MOT failure - Emmisions

[laurenceyon]

Haha - oh I do drive her. - Not to the point where it's thrashed but these cars aren't designed for driving like a wand..

I'll do the stem seals on Saturday. Can anybody hook me up with a user guide - I did search 

[search]

mine was high but the guy took my breather pipe off the filter housing then it passed lol.

[Sgt_Lemon]

To do the valve stem seals, with the head off. Remove cam, and tappets. Remove valves with valve spring compressor. Now remove the old valve stem seals. When installing the new ones you don't want to put them in too hard or too tight. Either damage the valve guides or it leaks. I used a socket and extension arm over the seal and gently tapped it down. Used a 9 sided socket slightly smaller than the seal, just tapped it down till it was tight enough to pull the socket off not the seal off. Does that help?

[laurenceyon]

I think I better book it into a vw garage. Thanks for your help anyway. At least I know what the issue is, hopefully it's not the piston rings. But i'n sure we'll soon find out, eh!

What a ball ache.

[gazareth]

first thing to ask when you take it to garage is. can they do it with the head on the car. it will save you some cash in labour and the cost of a new head gasket set. the thing is once to start removing heads you could end up with a lot of extra costs. like grinding valves/renewing guides/skimming. and if the engine is running great I would just go for the stem seals on their own. but at the end of the day its your choice as to how good or how cheap a fix you want.

[Sgt_Lemon]

It can be done with the head still on the car, it's just more awkward to compress the springs to drop the valves. Easier to ask a garage, you need special tools to do it yourself.

[gazareth]

yeah that's true but check first if the garage has the right tools to do it in a reasonable amount of time. like an adaptor to pressurise cylinders with air to keep valves up/proper spring compressor and stem seal puller. these seals can be really on there tight and its very easy to damage the top of the guide if your not careful.