Finally did it...

[MaxHedrm]

I had to, the city finally noticed the car sitting in my driveway, unregistered & uninspected. I couldn't let them take it, so I have to fix it.

Well, I'm mostly done.  Finally got off my lazy butt & pulled the head. Cleaned it all up as good as possible, the coolant passages were nasty. All full of diesel/coolant/oil sludge from when the old headgasket croaked. & now it's mostly back together. I have to hook up the new coolant hoses & probably should drain the fuel tank some at least, since it's been sitting over a year now. Then fill up the fluids & give it a try.

Any suggestions on what to flush the cooling system with? I know I didn't get it all out, & I'm sure the heater core & everything else is disgusting too.

One of the pistons was ever so slightly pitted. I meant to get pics, but never went in to get my camera. Is it something I should worry about? To my novice eyes everything else looked pretty good for a car that claims to have 362,000 miles.

And I only broke one bolt (to the front coolant flange, ooops) & one little vacuum splitter (gonna have to work around this for now). I also managed to lose one washer for one of the nuts on the exhaust manifold.  :?

[burn_your_money]

Way to save one of the good ones

[veeman]

>>Any suggestions on what to flush the cooling system with? I know I didn't get it all out, & I'm sure the heater core & everything else is disgusting too.

A friend of mine had a few Passats / Audi's come through with bad oil coolers on the 1.8T engine.  Oil got into the coolant system and made a terrible mess.  After replacing the parts they needed, he used Dawn dishwashing detergent (not a whole lot) and a bunch of water to flush it all out.   Seemed to work pretty well...