Nardo Grey Avant's last day as a 1.8T

So... the wiring jumper harness is done. This means the engines can now start dancing around. I will have to connect a couple of wires to certain places, but I'm sure it'll be fine. These are the body harness connectors that live in the same box as the ECU.
The (gauge) cluster in the car gets various bits of information from the sensors on the car through some of these connectors, such as RPMs, coolant temperature, oil pressure - some important stuff. Essentially this harness will allow my car to function normally and get all of the information it needs to run correctly even though the ECU is from a B5 and not everything is where it would expect it to be.

I didn't wake up today with the plan to tear the 1.8T out, but that's kind of the direction things went. Felt good though. So much tangible progress.

 Front clip removed, started removing things: airbox, intercooler and piping, all fluids drained - oil, coolant, power steering.

It's final moments...

Disconnected ECU and rest of main wiring, and put it in a grocery bag so they weren't dangling all over. Also went about removing CV axles, undoing the trans mount, driveshaft, A/C compressor.


Disconnected exhaust, fuel lines, slave cylinder, motor mounts, removed catalytic converter, and hooked up the engine hoist. And out she comes.

It really looks like a gaping hole when there's nothing in there. The ease of access to those areas is unbelievable though!

After carefully removing the bell-housing bolts, and saddling the tranny, it came loose with some gentle rocking. The pressure plate and flywheel now exposed, I set to work to remove them in order to mount the engine on the stand. The pilot bearing (pressed into the crankshaft in this particular application - it will be pressed into the flywheel with the 2.7T) was not in good shape. In fact, it dawned on me that it must be the cause for a rather shrill noise every so often when letting the clutch out in 1st gear. The little roller pins inside the bearing were completely separated, and had been floating around the space between the input shaft and crankshaft. Glad to be rid of that problem. Moral of the story is always replace the pilot bearing. This clutch job was only 10k miles old, half of which was pure freeway cruising.

Of course I couldn't resist some cleaning of the sub-frame, hehe.

I am currently waiting on new bell-housing bolts (the automatic ones are not the same as the ones for a manual application). I ordered them from ECS Tuning since I was ordering a coolant reservoir anyway and they were about the same as the dealer pricing. Well, shipping is looking like it will take about a week and a half, which is utterly ridiculous.

Today I went down to the local VW dealer and had them run the P/N's for the bolts. I'll pick them up on Monday, and return the bolts from ECS when they get here clear on Thursday. If I had ordered from the dealer on Monday (today is Wednesday), then I would have gotten them on Tuesday. Receiving them this coming Monday is due to Thanksgiving holiday.