Audi A4 B7 2.0T

So I spent the weekend helping a coworker to change his timing belt and clean the intake valves on an Audi 2.0T Quatro.

According to some on-line sources the front of the car has to be unbolted and moved forward a few inches to gain working clearances. This means pulling the front bumper and moving the radiator and AC condenser. As you can see from the pic below, the Quatro engine sets in-line whereas the typical front wheel drive engines set transverse, or parallel to the front wheels. On the two VW's I worked on, the passenger side engine mount had to be pulled and the engine had to be jacked from the oil pan in order to gain access to certain bolts.

This reminds me of a certain comedy skit.

We managed to strip the first two hex head cap screws so we had to dive even deeper by pulling the front even further off. We expected to need to drill out the stripped screws but after tapping the Allen wrench into the screw heads to get full wrench engagement,  we were able to get all the crank pulley screws out.

Pull the Front Off The Car

The timing belt work preparation includes marking the belt. My preference is to use white finger nail polish. I'm sure his wife thought something kinky was going on but there wasn't. After the water pump gets pulled, anti freeze runs down the engine. Solvents used to wash the antifreeze off the crank pulley will leave nail polish intact where permanent maker washes away.

Mark The Cam

Mark The Crank

Once again we spend hours scrapping and vacuuming coked up oil residue off the intake valves. And, once again we forget to take after pictures.

Clean The Intake Valves

We got the engine back together and filled the engine up with coolant and sure enough, we had a leak. When the 'front falls off', this is the time to change the thermostat, according to the expert parts salesidiotperson. The o-ring on the metal coolant line didn't seal so we had to dissemble the alternator again to gain access to the thermostat housing. It's a good thing we didn't assemble the entire front because having access through the head light area made the job much easier.

If you ever change the thermostat on a 2.0T engine, be sure to change the o-ring in the metal pipe, which happened to be 26mm od by 20mm id by 3mm thick for this model.

Update: Took it out for a spin last night and it is a beast. Just like it was when it rolled off the factory floor. The hardest part of reassembly, or getting the front to fall back on, is getting the headlights positioned. And, there was some guess work about where all the bolts go. Next time I will probably take more notes and pics.