rotodiesel

OK, found the number in EKTA. Cover fixing nut and captive washer: N 907 143 03 Don't waste time with "Skoda" - your VW dealer will have loads of them (probably mostly on the workshop floor...) rotodiesel.

Remove the front centre undertray nut and captive washer and use that. Although the washer is a little smaller, the assembly is a perfect fit for securing the engine cover. Replace the missing undertray fixing with a standard M6 nut and separate large washer. rotodiesel.

The equivalent relay to the infamous "109" on the Superb is relay 219. It lives in the ECU box under the scuttle (park wipers vertically and remove hidden plug in scuttle trim to access the rearmost ECU box cover screw) and is subject to the solder fatigue problems of the old 109. It is a dual contact relay and serves the injectors, ECU power and power to the fuel pump relay (which is in the car, inboard of the fuse box). Any failure of this relay will result in a non start. If the dual contacts are serviceable, resolder all the relay connections to the printed board using 60/40 leaded solder. Sometimes a broken soldered joint causes trouble only when the relay is hot - fitting your symptoms. rotodiesel.

Good news. Watch the alignment - if the garage does not understand the significance of "raised toe" and has the setting jigs, don't let them touch it. A Forum search will give more info. rotodiesel.

Good purchase if manual transmission. As you clearly know, if you can work around the VAG design sillies, these cars can do starship miles. A few points - assuming you know all about water ingress: Free front suspension pinchbolts - if it's not too late. (include the trackrod end pinchbolts, but don't move the ball pin height). Remove the circlips under the wiper arms, drop the shafts and oil the bushes. Derust (Dinitrol) around the number plate lamps. (Galvanised my **se)... Derust front wing edges at wheel (I fit a rubber channel strip with Dinitrol underneath) and check there are no foam blocks in the wheelarches. Derust rear wing at the bottom, just in front of the rear wheels. Check alternator freewheel pulley and fit a new (OE) thermostat. The coolant sender may well be duff. When you change the timing belt, don't overtorque the nut on the tensioner stud. In my view, the stipulated torque overstresses the stud - which is really bad news. Use only Mann or Bosch filters, and fit the "O" rings the right way round (blue to hoses) when you change the fuel filter. Good motoring, rotodiesel.

Lubricate the channel with silicone spray before fitting - but keep the stuff off the windscreen. Any appreciable bending of the trim strip will break it. rotodiesel.

Apologies, the scuttle part number is indeed 3B2 819 415E - must read my notes more carefully. I had a windscreen replaced and the fitter broke it. He thought I wouldn't notice... rotodiesel.

Windscreen scuttle trim is 382 819 415E available for about £16 from VW. (don't bother with "Skoda"). It's very brittle, remove the trim pieces on the hinge bars before fitting, and be careful. Pollen filter housing seal is AKD 497 010 04R 10 which is a mastic strip with backing paper. The part number is for a big roll - a tame VW mechanic might give you a bit. Next time you change the battery, unclip carefully the loom to the injectors and flip over the bulhead... rotodiesel.

I have relay 167 on my list as being the fuel pump relay. Whichever it is, the coil of the fuel pump relay is fed from relay 219 which is a double contact relay in the ECU box. These relays are prone to solder fatigue at the frame terminations - open it up and resolder. Park the wipers vertically and remove the small plug in the scuttle trim to gain access to the rearmost ECU box screw. rotodiesel.

You have to read and understand the VAG system diagrams. 1970 British Leyland technology does not apply to these cars, they are complex and need a proper understanding of their design faults to fix effectively. Because of this, many of these cars end up in a mess in the UK. I'll end this discussion here. rotodiesel.

Never go near a car which has been wet. There will be trouble ever after with corroded connector pins, and there are hundreds of them. Year model '04 does not have folding rear seats. The best model was the 130 PS 1.9 PD AWX with the 5 speed GGB manual box, model year '05 (10th digit in VIN). Buy trim to suit, but basic trim is the best as you get tough cloth seats and fewer VAG electro-sillies. I have one with retro-fitted cruise. It's a very good motorway cruiser and towcar and is astonishingly economical for its performance. It handles like a drunk in charge of a boat - but that's no problem in view of its job. I fold the rear seats down surprisingly often - the boot is pretty useless otherwise, given the sheer length of the car. rotodiesel.

Read this, referring to the electronics interconnects: http://www.myarchive.us/richc/VW_TDI_with_PumpeDuse.pdf If you google Audi 2 litre PD oil pump failure you will find the offenders. (pour yourself a beer first). rotodiesel.

The oil pressure monitoring is much more sophisticated than "a switch with one wire coming out of it". The oil light on the dashboard is not actually a true indication of oil pressure - when you assemble the oil filter dry, the light still goes out immediately the engine is started. Like the temperature gauge, the display is "sanitised" to avoid indications VAG don't want you to see. In my experience, the science of deception at VAG may be rather older than we think. So, the instrumentation is useless and the 2.0 PD engine is certainly a liability. VAG knew perfectly well that this engine was a lemon (as fitted by Audi) before it was ever used in the Superb. A nice bunch to do business with.... 2.0 PD engines are better now scrapped, or preferably sold back to a VAG dealer. rotodiesel.

