Smooth Drive with "New" Injectors

As the title says, the car is now running. It was not an easy job. Before the details of how well it runs, here is how it went back together. First and foremost, we received the injectors from BAR-TEK in Germany, and with them came a report of their performance.

Three of the boxes have "UNDLICHT" written on them, which is odd since that is not a German word. The spreadsheet makes it clear why they were marked:

None of the cylinders passed a leakage test before service, shown by the red "Nok". Cylinder 2 is fine after servicing. The rest are still leaking, which can do real engine damage over time, so they need replacing soon. Even with three still leaking, the before and after numbers are a big improvement. Look at the "Dynamic sec?" row. I would recommend getting your injectors tested at a shop like BAR-TEK (opens in a new tab). You may also save money if a service fixes the leak, as it did on cylinder 2.

What I would not recommend is using the seals that come with the injectors. The ones from BAR-TEK were too thick for our intake manifold. I had already ordered four sets separately, which was lucky. We struggled to get the injectors to fit, and once we tried putting one into the manifold it was obvious the seals were too big. With Elring seals they went in easily.

Before fitting the manifold, as part of the carbon cleaning, we scraped carbon off the plates in the valve openings. One plate had noticeably less buildup, which I think ties back to cylinder 2 being the one that leaked least.

With the engine bay finished it was time for oil and coolant. We used LIQUI MOLY Top Tec 4100 (opens in a new tab), 5W-40, 5L. The EA113 is known for burning more oil at higher mileage, so 5W-40 is generally recommended over 5W-30. The engine takes 4.6 litres and we put in all 5. It was completely dry because we had replaced the oil filter housing. At about 90% of the oil the dipstick read halfway, which is where you want it, so the rest went in.

Then we turned the ignition and cranked it, watching for leaks in the bay and on the floor. The front was still raised, so anything dripping would have been easy to spot. Cranking took a good minute or two while the fuel pressure came back up. After two or three minutes it fired and ran well, with no misfires. Getting rid of the misfires was the whole point, so that was the goal met.

Next was a test drive. The exhaust was still leaking badly at this point, which we have to fix before the car is properly drivable and legal. Nothing unusual on the drive, and it felt smooth, helped by removing the dog bone insert that had stiffened everything up.

The next day we put it on the lift and looked underneath at what the previous owners had done. The exhaust was missing the small converter that comes with the Milltek system, this piece:

Without it, connecting the two exhausts is very difficult, which explains the home made solution. The previous owners spliced a piece off the original and a piece off the Milltek and welded them together. We decided to undo that and rebuild the original exhaust to fit the car. Taking the exhaust off turned up more problems, including a very rusty hanger:

That hanger and the left side rubber hanger mount both need replacing so the exhaust does not sag on one side. We did not find this until after the original exhaust was already built, mounted and leak tested, at which point the whole thing was hanging lower on the left. Before checking the mounts we split it again and mounted each part separately to see whether a different orientation would sit level at the rear.

As mentioned a few posts ago, the previous owners also replaced the original Dynaudio woofers:

The car is built for 2 Ω woofers and they fitted 4 Ω ones. On top of swapping good speakers for ones that do not suit the setup, they decided the original door connectors were useless and cut them off. So we went to a scrapyard to find other Volkswagens with the same connectors. They are used across most of the VW range, so that part was easy.

The new woofers are Focal, and after testing them I would give them 8 out of 10. That is not Focal's fault. The speakers are good, but with the original head unit we wanted more bass from the rear. So the plan is to swap the head unit for an RCD 330+.