Turbo bolt up

I tried dropping the cylinder head + turbo/downpipe onto the block in one motion but quickly realized there was no way it would slide into the place. The problem was the wastegate which restricted the angle at which I could drop everything in. There were also two fitment issues preventing it from ever working - 

1) The turbo didn't clear the firewall - this was potentially a HUGE problem. In previous posts I mentioned how I should have bought an angled turbo manifold  and this was the exact reason why. I was lucky in that I was able to bash the firewall in about 1/2 an inch with a sledge hammer (not the most elegant of solutions). I also re-aligned the charge side of the turbo one more time to give it more clearance. Now that it's installed I have about 2 - 3cm gap between the turbo and the firewall.

2) The downpipe was too short... This was super disappointing but not devastating. You can see the downpipe in the pictures above just resting on the axle. It is less than 1/2 a cm too short. Super frustrating - I thought about taking the sledge hammer approach, but I wouldn't be able to get enough clearance to have a sufficient gap between the downpipe and the floor of the car to avoid heat issues, so I'll do it the proper way and re-weld the downpipe. Unfortunately I won't be able to simply extend the downpipe, I'll have to extend both the turbo's exhaust outlet and the wastegate's pipe in equal amounts, which will be tricky to do, especially now that the turbo and manifold are back in the car. I'll likely make a template using a cardboard box before I cut up the existing pipe - then I'll weld a new downpipe - this may be a winter project.

Aside from that, I worked on a few other key things. First, I found a solution to the turbo's coolant lines - I found a way to expand the water lines from 3/8inch to a half inch, and will be tapping into the heater core lines. This solution is nice since it doesn't involve any cutting, welding, etc.

I installed the fittings for the turbo's oil feed line (braided metal hose in picture above) and tapped that into the oil filter housing without any major modifications or problems.

I also pulled the oil pan off the old 16v block and welded a hose attachment for the turbo's oil return line. I then pulled the 8v oil pan and swapped it for the modified 16v oil pan. Again, everything went pretty smoothly with the exception of a few stripped bolts when removing the oil pan.

I also installed the new head gasket and head bolts to spec. I used ABA torque specs and ABA head bolts.

I re installed the timing belt, re-timed the motor, re installed the distributor, fuel injectors, etc.

Next steps will be to find an oil return line long enough to reach the modified oil pan, install the coolant lines as planned, and then bolt everything back up so I can refill the fluids. I'll likely plan to get the motor running again without the intake piping hooked up and without a downpipe, since I'm running out of time before winter comes. If I can get everything running before winter, I can work on the downpipe in the basement and have everything road-worthy by spring. 

Downpipe

In the past few days I finished the welds on the downpipe so that everything matches up quite nicely. The welds aren't pretty but I think they will be strong enough. I erred on the side of strength versus appearance.

Tough to tell from the picture, but the downpipe is now orientated pretty much straight down from the driver side exhaust outlet. In my previous posts I explained how the stock ABA downpipe was having issues being too far towards the passenger side, so I'm optimistic this will solve the problem. I'm still a bit nervous the whole thing will have too much depth to fit in front of the firewall.

I also cut mostly new gaskets myself with the exception of the actual turbo onto the manifold. I decided to go gasket-less on this. Hopefully it doesn't prove to be a mistake, but a lot of my research showed that people that did use gaskets kept blowing them. I'd rather have a small leak not using a gasket than a big hole where a blown gasket used to be.

I plan to pull the oil pan off the 16v motor to tap the oil return into - the oil pans should be the same size and thus easily interchangeable. For the coolant lines, I'm thinking about using the heater core coolant lines. I could simply tap into the line going into or out of of the heater core. The only problem is the heater core lines are much bigger than the nipples currently on the turbo. The turbo nipples are currently reducing to the line, so I might be able to find alternative ones that expand to the proper size for the heater core.

