I had planned to do an oil change and a coolant flush the other day. I got one done as it was too cold to be messing around with fully flushing the coolant, and i didn't have any running water available to fill it back up with the flushing additive...

Never in my life have I had an oil change take so long and give me so many problems.. lol. First the filter was practically welded on to the flange.. and i couldn't find my filter wrench so I had to settle for a punch and a hammer. lol so after a nice long fight with that I went to get the drain plug out.. sure enough the PO striped the HELL out of it. GREAT! so i get out my vice-grips.. no luck, only making it worse! starting to go numb as I had already been outside prior to deciding to do this. what to do what to do? PIPE WRENCH! Fantastic invention! The harder you pull the tighter it wraps itself around whatever you have it around! LOVE IT. Got the bolt out, new MANN filter on, 4L of new 15w-40 oil in (some people i have heard say this is to thick) and 500ml of Bardahl Oil Treatment. let the oil settle and make its way back to the pan.. and then fired it up. Woohoo, no leaks. So happy at this point, as it was cold as crap out. Get in and get warmed up as i let it sit there and idle. Had it warmed up prior to doing the change, so the oil would flow easily.
I have a question, what is the temperature ranges for a 15w-40 (or was it 15w-50??) diesel motor oil? I think the little green book that came with the Jetta shows it as being used down to around -15 Celsius. It has not hurt starting in anyway, still cranks over very quickly and fires on the second chug of the starter.. Starts better then my 1.7 gasser

so it seems to me that 15w is not to heavy for winter starting at -5 or -10 C. However what would be the best warm up routine, let it warm up for a few minutes with the high idle on (91 pump has this awesome feature), and then be on my way? keeping the revs low and not putting it under to much load? seems to be the quickest way to warm up my 1.7..
I will be pulling the vac pump off the 91 engine sometime this week and hopefully getting it in to the 81 engine fairly shortly so i can have some real brakes.. I've been driving it around the last couple days, just around the area.. small road in the middle of nowhere.. and even with absolutely no power brakes the car can still be stopped fairly well, with the gears of course lol.
Rabbitman you blew the booster up to 120psi?? what would this tell you? that it id for sure working ant not leaking? lol I am still not exactly sure how they work.. to be honest.. suck in a very small amount of air.. and all of the sudden braking is night and day? i do not get it..
I didn't go through with the cutting of the springs, as I was looking at them and they are definitely all shot. The two fronts coils sit very very close together.. meaning the springs barely have any lift on them anymore.. so new springs and struts all around are for sure.. Seeing as i will be adding new springs to the list.. Should I be getting new Mk1 springs for it? or new Mk2 springs and cut them down to begin with? or some good used mk2 springs.. from somebody who just went to coils and will be very likely to get rid of them for close to nothing?

Also I know Lucas (theman53) has a thread going about what struts to use to get a quality ride that isn't going to be shot after 15k
What are your thoughts and opinions Sirs.