Waste of a day....

[BenG]

Took a day off work today to try to get some jobs done on the car (in daylight). It's an FR TDI.

Planned to change the rear brake discs and pads, change the gearbox oil, clean out the EGR valve and replace the intercooler pipe seals.

Stripped the rear brakes to find none of the 5 different sides of my caliper wind back tool fitted the Leon piston indents. So, everything back together again.

Looked at EGR valve but no way could I see how to get it off the inlet. Top two bolts easy but the third was hiding behind the cooler pipe bolts, themselves almost impossible to touch let alone remove. Another waste of time....

Took off the undertray to find that the gearbox fill/drain plugs use a funny kind of splined fitting (why???) and not the usual allen key, so no-go there either

The only thing I managed to do was replace the IC pipe seals, only to find the red pipe to the turbo was loose at the turbo end so evidently worn and needs replacing (I guess the cause of the low power I posted about previously)

Is it me or are Seat trying to make the cars so hard to work on that there's no choice other than to take them to a dealer???? What a annoying waste of a day's leave!

Just needed to get that off my chest....

 

[Matt-V5-Duffy]

It not just Seat, most (if not all) manufacturers do it now

 

[bruceR]

Not so good mate when a plan doesn't come together
On the bright side..............now you know what tools are involved

 

[MJ]

I must have £20k worth of tools in my box in the workshop and that's still only a small percentage of all the tools you'd need to do every job on every car. Some of the "special" tools you need to carry out some jobs are just daft and if you think thin 2 pin caliper adapters and M14 splines with a hole in are out of the ordinary you should have a go on some French or sweedish motors.

 

[tony323ci]

reminds me of a few years ago I worked in an engineering/manufacturing company I had a mate with an Audi Quatro need some right weird tools to work on it. Luckily the local Audi garage was friendly and would lend him the tools. He promptly gave them to me I took them to work and made copies, he would then return them to Audi and he had a nice new one he could keep and use whenever he liked

 

[seantdi]

i can take the egr off my fr in less than 30 mins!!

 

[BenG]

It not just Seat, most (if not all) manufacturers do it now

Had a Mazda 323F 1.8 a few years ago and was dead simple to work on, with loads of room around the engine. Had a Rover 214 before that and was even easier to work on.

My last car, a Focus TDCi, was more cramped but all IC hoses were jubilee-clipped and easy to tighten and the IC was top mount so easy to get to. Also used a conventional sump plug and my universal wind-back tool fitted the rear brake calipers.

Not much impressed by VAG user-friendliness so far...

 

[BenG]

i can take the egr off my fr in less than 30 mins!!

Wish I could. Couldn't even get an allen key in the cooler pipe bolts to check the size, let alone undo them!

 

[seantdi]

i usede an allen key. you need ones with the ball on the bottom as its hard to get them in straight

 

[BenG]

i usede an allen key. you need ones with the ball on the bottom as its hard to get them in straight

Think I've got some of those. I'll have to have another go at it some time.

Got the Mr Muscle oven cleaner on standby waiting to de-gunk the valve