Turbo and manifold - first look

I eventually gave in and made a deal with the guy on the Vortex for the BBM throttle body adapter. While I still feel it is quite expensive (the most expensive part on the motor so far) I believe my amateur attempts at welding something that sophisticated would have failed, or at least taken a long time to complete. After thinking about it for a while I decided I'd rather not have the entire project sitting idle while I debated whether I could make a CNC machined part out of a Dremel, scrap metal and amateur welding skills. This is something what it should look like:

Since I am now pretty comfortable the motor runs as it should in naturally aspirated form, its time to get going on the turbo. The first step was to piece everything together and get a rough idea of how it will fit. When I was choosing the manifold, I wanted something that kept everything at right angles since I thought it would keep things simple, and the downpipe I acquired already had a right angle on the wastegate from the turbo exhaust flange, so I thought it might get lucky and it could actually fit. It may turn out that this was a bad mistake. Since the turbo is sticking straight out from the cylinder head, it requires more room than it may have require more room than if I bought a manifold with an angled flange. My rough measurements suggest it may just squeeze in place - but if I could do it over I would buy an angled flange.

I then rebuilt the turbo charger itself to realign the charge pipe. Its original position would have pointed straight back into the exhaust manifold, so I realigned it such that the charge pipe points straight up parallel to the cylinder head. This configuration should allow for easy intake and charged piping.

Piecing everything together I began to think about how I would run the wastegate's boost line and the coolant and oil lines.

For the boost line, there is already a nipple on the charged side of the compressor that I could simply run to the waste gate, however, this would leave me with no control over boost aside from the pre-set spring included in the wastegate, which I am not sure what its set at. This leaves me a choice of running it as described as a temporary solution to get things running, or perhaps warrants the search for a boost controller on the forums somewhere. Ideally I'd find an inexpensive boost controller that I could run the lines for before everything gets installed to avoid any difficulties working in the tight spaces later.

For the oil lines, I can run the oil intake straight from the oil filter housing. There are two spare bolts on the filter housing I could screw a threaded adapter into - unfortunately I stripped both the bolts out trying to remove them, which means I'm now likely committed to a thread removal tool - I'll see if I can find one to borrow. The oil return line will need to be tapped into the oil pan.

Last is coolant lines, for which I have no idea how I am going to run. One option would be to tap the side of the cylinder head. I'd rather not take this approach since an error would be catastrophic to the whole project. Off the top of my head - I'm thinking an adapter on the flanges - both in and out, is the best solution for this.

It Runs!

Happy to say I finally got it started! After the distributor modification, I couldn't get it to start for a few tries. The first thing I did was test the spark plugs, and realized that they weren't working. I should have guessed this would be a problem since I was using the original plugs from the 16v head as I received them, and who knows how old or what kind of shape they were in. I replaced the plugs with the ones from the ABA head, since I knew those were working properly, tested again and was able to observe a nice blue spark when the engine cranked.

Replacing the plugs wasn't enough to fix the problem - after a bit more tinkering I realized that the distributor wasn't firing cylinder 1 at TDC (which - as I understand, is proper timing). I reordered the plug wires from the distributor and it fired up!

Getting it in a state to run required quite a bit of annoying tinkering -

- the original fuel lines didn't fit the fuel rail. I bought the proper sized fuel lines but then also had to deal with reducing down to the connecting points which lead to the fuel tank. The guy at Parts Source helped me out with a variety of brass fitting to get me to the required reduction. After installing these fittings, however, fuel began to leak from the thread on the fittings - I had to buy gasoline thread tape at the Home Depot before the problem was finally fixed several hours later.

- the downpipe for the 16v didn't quite match up to Catalytic converter. Again, this was a huge headache for multiple reasons. First of all, I had to crawl under the car (still with walking boot on foot due to ankle injury) which I absolutely hate doing. Then I had to try and pull apart the exhaust joints as best I could to give me some wiggle room which required me to heat them with a blow torch for a few minutes and smash them with a hammer until they finally gave in. Then I was able to wiggle the CC reasonably close to the downpipe but realized that the real problem was in the fact the downpipe was slightly closer to the passenger side then desired. This caused the O2 sensor on the catalytic converter to hit the heat shield. My ghetto solution to this was to bend the plug on the O2 sensor away from the heat shield as carefully as possible to avoid damage to the wiring which allowed additional clearance to get 2 of 3 bolts on the CC up to the downpipe. I left it at that, since as I will discuss later, the whole thing is going to come apart again anyway.

