Club-S12 Username: Zman
The easiest way to get the turbo out is to get the exaust manifold, turbo and down pipe out as a unit. It would also be a good idea to get new gasgets before you go to work. And just incase be sure to have some helicoils ready. Aluminium is a fragile metal.
Materials Needed:
- common hand tools (screwdrivers, files, wrenches/sockets, etc...)
- First you should raise the car. High enough so you can work clearly under the car. Make shure that there is no way that the car can fall down on you. Then you can emtpy out the coolig fluid. You can do this by a plug on the underside of the radiator. Sqeeze the radiator tubes to get out some more fluid. This will only let out the fluid inside the radiator so there will be some left in the engine.
- Remove the distributor cap (1), power steering oil resevoir (3) and the air pipe from the turbo (2). The distributor cap and power steering oil resevoir are removed for clearence. It will be much easyer to remove the turbo this way. Also remove the air hose (4) from the turbo.
- Remove the heat sheald over the manifold. It's fixed with three screws on top of the manifold. These can be very hard to remove in one piece so be careful.
- Now you can remove one of the cooling lines to the turbo (5).There are some copper washers (12 last picture), be careful not too lose them. This can be a bit tricky but it can be done. The bolt is located behind the actuator arm of the wastgate. The turbo on the pic is not an original T2 but the cooling lines are installed exacly the same.
- Climb beneath the car and loosen the three bolts holding the exhaust to the down pipe (6). And also loosen the oil return hose (7). Nr 9 in also a cooling line but this one can stay connected for a litte while longer.
- Now you can start loosening the exhaust manifold. There are 6 studs holding it (9). 2 of them are on the underside. All studs are
accessible from the top of the car. The stud closest to the back of the car, the one that is below can be tricky do get to.
- Now that the exhaust manifold is loose you can gently slide it away from the engine. Be carefull not to damage the oil suply line (11). On my car this looks different because I have replaced it with a better one. The original is made of copper.
- Remove the second cooling line, don't lose the washers. And also remove the oil suply line from the engine.
Now the turbo is loose and can gently be removed. It would be a good idea to have someone under the car, helping.
- When you get everything out it would be much easyer to unistall the manifold and downpipe from the turbo. Before reinstalling the turbo be sure to check that the oil line comming from the engine to the turbo is in good shape.
If it gets bent it might crack or it will just get more fragile. And with time the oil presure can make it pop right off.