To show myself as a total noob, wanted to ask how difficult something like this would be to replace.

Wife has a 1998 VW Beetle (2.0), and we've been noticing an oil spot in the garage lately. She took it in to get the oil changed, and mentioned the leak. They said it could be the valve cover gasket, and wanted to charge her $200 to replace. That seemed really high to me.

Could someone with little automotive experience but a decent mechanical understanding replace it?

2/3/2010 8:18:01 PM

i can't speak to that car specifically, but its generally easy enough to tackle

2/3/2010 8:54:36 PM

I will say the difficult part looks to be removing the upper intake manifold. Having to remove the accelerator cable just makes me a bit nervous for some reason

2/3/2010 9:12:50 PM

in my car and the other cars i've seen, the cable comes right off. there is a notch that it fits in, just turn the part that it fits into (looks like a round wheel with a notch, located on the throttle body) and slide it out.

2/3/2010 9:44:03 PM

not too hard. you will need some sockets and some allens.

2/3/2010 11:20:57 PM

sometimes the hardest part can be actually getting the valve cover off because the gasket is hardened on there. and then you have to get all the pieces of the gasket off without damaging everything.

2/4/2010 7:54:36 PM

i know nothing about VWs but valve cover gaskets are generally easy...swapped mine (saturn) in a parking lot in about 45 minutes, and I'm no mechanic. all I needed was a torque wrench and some RTV, totalled ~25 bucks.

2/5/2010 9:29:46 PM

Quote :

"6MM ALLEN BOLT "

2/5/2010 11:36:52 PM

Welcome to the world of VW engineering

took 6 hours

yep, that's right. 6 hours.

2 main reasons it took so long. Because the car has been spewing oil inside, most of the hoses were basically caked on. Took a while to get some of them off. The second reason was because the valve cover was under the upper plenum, which has 7 bolts. 3 of them were relatively easy. 2 were down between the openings in the plenum. The last two were at the back of the friggin thing. Almost impossible to get out. At least 30 minutes for each bolt.

I did find out that the oil cap for the valve cover was broken. It's a special dealer part that I can't get at an AutoZone, so we'll see if that's it. The wife has my car and her keys right now so I can't start it up.

This just furthers my hate for VWs. I can't believe how tight everything was in there.

Oh well, at least it's done. If it still leaks, I'll just take it to the shop and let them handle it.

2/6/2010 3:22:36 PM

VW's are hell on earth to work on.

2/6/2010 8:27:43 PM

Not necessarily.




But their owners still love them. They even take pinup photos!


And just because they're my favorite TWW photoshops:




[Edited on February 6, 2010 at 10:41 PM. Reason : .]

2/6/2010 10:28:00 PM

Quote :

"VW's are hell on earth to work on."

A friggin men

2/7/2010 10:51:21 AM

vws arent that bad... beeltes can be a pain.

the raintray comes out fairly easily to give a lot more access to the back of the engine.

2/7/2010 11:13:17 AM