- the MAF sensor was previously on the passenger side - as you can see in the picture - I extended the wiring over to the driver side as a temporary solution, since again, I intend to pull everything apart again eventually.

- The PCV valve is rigged up from a generic PCV valve purchased at parts source connected to a hose attached to the lower intake manifold. I did some searching and apparently this hose is intended to act as a breather for the crankcase. This solution should last permanently.

- The Fuel pressure regulator vacuum line is currently running to the cold start mechanism on the 16v head, which I will eventually block off.

-The majority of the other vacuum lines are tee'd off the brake booster line at the back of the manifold which again should be a permanent solution.

- The intake is the most annoying problem due to the odd shape of the 16v intake. To get it running, I simply stretched the ABA intake over the 16v TB. I ran the ISV plumbing into its original location on the ABA intake manifold, and used a rag or ducktape to block off all remaining openings. Stretching the intake over the 16v was a real test of patience. This solution was enough to get it started and idling properly, but ass discussed earlier, the 16v throttle body does not have the required sensor for the ABA ECU. When testing the throttle, however, I had no throttle response (which at the time I assumed was due to not having a throttle position sensor). To test this thory, I tried connecting the TPS to the original ABA throttle body on the side, and manually opening both the 16v and ABA throttle bodies while the engine was running to achieve throttle response. While this worked moderately, it was still pretty sluggish, and at the time, I figured my method of testing this was simply too crude to work. I then decided I would need to find a way to rig the ABA throttle body to the 16v intake manifold or find a way to get a 16v throttle body with appropriate sensors.

- Apparently a 16v Passat TB with AUTO transmission would work sensor wise. Unfortunately I'm not allowed into junk yards because of my boot, and I wasn't able to find a Passat with automatic transmission anyway, and apparently there are hood clearance issues with this solution as well. I decided instead to rig the ABA TB to the 16v manifold. In theory this is simple, but the 16v manifold has an odd shaped opening making difficult, if not impossible to get any type of coupling attached to the manifold. Additionally, the intake requires a sharp 90 turn to clear the coolant expansion reservoir further complicating the problem. My solution required many hours of tinkering with various pieces of scrap tubing, couplers, etc, as well as a piece of flanged exhaust piping I was able to connect to the ABA throttle body, and some expansion pieces. I finally rigged something up, again, just for the purposes of trying to get the engine revving properly in response to the throttle, which involved my odd contraption of piping rigged up to the ABA throttle body, attached to the ABA manifold, which I again stretched over the 16v intake manifold flange.

- After doing all this, I still had no throttle response - even with the ABA throttle body and a functioning TPS. That said, the motor still idled reasonably strong. Because the throttle was now downstream of the ABA intake, the motor vacuum sucks up the rubber ABA intake - which was funny to see. Frustrated, I began to google randomly my issue, and the MAF came across as a possible solution. To test I simply pulled the MAF sensor, and it revved up beautifully! I must add that it sounds awesome, and much stronger than the old 8v head. So I was happy that I was able to diagnose the revving problem, though a little bit sad it had to be the MAF, which is ridiculously expense. I'm optimistic that there is a problem with my MAF rewiring, or perhaps that the MAF might just be dirty, and that there is nothing wrong with the sensor itself.

So that was basically the path I took to get the motor performing properly. Obviously, there is quite a bit of frankenstein, and at times, sloppy solutions to get things running in the garage. The reason for this is that I purchased a variety of turbo parts from members of the VWVortex community and ebay. These included a turbnetics T3/T4 turbo, turbonetics wastegate, air-air IC and various piping, blitz BOV, and various other components. I also sourced a downpipe, and bought a manifold off of EBay. Everyone has an opinion on the ebay parts - but I have to say, this manifold looks to be pretty well constructed, and of unexpectedly good quality for $50. Now that the motor is running properly, the next steps will be to weld up the downpipe so its fits the manifold, wastegate, and turbo flange properly. Once I'm comfortable with that, I'll pull the head again to install the turbo. I'll also need to pull the oil pan to tap an oil return line.

