Okay, so last week I posted that my car was feeling a bit flat, and after looking under the bonnet (and getting awesome advice off of here), discovered the breather pipe was knackered. Makes sense as the standard ones are rubber, and I guess this has just perished over time. So I went ahead and bought
this breather pipe as a silicone upgrade made sense especially as it was cheaper than a standard replacement from VW. And it is blue and looks
So after removing the engine cover, you can see where the pipes had split and been blowing oil all over the place!
Looks like its been doing it for a while with the amount of crud everywhere. I also think the seal on my oil cap has gone too as there was quite a bit around there too.
I decided whilst I had the old pipe removed, I would use a bit of engine de-greaser to clean up the bay a bit
. I only did half the rocker cover for the time being - I am going to tackle this again one weekend and get it looking a lot better, especially if I need to replace my oil cap seal. Anyway, you can see the difference between the two sides of the rocker. I just used a toothbrush to agitate the grease and then wiped off using a damp cloth. Looking better
Here you can see the old pipe and how bad it had split (might have been made worse by me prodding it!).
When I was removing the old breather pipe from the lower breather pipe, I noticed that the lower pipe was also knackered and had started to split. I accidentally pulled off the tip of the lower pipe which was a bit of a problem! So I am going to need to replace this sooner rather than later too (looks a lot more awkward to get too!). I popped into my local car shop (literally just next door to where I live) and he had a look and managed to connect the new and old pipes with a work around. He didn't seem to impressed with the silicone breather I had bought off ebay to be honest - he thought the holes in the pipe were too big. He is a sound guy (does rally driving) and his advice is just as good as his discounts for locals! But once the jubilee clips were on and tight, it seemed fine.
Here is the new breather compared to the old one for comparison. It is slightly bulkier than the old one.
Fitting the new pipe was a doddle - slot into place and do up three jubilee clips. I am a complete engine novice, but it was straight forward. The new pipe did need a bit of trimming with a sharp stanley blade on the left hand side, as when I first fitted it, I couldn't put the lower engine cover back on. I think I took off about 20mm in the end.
Since the breather has been swapped, the car feels a little better, but probably wont feel right until I swap over the lower breather pipe. I think there are some more old rubber pipes which need doing too
**Pics now added - it kept timing out
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