Oh my god... What a buggar of a job!

Took me ages to get the inlet manifold free of the slightly rusted bolts and the mashed up old gasket.

I changed it as there was a bit of an exhaust blow kind of noise when the engine was under load and I was right as on one of the branches coming from the block there was sooty deposits all around on the gasket where it had been leaking.

Coolant needed changing anyway... looked a bit brown and dirty!

I think the haynes manual should have frases in such as "in an ideal world...", "...if your a small dwarf with abnormally small hands..." etc. :P

Phil

Extension/wobble extension bars, universal joints and a small 1/4" breaker bar (i broke the ratchet mechanisim in my thingy on those bolts) would be the best to use, but still fiddley and in my experience things still prone to snapping etc.

Nothing snapped on me thankfully... just fiddly.

I used a block of wood and a mallet to "loosen" the manifold and help me get it off!

She's running really well now anyway and pleased with myself!

Phil

Well done mate.

It also looks like the gasket has been revised by skoda/vw in the mean time as the new one was green and looked to have bigger metal seals than the old one.

Just need to get the gasket changed between the manifold and throttle body. Seemed to have problems trying to find one a while ago due to the whole switch over to the MPi engine etc.

Phil