I'll still need to find a permanent solution to my intake problems. BBM sells an adapter for using the ABA throttle body on 16v motors, however its ridiculously expensive. I asked around the VWvortex for anyone looking to sell this part, and found one guy with one he doesn't need, but he still wants $150 for it, which  I think is ridiculous for a simple adapter. I doubt he'll sell the part to anyone else any time soon, so I'll sit on that for a while.

Ultimately, I think I might try to weld up and fabricate my own adapter - materials wise it would be considerably cheaper than $150. Also, I'll likely need to make weld modifications to the down-pipe, and will have lots of inter-cooler piping that could use some welds as well, as well as body work down the road.

As winter closes in - that's pretty much where I'm at.

Distributor Modification

I finally got around to the distributor modification. Pulling the drums off the shaft was a real challenge. After trying various things my solution was to find a series of 1/2 inch sockets that had an opening large enough for the shaft to slide through, but with a socket size that matched the diameter of the inner portion of the drum on each shaft. I then inserted this set up into a vice to push the drums off the shafts from the bottom such that they slide out the top of the shafts. This was important, since my original attempts were trying to push the drum off from the top down, which was physically impossible given their design (which was difficult to assess visually until I eventually succeeded). Even using this set up, it took considerable force from the vice before the drums let loose of the shafts - on the 16v I actually had to tap the handle of the vice with a 10lb sledge hammer before it let loose:

Belts and wiring

The past few days were spent on the rest of the pulleys and some electrical.

At the end of it all, I ended up using the starter motor to pull the crank pulley bolt out - I levered a 19mm wrench on the crank bolt tight against the axle. I then pulled fuses for the fuel pump, radiator, etc. (anything that was clearly inoperable given the state of the motor) and ran the starter for a crank - worked like a charm!

I replaced the crank bolt to spec with the new one from GAP, and torqued per the Bentley manual. In order to get the torque required without spinning the crank shaft I used a 2x4 wedged between the driver seat and brake to apply brake pressure to the front wheels while the car was in 5th gear. I also re-installed the serpentine pulley attached to the crank pulley.

With all the pulleys back in place I decided to time the engine. It is a very simple motor to time, especially without having to worry about the intermediate shaft gear. Since the 16v distributor runs off the cam gear instead of the intermediate shaft I only had to worry about the timing of the crank gear and the cam gear. The cam gear was left unmodified throughout this whole process so I simply lined it up with timing marks on the valve cover. The crank gear has no timing marks so far as I'm aware. There are timing marks on the flywheel that can be observed by pulling off the green cap on the transmission.

The green cap was actually tricky to unscrew - I certainly couldn't do it by hand and it had a really wide hex pattern which I didn't have the tool for - another annoying situation where solving a simple problem involves the purchase of an expensive tool. I decided instead to take a large wood boring drill bit and gently push the sharp end of it into the plastic cap and used an impact driver to reverse torque it out of the transmission casing. This technique worked well and did minimal damage to the cap so I was happy to avoid the cost of buying a bit simply for this purpose.

With the the gears properly timed I put the timing belt on - I used a belt purchased from BBM intended for this conversion - I believe it is an ABF belt but not exactly sure - I simply took BBM's word for it. I used the manual belt tensioner which replaced the hydraulic mechanism previously described. Not sure exactly how tight the belt should be - I've read you should only be able to turn the belt 90 degrees without significant effort - I think I'm probably a bit short of that much tension, but I plan to let the belt settle in its installed configuration which should make it easier to tension properly before I run the motor. The serpentine and accessory belts were easily reinstalled - the serpentine tensioner works quite well (although its annoying how it interferes with the coolant flange described earlier). The accessory belt has a gear driven mechanism which I tried to tighten as much as possible - I had problems earlier with the belt slipping on the power steering pulley when under pressure - this was caused when the car hit a raised sewer hole which damaged the tension system - at least it didn't take the oil pan off when it happened.

With the belts back on I did a few manual turns of the motor to make sure the valves were clearing and to check the timing - everything appears to be okay. It's tempting to run the starter again just to give the motor a few cranks and I wouldn't mind testing the compression, but I need to remember there isn't a drop of oil in the block so I decided against it.

