VANOS rebuilt!

Almost gold.

The thing is, I needed to swap the radiator, but VANOS were just in the vicinity and I had a seal and rattle kit ready. It’s a beautiful thing when the size of the engine forces you to adapt the plans for the better.

Old radiator goes out

The radiator was, strictly speaking, due to be changed already when I bought the car. It wasn’t curved then as it is in the picture above, therefore it wasn’t a priority. It didn’t leak, it cooled the liquid, everything was OK.

Fortunately for me, this spring was cool in Germany. I really doubt the radiator would survive higher air temperatures due to higher pressure build-up inside of it.

As one can see in the picture above, the front side of the cooler was also covered in dirt. Other than that, the A/C radiator was also cleaned in the process, so the A/C is cooling even better now.

Shiny!

Nissens radiators are known to be dependable allies and are OEM-quality parts. The prices are not crazy high either.

One can see it’s pretty cosy at the front without the tubing and fan. In this situation I would be crazy not to rebuild the VANOS unit since it is already accessible.

I must stress, I did not have any idling RPM problems or any power loss on the car, and as such the VANOS did not needed to be rebuilt. The motor had around 225k km (140k miles) on the day of the service.

To my amazement, the job was done with absolutetly no problems! I was astonished how easy it actually is. It did not look complicated in the how-tos, but that easy, it just blew my mind.

The hardest part for rebuilidng the VANOS is to remove the old seals.

Old seals, although obivously sealing perfectly, were causing some trouble removing. Watch out when removing the VANOS inside cover on the intake side, there is a spring underneath and will make a rocket out of your screws and cover.

After that it is pretty straightforward. One should really be careful where to cut and watch out not to damage the inside of the sealing grooves. The slight damage that can be seen on the outside of the VANOS piston does not pose a problem, as long as you don’t cut deep. You can see slight marks from cutting seals on the piston to the right on the picture below.

Unfortunately, I did not take any pictures of the VANOS rattle ring replacement, but there is a high quality how-to on the Internet and there is no problem about it. Just clean everything thoroughly and put back together in the exact order, of course, with the new ring.

VANOS piston to the right

Every seal groove accomodates two seals, first going in is the rubber seal and after it the teflon one. The teflon one can be pretty hard to stretch over the piston to fit in the groove. Here, use hot water and dip the teflon seals for a few seconds to give them a bit of a stretch. Still, when pulling the seal over the piston, it won’t just slide on like the rubber one does.

I found the best way of setting them in place is not to push the seal with your thumbs, but to pull the seal towards yourself with fingernails (not using thumbs). That way the seal will enter the seal groove on the piston more easily.

The seals need to be “accomodated” to the cylinder bore, on both sides. For that, one needs to slide the piston into the VANOS body at a slight angle and close the angle-gap fully, push the piston all the way in, push it half way out, and let it sit for at least 30secs. Then, the pistons shall be taken out and the procedure repeated for the covers (smaller diameter seals). After that, put VANOS unit back together.

VANOS unit: solenoids, pistons and covers can be all seen

VANOS unit can now be placed back where it belongs, a new gasket between the block and the unit itself, few screws tightened to tolerances and voila.
While at it, the camshaft cover gasket and seals were also changed, the contact surfaces cleaned before that.

I also changed the brake lines for the goodridge ones and of course did a braking fluid swap. Although goodridge lines are a high quality product, I don’t understand why the rubber grommets are too small. They simply jump out of the grommet hole, so I had to improvize.

New brake lines

I have also let the wheel alignment to be done on the car, the rear wheels were slight out of tolerance and I could notice the uneven wear on the new tires. The cabin and intake air filters, as well as new oil and oil filter are standard procedure, but also worth mentioning.

So, a few more pics from different angles can be found just underneath.

DISCLAMER: this is not meant to be a how-to guide, nor does it provide sufficient information and details to make any of the service work described. I am not to be held responsible in case of any type of injury or even death.

Have a nice day!