mitch this is the 1st pull for both me and the car and the thread lock was evidant on the bolt. Thanks all and i would hate to actually want to re use the EGR pipes!
a plenum pull on a zed that hasnt had one before takes at least 3 times as long, brackets everywhere !!!!
Cheers Ron, I'm pretty sure I'm past the difficult hurdels now. There will be lots of simplifying! I don't feel so bad knowing a 1st pull takes ages! Lol Its fought me the whole way so far but I will win!
Ok, got the plenum off last night with much head scratching and a few naughty words lol. Damn there is some useless crap the will be turfed! So intended simplifications are all under plenum coolant bypass, boost solenoid deletion as I'm going with an EBC, EGR delete. Already gone is the AIV's and the fuel pressure vacuume sloenoid etc. I'm also getting rid of the hard feul lines over the manifold and fuel pressure dampener. Is thare anything else to chuck out while I'm at it? Where have you guys routed the wires each side of the plenumto tidy that up also? Cheers again!
mine are in heat sgrink under the plenum but still down the centre. semi hidden but still easiy enough to get at if I really need to.
The injector and coil pack wireing till be tackled at a leter stage and that is what I was thinking for that side of things. The wires I want to tidy for now are the ones that run on the outer edge of the plenum above the turbo outlet pipes.