I moved on to the wiring - while I intend to keep the stock wiring in tact, I'll need to reroute a few things - the distributor senior, some of the grounding, the MAF sensor, and a few other things need to be reconfigured just because their positioning has changed. The challenge is pulling the wires out of the old cable wrapping without damaging them - I got a good start on it but its a long process that requires patience. I got the fuel injector cables back in place - looks like they might be a tight fit against the upper intake manifold. I'm not too worried about the rest of the wiring.

I also compiled a short list of what else I need to do before I can try to start it up:
- re install and properly time the distributor
- run remainder of electrical and sensors
- tap upper manifold for air intake temperature sensor
- install upper intake manifold
- install air intake
- fasten downpipe to catalytic converter
- re-plumb ISV and PCV systems
- install vacuum lines
- solve throttle body issues (re-run cable and determine strategy for throttle position sensor)
- reinstall radiator
- refill fluids

Timing gears and head installation

Past few days have been a lot slower since I'm back at work after a two week vacation. Also, I was waiting on a new crank bolt and the 16v head bolts, both of which I ordered from GermanAutoParts.com. They were good, but as a side note, I found a Canadian distributor of these parts (www.autopartsway.ca) which would have saved me a lot on the shipping... crap!

I've learned a lot about the distributor swap and I think I have everything I need to do figured out. With that in mind I pulled the ABA distributor off the block and replaced it with the BBM "Dizzy Gizzy". It's definitely a nice part which makes this process very simple, though expensive:

There are various posts out there explaining how to modify the 16v distributor to make it work with ABA engine management, but basically there are two differences between the guts of each. The 16v has a four window drum and spins counter clockwise. The 8v has a single window drum and spins clockwise. I need to move the single window drum to the guts of the 16v, and realign the window relative to the rotor thing such that it reaches the sensor in the same sequence as it would have in the ABA given it will be spinning the opposite direction on the 16v head. The way I looked at it, I calculated how many degrees of rotation the window would have to turn following the rotor to hit the sensor, and then applied that same logic if the rotor went the opposite direction. Essentially, you just need to mirror the position. I marked up the drum with some marker before I pulled the drum out of the distributor:

I'm having trouble pulling the drums off their shafts without damaging them but I've received a few pointers from VwVortex members so I'll give it another try.

I've been working on how to incorporate the ABA Idle stabilizer valve (ISV) onto the 16v head and think I have it figured out relatively well. I just bent the bracket for the old valve a bit and the 8v plumbing worked reasonably well on the manifold. I'll have to rig up some new plumbing for the intake:

I've already swapped the intermediate shaft gear so the only one left to do will be the timing gear. Now that I'm working on the actual timing gears I'm no longer very worried about timing the engine. Removing the distributor from the intermediate shaft means I should pretty much only have to time the crank gear and the camshaft gear. The crank bolt from German Auto Parts has arrived so I can replace that now and put the actual belt on soon. I tried to pull the crank bolt off last night - I put the car in 5th gear and stuck a 2x4 between the seat and brake pedal to hold the drive shafts in place, but that bolt isn't going to move with my muscle force. The other crappy thing is that its an odd size - 19mm 12 point bolt. I have the appropriate wrench but no socket. Even if I did have the socket, I doubt my 18v Makita Impact Driver would have enough torque to pull it off. I'm now faced with a predicament - I could try some of the ghetto methods I've read about from other people, where they jam a wrench to the floor and kick the starter, but it just seems sketchy to me, and I don't want to have to turn the key, since I'd have to do something to stop the fuel pump from turning on, put the battery back in place, etc. The alternative is tempting - I've always wanted air tools - and searching on Kijiji I can find decent impact wrenches for $100 bucks or so. If a 500 ft lbs impact wrench can't take the bolt off I must be doing something wrong:

Since I was frustrated with the crank bolt I decided to put the head in place. It's amazing how everything lines up relatively perfectly! One exception is the coolant flange off the front of the block is hitting the serpentine belt tensioner - I was a bit surprised about this - when I look at pictures of other 16v motors the flange appears to be pointing the opposite direction. The solution should be relatively simple - I'll trim a bit off the bottom of the flange so it clears the tensioner. The coolant hose is going to need to be extended anyway. It's a bit of a sketchy solution but it won't cost me anything.

