Thanks people
I have dropped them off with a local contact for wet sanding today.
Over the last few days I've been getting intermittent low oil pressure warnings on my dash. It would come on for a few seconds and then go out again, or it would come on after high revs/load situations. I panicked and haven't driven it.
After doing some research I found it could be the oil pick up pipe (thanks to Niki at R-tech for the thread he made which alerted me to the problem).
Had to buy the pick up pipe, oil and what not on my credit card
but I was brought a Halfords professional tool kit which was great..
Car jacked up and all secured on axle stands with the jack on the suspension arm for extra safety. Ben looking a bit confused
Before Ben arrived I had drained all of the oil already.
Getting the sump off is not actually too difficult. Around 20 10mm bolts, with 3 larger bolts going through the bell housing into the sump. Three of the 10mm bolts were a pain in the arse due to them being angled. You either need a severely wobbly extension or you can use a 5mm ball headed allen key and a spanner, which is what we did.
Then you have 2 bolts holding the turbo oil pipe on to the back of the sump. There is a metal gasket on this. As long as you don't bend it or crack it you can re-use it.
When everything is removed you scratch your head wondering why the sump is still magically staying on.. There's a tab on the passengers side which is just enough room to get a screw driver in, wiggle it about (use the shaft if you can not the head to avoid damaging the mating surfaces) and it will drop. It's not heavy but don't let it fall down.
And here is what you see afterwards..
You can see my pick up is well and truly clogged.
The sump itself
This is on a car with 86k and that had been previously on long-life oil services, between 12 and 15k. Not too bad but obviously bad enough.
After a thorough clean with brake cleaner, plenty of neat BH Surfex and warm water....much better!!
So we cleaned the mating surface of any remaining sealant/gasket and put in the new oil pickup
Ben has a much steadier hand than me so he did the application of the sealant. There is an official VW part for this but it's just a high temperature gasket sealant, after doing some research I found that Loctite 5920 would be perfectly good. So that's what we used.
A very thin bean is required, 2-4mm, as applied in the picture. Any more than that and it could get sucked up into the oil pick up, pump, or into the turbo!
Oil filter replaced with a genuine VW one, complete with 5.3 litres of Mobil 1 5w/40, gave a completed job well done.
Car started, sounded much better, idling happier. Gentle warm up drive followed by some blats up and down a dual carriageway revealed no problems!
Going to run this oil and filter till end of July and then swap it out (around 1200 miles) and then keep it on 8-10k oil changes.
