Replaced my rear shocks last weekend after getting an MoT advisory that the offside was "soft". All did not go too smooth so I thought it might be good to post the issues that I had to help anyone preparing to do this job:
Get the right parts: I read through few posts and decided to buy all the extra bits and pieces except the metal and washers (from
http://vwspares.co.uk/) . This was a good decision as you will see from the photo below the spring plate was in very very bad condition. I have had the car for over 10 years now and I am ashamed that I was driving around with them like this for some time. If there was any knocking I probably just got used to it. Interestingly the rubber spring buffers which are the usual suspects for a saggy rear end were in pretty good nick. Conclusion: Buy spring plates or have a very good feel around the area above the spring. This area is obviously a good place to focus on when hosing down the underside. I ended up peeling back a good amount of cracking seam sealer in this area and having to treat some corrosion that might see the car off to the scrap heap eventually.
When building up the replacement shock I found that the lower coil of the spring where it interfaces with the damper was far too sloppy a fit. Neither VW heritage or vw spares list any packing piece on their sites (it may be that some shocks don't need them, these were SACHs oil filled) but I all the exploded diagrams and vagcat show something there. I ended up putting everything back together (with a new spring plate) and going to our local VW dealer to pick up a packing washer (321 512 109, GBP2.02 each)together with some new self locking nuts. The packing washer is shown below (L-R Old, New, Installed). It doesn't make for a tight fit but things are much better with one fitted.
Finally I was puzzled that while I took everything off with a 17mm spanner, I needed a different spanner (ended up using a 5/8 AF because I don't have a 16mmm spanner) with the new nuts that I bought for the top mount. I ended up leaving the old nuts on the lower mount because I wanted to keep the retaining plate that is fitted to the rear beam (not shown on the exploded views I've seen) and the new nuts didn't have a flanged section and they wouldn't fit it anyway. The original part number listed is N10209005, VW supplied N10209009 as an alternative. The old ones still seemed to have plenty of locking torque. The lower mount nut bits are shown below (new nut in middle).
Hope that this helps anyone needing to do this job on a standard car.