Here is the head on the block for the first time. You can see the front coolant flange snuggling up against the tensioner:

Working on the half block

The past couple days have been spent working on the lower half of the motor and dealing with some nit-picky stuff.

First off - I had to order various gaskets, headbolts, etc. to continue with the build. Had some trouble at Parts Source getting the proper parts ordered - they couldn't seem to understand how I am working with two different motors. After a few days I got some of the gaskets I need but they ordered the headbolts for the ABA head when I need them for the 16v head. The guy at the store gave me an unreasonably and frankly disrespectfully hard time with it too, going on a rant about how they can't just "order in random sets of headbolts till I get the right ones". It was odd, since he was just an employee - its not like it cost him anything anyway. Another frustrating thing about it was that I physically went into the store the day before to explain specifically how I needed the 16v head bolts and NOT the ABA bolts, and the guy at the counter assured me he ordered the correct ones. After some rude conversation he eventually said the manufacturer didn't make the headbolts for a 16v (though I think he was just frustrated and wanted me out of there) - so I'm just going to order them online - its probably cheaper anyway and I know exactly what I'll get, but it will take some time. This would be one of those times where it would be nice to live in the US and not have to worry about brokerage, duties and shipping.

I also received the parts I ordered from BBM - Dizzy Gizzy and a BBM fuel rail and FPR. I assembled the fuel rail but decided to leave the ABA distributor alone until I get the timing set with the new head on - I doubt it will matter since as mentioned earlier, I already took the timing belt off before aligning the distributor to TDC anyway - but all in all, I think I'll leave the distributor untouched till near the end - I figure the distributor will by my biggest risk of error.

Next I looked into the hoses - I have a replacement upper radiator hose that will run from the 16v head and has a coolant expansion valve return line attached to it. I then needed to figure out how to replace the ABA hose running between the water pump, oil filter and the old ABA radiator hose, since the old hose had this as one piece. Since I'm lucky and have the 16v bottom end, I realized the hose from that motor fit relatively well. I had a hell of time getting the hose off the ABA without the proper tools for the clamps, and everything is pretty tight in there. I ended up removing the AC lines from the condenser but unfortunately still pretty much destroyed the hose removing it. Eventually I got the new 16v hose in place. The heater hose running to the passenger side of the head will also need to be replaced but I have a new flange and the proper fitting hose for that already.

This is a picture of the 16v hose for the pump and oil filter:

Here is the new flange installed on the 16v head which will support the heater hose and one of the original two sensors on the ABA head. The other sensor fits into the actual head just below the gasket.

I then moved onto the pulleys - the cam gear on the 16v head I will leave alone. I replaced the tensioner and got rid of the weird ABA one. I then moved to the lower block and removed the serpentine pulley that attaches to the crank gear. Had lots of trouble with just one of the bolts in this thing - not sure why but it just wouldn't come out and eventually I stripped it. I thought about buying one of those stripped bolt removing kits, but costs just slowly creep up with all those sorts of random purchases, so I decided to just cut it off - it wasn't clean but I don't think it will matter in the end, and it got the pulley off as I needed.




I will also need to replace the crank gear and the intermediate shaft gear to fit the wider timing belt. At this point, I got pretty tired, and also realized when doing some research that the crank gear bolt is a "stretch" bolt that will need to be replaced. Luckily I hadn't placed my order for the head bolts yet so I left off there. The timing belt cover had all sorts of random little bolts and I didn't do a very good job of keeping track of where they went - so I'm a bit worried that I won't get that cover back on again.

Pulling the ABA Head

I've worked on a few things in the past couple days. First, I decided I would paint the valve cover and manifold just to make things look a bit cleaner. I disassembled the components into their individual pieces and taped off anything that shouldn't have paint on it. I used a flat black high temperature paint. It's nothing flashy but it takes away any old stains that may have been there. Here are the finished products, which I already got a bit greasy just from picking them up.

