temp gauge dropped like a stone

[nwmlarge]

So friday night i'm out at a meet at the 8ball cafe on the a12, on the way back i'm pushing on coming off the slip road and i look down to notice my temp gauge dropping.
I backed off obviously and it continued to fall.
i pulled over a little later and tried to find the problem
no leak, obvious.
called a mate who's a master tech at vw and he advised likely scenarios, Water pump or head gasket

I have recently replaced the stat and the temp switch due to it running a lower temp than normal previously. since it has been fine however.

so i text my boss and asked for monday off to solve the problem, he kindly agreed and i waited until traffic subsided and went off to Euro Car Parts.
They promptly supplied the parts according to my registration:
Water pump inc housing
Water pump belt
New stat (just in case)
Stat o ring
Two big bottles of G12

off i went home and set about removing the front bumper using an online guide, a quite bizarre way to remove a bumper if you ask me! i ended up accidently pulling the mount off on the drivers side which i will have to fix back more securely in the future.

Then the arduous task of removing the "front clip", now i've read many guides and references to this taking about half hour to an hour, rubbish it takes much longer unless your car is brand new!

look at that wasted perfectly good coolant from a month ago
ended up having to leave the rad hoses attached as they just wouldn't let go!

we then proceeded to remove the fan etc and were faced with this

where the hell is the water pump and why does it look nothing like any of the guides

back in and on the lap top we have a problem i have a water pump from ecp that looks like this:

which clearly isn't what i need.

spoke to audi and they confirmed i had the wrong part, ecp were insistant it was the correct part for a AWT 2001 1.8t

i needed this:

which meant some of this...

yes thats the timing belt, not looking forward to the removal and replacement of that!
Audi needed the original pump for exchange £33 which was reasonable so we carried on to remove it.

got it out, nothing wrong with it at all, completely intact, tested the spindle etc absolutely fine!
rang my mate at vw back he said what did the stat look like?
i said we hadn't looked so while on the phone i popped it out

gutted! took the whole front clip off and the cambelt for the sake of a half hour job!!!!

managed to get the belt back on and timed correctly, starting the car up was easily the scariest moment ever!
all fine and running sweet.
took a while to bleed the air out of the system and i took to blowing the water through the top hose to get the air out, this resulted in an interesting look...

the car is now running up to temp just fine and all is well.
i was thoroughly knackered after a whole day in the garage!
ended up with one metal clip spare which was good going considering how many we had to remove lol.

 

[aragorn]

Your engine is an 06a block, which is used in A3/TT's and B6 A4's onwards, most B5's are 058, hence the differences.

As for the month old coolant, why didnt you just collect it in a clean bucket and put it back in again

 

[nwmlarge]

yeah so it seems, i'll have to be very specific about parts in future, ecp's computer doesn't differenciate.

IT had run over some of the engine block bits and bumper i couldn't be sure it had no crap in it.
if i had thought about it i suppose a sieve would have done lol.

still its minty fresh stuff in there now.

 

[jamie226bhp]

was just going to suggest the stat as thats exactly what happened to mine 2 months after fitting a new one from GSF

 

[aragorn]

I got a few fine cloths, and put them in the bottom of a cut off coke bottle to make a fine sieve, and poured the coolant thru that.

 

[nwmlarge]

I got a few fine cloths, and put them in the bottom of a cut off coke bottle to make a fine sieve, and poured the coolant thru that.

blue peter much!!

 

[aragorn]

meh, saved me £25, i am scottish you know!

 

[Broken Byzan]

meh, saved me £25, i am scottish you know!

 

[murran]

all day in the garage? cambelt waterpump and stat. half a mornings work there!

whyd you blow into the pipe? just pull the heater matrix pipe off where it goes thru the baulkhead (the one with the bleed hole in it) a bit to expose the hole. fill with coolant and put the cap on. start it up let it idle for a couple of mins give it a little rev coolant will start coming out of the little hole..... shove the pipe on and put the spring clip back in its place.

 

[aragorn]

You dont even need to start it.

Just fill the tank up, and keep filling until it comes out the hole, then clip it up and job done.

 

[nwmlarge]

thanks for the tips.

I don't see how you can do the procedure much faster than we did unless you knew exactly what to do, as stated none of the online guides matched my car.
water hoses not coming away from the rad did take up a good half hour or so though