I have to agree - a 2.5 with a VP44 self-destructing pump, an auto box with a self-destructing reverse clutch drum and wet/corroded electrics is definitely not my idea of a good buy - at any price (or even a gift). A 1.9 PD 5 speed manual with dry electrics is the way to go - but not many good ones left as most have been cabbed to death. rotodiesel.

The connectors to the injector solenoids lose their tension with long term engine vibration and thermal cycling. This gives an intermittent connection when the engine runs at certain critical speeds (resonance) which will not generally be revealed by buzzing out the loom with a Fluke, which passes negligible current through the connectors and has a slow readout response. One way to find a bad loom is to disconnect the large circular connector, apply a low voltage at constant current to an injector and monitor the current draw with a current probe and a storage 'scope on a slow timebase speed. Flicking the injector connector bodies with a biro will often reveal a bad one. I just change the loom these days. After about 150k miles, the loom is on borrowed time. The (Bosch) injectors are dead reliable if the fuel filter maintenance has been up to scratch. rotodiesel.

Most likely the injector loom in the engine has become intermittent. A bit of a wangle to change - warm the new one before fitting. rotodiesel.

You can't adjust the tensioner without pulling the front, installing the locking tools and slackening the 3 camwheel bolts. This is because without the locking tools, the engine has locked-in torque due to the action of the valve springs and the return springs in the unit injectors. The locked-in torque tends to rotate the camshaft relative to the crank and give the wrong tension. When setting, the tension must be provided only by the torsion spring inside the Litens tensioner. This is one reason why the camwheel can rotate relative to its hub when unlocked. The other reason is, of course to get the timing dead right. Note also that the belt tension setting is very temperature dependent - engines expand when hot and the drive centres move apart. Set the tension when stone cold, with the belt and the engine at the same temperature. Bodging these engines (often a dealer speciality, complete with white paint) usually ends in grief. Using the right tools is much quicker anyway. rotodiesel.

If KW is zero there's nothing wrong as long as the belt is not being damaged by running on one edge. On my PD and nearly all of the many others I have examined, the belt runs almost dead centrally on the cam pulley - so you might need to keep a watch on it. Watch particularly the stepped stud for the tensioner - which is under engineered and will not withstand repeated tightening of the nut to its specified torque. The toothed window rotates with the camwheel. When the engine is pegged at TDC, the toothed window is pretty well at the top. If your engine runs properly, it can't be wrong. rotodiesel.

The way to set KW is to use the correct locking tools when changing the cambelt, positioning the belt so that as it is tensioned, the bolts are somewhere within the range of the slots. They certainly don't need to be central and often are not. When my Superb was new the bolts were at one end of the slots. When I changed the belt, I decided to position it such that the bolts are now near the other end - ie. the belt is moved one tooth. I chose this position to give me more latitude in the KW setting. The car ran perfectly as delivered and still runs perfectly after my belt change (40k miles ago) and in each case, KW was near zero. You need VCDS or equivalent to check KW unless you use a 2 channel oscilloscope on the crank and cam position transducers. After fitting the belt, KW can be trimmed to zero in-situ by removing the upper belt cover. In practice, if you use the locking tools carefully, KW is nearly always within the allowed tolerance without further adjustment. If you can't get KW = zero with your belt as positioned, you need to take it all apart and move it round one tooth - using the proper locking tools. rotodiesel.

The cambelt is out of position by one tooth. The range of adjustment on the slotted holes slightly exceeds one tooth pitch - so you can always set KW correctly and have some adjustment. The belt is axially guided by the flanges on the tensioner wheel. If it's not fraying at the edge there is no problem, but if it is, something is out of square or not properly seated. rotodiesel.

Pull the light switch out 1 click and the built in foglights will come on with the ignition. rotodiesel.

Cheapest Michelin. rotodiesel.

The pulley most likely to be causing your problem is on the alternator. It contains a sprag clutch so that it drives the alternator in one direction only. If this seizes, the whole auxiliary drive system will oscillate and can be damaged. To change the alternator pulley, lever off the plastic cap and insert a 33 (from memory) splined tool to engage with the ring nut. Use a long triple-square or torx bit (depending on Bosch or Valeo alternator) to hold the shaft. The ring nut has a right hand thread and can be unscrewed whilst holding the shaft. Alternatively, hold the ring nut and turn the shaft clockwise to unscrew. These are usually gorilla tight - better to use a rattle gun on the ring nut. rotodiesel.

First check the alternator freewheeling pulley. In 90% of cases, this is responsible. On full lock, there is more stress on the auxiliary drive and a seized alternator pulley will cause it to oscillate - hence the noise. Holding a hydraulically assisted steer system on full lock is not good for the drive. rotodiesel.

As I predicted. UK skills levels are appalling, but the disinterest and lack of understanding are worse. Faced with the same problem, I would make use of the availability of cheap laser pointers, find a flat horizontal area with a perpendicular plane wall. You can then fix a pointer to each wheel and project and measure the images, using trigonometry to calculate the toe angle. After making or buying (not necessarily expensive) the VAG fixtures, repeat for the raised toe. Have a beer if you get it right. Getting the lasers fixed parallel to each front wheel rim may require some original thinking - two walls and half a turn of each wheel might address this problem. Alternatively, if you're near SE UK, contact VAS Motion at Merrow, near Guildford. rotodiesel.