Before moving to the ABA head, I pulled the front end off the vehicle. I already had the bumper cover and lights removed, but I also cleared out the steal bumper, radiator, AC condenser and support frame, and before doing that I flushed the coolant. To do so I pulled the coolant line from the pump and drained into a  container. I had a hard time judging how much came out, but I was expecting at least four litres, so my initial attempt to flush the coolant system didn't appear to flush everything out. I thought part of the problem was the fact the front end was lifted up and thus gravity was potentially inhibiting the flow of coolant to the lower pump flange. I dropped the car which didn't make a noticeable difference and decided I had most of it out of the system.

I also pulled the lines to the AC condenser - the condenser cracked years ago so the system no longer contained any coolant, but normally you wouldn't pull the condenser to avoid opening the system. Opening the system is environmentally hazardous, but would also require a recharge of refrigerant and potential flush of the entire AC system had it actually been working. After removing the air intake, the entire AC system is extremely accessible - I am now considering whether its worth trying to repair the AC in the car before I put the motor back together. I would need a new condenser and receiver drier, but given the whole front end has been pulled this is a great opportunity to replace these relatively inexpensive parts and try to get the system working again.

Removing the air intake is relatively straight forward. There is a confusing stretch of piping leading to the exhaust manifold. Apparently this is designed to feed the the intake with warmed air from the manifold to help with cold starts. I'll be getting rid of this - as mentioned earlier, I have a driver side intake which will require a custom air filter and I likely won't have any way of incorporating this heat exchange design. Also, the little air box on the top of the manifold is a PIA! I've always had trouble with it rattling, and it makes it even more difficult to work with the manifold when the motor is in the car - more on that later.

I started dis-assembly of the ABA so that I could remove the head from the block. Again this is pretty straight forward. One mistake I made was not aligning the engine to TDC before I pulled the cam pulley belt. This won't necessarily cause me problems, but would have potentially made everything simpler down the road. I wish I would have thought of that, but its too late now. My biggest concern is the position of the distributor relative to the crank.

I labelled as many sensors and hoses as I could - even if they seemed obvious at the time. I can already tell that as a I move things around, especially wiring harnesses, plugs and cables that once looked familiar are hard to identify when they are out of place.

I then proceeded to the exhaust manifold. I did this piece last because I was dreading it, and for the right reasons. In the car's almost 20 year life, I'm not sure the exhaust has ever been touched. As a result, the bolts are rusted round. I tried removing the manifold from the head first. I had good success with the upper bolts but the inaccessibility of the lower bolts -  below the heat box for the intake air exchange and above the motor mount made them pretty much impossible to access. I tried everything to reach this bolts - from above and below - but eventually realized it wasn't going to happen. I then decided to try and take the head out with the downpipe attached. This was a relatively good strategy but again the bolts connecting the downpipe to the cat were pretty much toast. I decided they needed to be cut, but it was hard to get any decent tool in there to cut the bolts out without cutting out the flange with them. I used a Dremel tool with the extension "snake" and a reinforced metal wheel which eventually cut them loose. I went through about 15 standard cutting wheels which kept snapping before I gave in and bought the reinforced wheels - which aren't cheap. Here is a picture of one of the easier bolts, which was still in relatively decent shape::

All in all - the head is relatively easy to get out, provided you find a way to deal with the exhaust.

I then needed to lift the head from the engine bay. Relatively simple task for most - but remember that I'm still on crutches and can't lift much of anything. I ran a rope through the lift points on the front of the head and swung them through the roof rafter above in my garage. This served as a relatively effective pulley for me to pull the head while still on crutches. I had a bit of trouble with the cam shaft pulley tensioner - apparently I have the "new type" which has some type of weird hydraulic tension application which was still connected to the lower block. I also forgot to pull out the coolant expansion reservoir return line which was odd since it was in plain site. With the head out, I disconnected the down shaft from the ABA manifold. I wasn't sure which exhaust manifold to use, but it appears the 16v manifold will match up perfectly with the ABA downpipe, so I plan to leave the 16V manifold in place and avoid replacing the gasket.

Preparing the 16v

In order to prepare both motors for the eventual swap I did a few basic things. The ABA block was compression tested and to my surprise had even 180 psi compression in all four cylinders. I then did my best to clean up the ABA engine bay and motor - in its final days as a daily driver an oil pressure sensor in the ABA motor blew out of the cylinder head and sprayed oil over everything - apparently this was enough frustration for me at the time that I bought the Volvo S60 to replace it and never did a very good job of cleaning it up. I did fix the sensor issue so the leak is no longer there, but that is redundant now that I'm replacing the head anyway.

I removed the front bumper cover that needs to be replaced anyway, and the headlights. Then, as a first step I took as many pictures as I could of the existing motors in tact for future reference. Unfortunately, these pictures are stuck on a camera for which I cannot find the cable, so from that point on I began using my phone for the pictures.

Next step was to pull the 16v head off of the old motor. It was at this point I made the realization the intake manifold orientation was the opposite of the ABA (i.e. the drivers side). I think they made this configuration for the Scirrocco? The flipped orientation will be a bit of a problem when I try to get the hybrid motor running for the first time, since I'm not sure what I'll do for an intake and I'm not sure if I'll have problems with the throttle cable? I guess if anything, the ABA throttle cable would need to be shorter which seems like a better problem to have than being too short. After thinking about it, in the long run I'll be better off as the drivers side orientation will be perfect for intercooler piping going forward.

Dis-assembly was pretty straight forward - I started with the intake manifold, then removed the timing belt and pulled the head cover off. From there you can pull out the head bolts. All that should be left are a few hoses. I left it at that for the day.

At this point you get to see the mechanics of the 16v motor - dual cam shafts and the additional valves just make it look more sophisticated than the ABA. Overall the head appears to be in good enough shape - no obvious problems detected by me at least. Ideally one would rebuild the head and the block - I just can't bring myself to spend that much money on a motor I can't be certain I'll ever get properly running. For now, the stock internals are how its going to stay.

The original ABA:

 16v manifold - here you can see the driver side intake. Note above the ABA intake on the passenger side. I forgot to take a picture of it, but the throttle body for the 16v is also pretty awesome, it has a two stage valve .

Here is the head removed from the block - you can see the dual cam shafts and the distributor on the side of the head as opposed to the ABA distributor lower on the block. You need the ABA distributor  to run the oil pump in the ABA block, but the 16v head will use its own distributor.

After doing research I think I have a few possible solutions to this problem. Since I have the old 16v block I could install the oil pump intermediary shaft gear from the 16V into the ABA. I'd need some sort of block off for the old ABA distributor. Since removing the oil pan and potentially pulling the block of the ABA will be difficult for me to pull off on crutches, I decided to take the easy way out and buy a part designed by BBM to solve this problem - the Dizzy Gizzy, which is now on order.

 


Set the valve cover back in place.

Start of the project

I've had the old 1997 GTI with a 2.0L ABA motor for a long time - since I was 16. After a few years the car became frustrating to operate in my career as an accountant due to failed AC, being low to the ground, having only two doors, etc. and I bought a Volvo S60. Unwilling to give up the GTI, however, the car remained stuffed into the front of my garage for a few years. I was always interested in the boosted 16v ABA project, simply because the idea of combining two different motors just seemed so cool to me - the problem is that where I live, finding a 16v motor or even the head seemed impossible. After a few years of sitting, I decided it was time to get rid of the car.

As if the car gods were looking out for the old GTI, early into the start of summer 2013 I ruptured the achilles tendon playing hockey. The sad realization was that I would spend my summer on crutches. With loads of desk time on my hands and while cruising Kijiji to try and guess a price I might be able to sell the GTI for I came across an ad selling a Rabbit restoration project with a fully rebuilt 16v motor and a secondary in tact 16v motor for parts. Here was my chance to get the 16v motor I needed for the project - and it seemed like a decent project for me to work on while I was stuck on crutches for the summer. I immediately emailed the guy asking to take the parts motor off of his hands.

He emailed back saying he had a lot of interest in the motor and that it was already potentially sold. When he emailed back, however, I could see his name and recognized him as the same person that sold me the very GTI I bought years ago as my first car - what are the odds! When I pointed that fact out, he said he had a soft spot for his old car, and decided we could work something out. The next day, I had the 16v motor in my hands and against all odds the project was born!

I wasn't able to find many pics of the car in its glory:

Canoe on the racks after travelling a winding dirt road into the north:

Cleaned up for some pictures: