2009 VW Passat L4 2.0L Upper Timing Chain Tensioner Preferred Components Inc T64206

Hi. I'm Mike from 1A Auto. We've been selling auto parts for over 30 years.

In this video, we are going to be replacing a timing chain tensioner in a 2010 Volkswagen GTI. This tensioner will fit other Volkswagen and Audi models. Check 1aauto.com for other applications. This is an updated part, whereas the old part would often fail. The manufacturer recommends, when doing this job, you replace the front cover bolts, the engine crank seal, the engine crank bolt, the motor mount bolts, the front bracket bolt on the engine, and you will also need some RTV or engine sealant. This is the coolant reservoir we're going to be removing.

We want to start by taking out this 10-millimeter bolt for the washer fluid fill. A 10-mil out. Now, we're going to pull the washer fill out of the way. We're going to pull off the cap. Make sure this is cold, because otherwise you're going to have pressure, and it's going to have a lot of coolant come out. We're going to pull this hose off. I'm going to use some pliers. Take off the clamp. We're going to use a right-angle pick and get in underneath here to break the seals. Sometimes you can just twist the pipe back and forth the hose. So, if you go right around, that'll break the seal and pull right off. Next, we're going to disconnect this connector. You're going to use a small flat-blade screwdriver, and pop it, and pull it right out. I'm going to pull this wiring harness out of the way. We're going to use a T25 and an extension and a small ratchet, and you get these two fasteners back here. Make sure you want to have a drain bucket underneath because you're going to lose a little bit of coolant. Pull this out of the way. You are going to put a hose clamp on here, so that we don't lose too much coolant. But there is going to be cooling in the reservoir you're going to lose. I'm going to take this clamp off. We're going to use our pliers again.

Down the hose. Grab the hose and pull. Twisting. Here's our reservoir. We're going to pull the wheel off. These normally have caps over it, so on your vehicle you may have those. You're going to use a tool from the kit in the trunk. It's got, like a hook on it. Put it in the center of the cap and you pull straight up. This vehicle does not have that. So I'm just going to take them off, with a 17-millimeter socket and a breaker bar. It's going to break them free. This is the passenger side for the vehicle. We're using a two-post lift to raise and lower the vehicle. At your house, you can use a jack and jack stand.

We're going to take these lug studs out. Volkswagen uses lug studs or lug bolts, not lug nuts. For this one, when you get to the last one, you're going to want to make sure you put pressure on the wheel. Because of the lug studs, the wheel will fall. To access the front of the motor, we're going to take this panel out. I'm going to start by taking these T25s out one at a time. There was one fastener here. There's one here. One here. There's two right here. And underneath, there's one right here. One here. One here. One here. There's two right here, and this one's missing one, but there's normally one right there.

We're going to pull this lower shield off to give us more accessibility. I'm going to take these other ones off from the other side, from the driver's side, and it's going to pull straight back. Next, we're going to take this intercooler pipe out. This comes off the turbo and goes to the intercooler. I'm going to take these two torques out. It's a T30 and ratchet. These bolts are captured, so they won't pull out. So, they'll just stay there. We're going to pull this intercooler pipe out. There's a little lock ring here. You're going to pull it straight out. Just hold it. You should be able to wiggle right out.

I'm going to do the same up here. There's a little lock right there. Pull it up and it comes out of the way. You can separate it there, but there's no need to since we were able to separate it in these two spots. That gives us the most room to work. Now, I'm going to pull the belt off. The tensioner is right here. You're going to use a 17-millimeter socket, and we're going to use a breaker bar, but you could use a ratchet. Put it on and you're going to pull it towards the back of the vehicle. That's going to loosen the tension for the belt. Then we can slip the belts right off. You might want to hold a little bit so that you don't get it stuck like that. There you go.

This is a special Volkswagen tool that you're going to need to pull the crank pulley off. It's going to hold the crank. If you don't have this tool, it's going to be rather difficult to get that nut out. I mean, this bolt out. You might be able to use a impact to get this out. But, we're going to use this tool to get it out. Put it there. Now, we're going to use a 24-millimeter socket with a breaker bar. The tool is going to hold the crank pulley. Once it's pretty loose, it should come out fairly easily. Here we go. We're doing this now while the upper engine mount is still in so that the engine is pretty stable, so it won't shake around. It'll make it safer to do this right now.

All right. Immediately, after taking the crank pulley off, something you don't want to forget that we actually forgot was you need to install the crank bolt with a spacer. Volkswagen actually has a special tool number. It is T10368 washer. We're just going to use a nut. And the crank bolt, you want to put it back in very carefully. The reason you want to do this is because all these ears are not attached to the crank right now, and they could fall off, and then your engine would be out of time. So, just put it on loosely and you're good. Just finger tight. We need to gain access to the front of this engine. We're going to have to take this out.

This is what is known as the noise pipe. So we're going to start by taking this clip out up here. Just use a screwdriver just like down below. That pulls out right there. I'm going to take the torques out with a T30 and a ratchet. There's a hose right here. I'm going to pop the hose out of the retainer. I'm just going to set this on the side. Before we pull this front engine mount out, we're going to have to support the engine from the top. So we're going to pull the oil cap off. Now, we're going to grab underneath this shield, this cover, and pull straight up. We're going to use some holders to hold the engine up here, with this bracket, and this bracket right here.

I'm going to put the oil cap back on, so we don't get any debris or bolts or anything to go down there. This is how we supported the engine on the top. Next, we're going to have to pull this front motor mount out. We're going to start taking this bracket off, and we're going to use a 13-millimeter socket and ratchet. We're going to pull this bolt out with the same 13-millimeter. We can pull that bracket right out. Next, we're going to pull this pipe out of the way. There's a little release tab right here and it comes right out. I'm going to pull this bracket out of the way and use a 10-millimeter socket and extension and a ratchet.

We're going to take this 10-millimeter nut out and also the 10-millimeter bolts right there. We're going to take these two top motor mount bolts out and then pull this coolant hose out of our way. We're going to use an 18-millimeter socket on an extension, with a ratchet. Just break that one free. Then we'll go to the next one. Break the next one free. While you're doing this, the motor may drop down a little bit, but that's why we have our support. That's one bolt. That's the second bolt. Now, we're going to take this bolt out. We're going to use a 16-millimeter socket and an extension and a ratchet.

We're going to take this back one off, too, 16-millimeter. Now, we should be able to pull this motor mount out. Get that out of your way. There's three triple-square fasteners that hold this engine bracket to the engine. I'm going to start with this one. I'm going to use a triple-square M12, which is 12 millimeter on a ratchet. I'm going to loosen it up. Once it breaks free, we'll do it by hand because there's not a lot of space in there. It's real tight in here, so we actually had to modify one of our bits, because we couldn't get it in there with the driver to be able to get the bolt out.

So, we just trimmed ours down a little bit, and we're able to get it in there with a wrench and able to break it free. That pulls out. We leave that one in for a second and we're going to try to grab the last one. Now that's in there, so I'll use the open end of the 13-millimeter wrench and break this one free, and it's loose. So that's out. Now, we're going to pull this one out a little bit and some bracketry will come down. Now, we're going to take the dipstick tube out. There's a fastener right here. There's a T30. Break it free. And there's a T30 right here also. Take it out. Pull the dipstick tube out, dipstick indicator out. I'm going to pull the dipstick tube straight up. Wiggle it back and forth.

There it goes. Pulls right out. We're going to move this tensioner out of our way and use a 17-millimeter wrench and a small Allen. Pull the tensioner. Then there's a little hole right here. It's going to keep the tensioner pulled. You're going to leave that there. Now we're going to loosen the bolt for this pulley. We're going to have to take that off. We're going to take these torques. They are a T30. There's 15 of them that go all around the front engine cover. The reason we had to pull that pulley off was to get access to that one right there. We'll start down here.

All right. We're going to pull this bracket off next, so it would be out of our way, and pull the cover off. It's a T30 again. I'm going to use a flat-blade screwdriver and just go around the edge. Try to pry a little bit. Trying to get the sealant to break free. Try to be careful when prying on this. It will bend the metal. It's just thin steel. If you do bend it too much, you're going to have to replace it. Do your best, but it may need to be replaced. I'm just going to try to move this tensioner back so it's out of my way. To get the cover off, we're going to have to gain more access. We're going to have to pull this turbo elbow off. I'm going to use a five-millimeter Allens.

There's three of the five-millimeter Allen bolts. I'm taking off this four-millimeter Allen on the boost control solenoid right here on the back, because the solenoid is in the way of the last bolt, for the right angle coming off the turbo. With that removed, we can push it out of the way so that we can access the last five-millimeter Allen bolt. That last bolt, pulled it out, and we're able to pull this out. There is a O-ring right here. We're going to make sure that stays there. You don't want to lose that. Pull the last cover bolt out. Slip the cover right out. Your tensioner that we're going to be replacing is right here. This is the old-style tensioner.

What we're going to be doing next is putting some zip ties to hold the chains together, so that they do not lose time or skip teeth. Make sure they're all tight. Now, we're going to use a T30 and a little ratchet, and take our tensioner bolts out. As you can see, our timing chain did not move. It's exactly where we left it. This is our old tensioner that came off the vehicle. Now, there's indications that you can tell that this is the old style, which is the ones that fail all the time. This band right here, it actually holds down a lock, and the lock prevents the piston from going back.

Those fail often. When you are driving your vehicle and you shut it off and the oil pressure goes down and this lock is not there, this piston will actually go in, and then your timing chain can jump off and lose timing, and that can cause engine damage and other engine to not start and stuff. As you can see, this is our new updated part. It does not have that style lock. The lock mechanism is a lot more solid in this new style part. The reason why this looks a little different sitting right here, is this is the lock that holds the piston in to this tensioner.

You will see when I install it in the car, when I pull this out, this would act as a grenade pin, whereas this one would just have a little pin here. But this holds it all together. We're going to reinstall our tensioner. Remember, we still have our zip ties holding the chains on so that our engine does not lose time. You can reuse the old bolts for this. They're not torque to yield. We're going to torque this to nine Newton-meters or seven foot-pounds. We're going to pull this clip that retains the piston down. Now that we have our new tensioner in, all the chains are nice and tight, everything's good. It's safe now to cut off these cable ties. All right. Now, we're going to clean up all this gasket area. We're going to use some brake clean and a rag. Wipe off. Make sure you clean it real well so the new engine sealant will stick, and some of the areas that just the brake clean and the rag wouldn't work, a razor blade would work. Just lightly scrape it. We were able to reuse our cover because when taking it off, it was not mangled beyond reusing it. But if yours does become warped severely, then you're going to want to replace it. Now we're going to take off the sealer and just going to use a razor blade to peel it off.

You can use a scraper. It's a little bit tedious, but go all the way around. Scrape it all the way off. We're going to use a little bit of brake cleaner on this and a rag and wipe it. So there's a little area right here. It's lifted up from the one we were prying. I'm just going to use a little hammer and bang it down a little bit, and it's flat. Before we put in some new engine sealant on this, what we're going to do is we're going to replace the crank seal. We're going to bang out the old one. You're going to have it faced down. I'm going to put it on a piece of wood to raise it up a little bit. We're going to take either a screwdriver, or this is a little pry bar, and a hammer. Tap it down.

There we go. It's pulled out. Just pry it like this, peel it out. Just checking here, make sure everything looks okay. Looks like there's a little bit of silicone on there. Now we got this area cleaned up. We're going to take our new seal, line it up, and we're going to take a block of wood, put it on there flat. We're going to use a hammer. Just hammer it down. So you want to make sure that you do not crush these oil valleys when you're hammering down on that seal. The seal needs to go down a little bit more. This block of wood only got us to there, so it's flush. What you can do is if you have a socket that will fit, this perimeter of the seal, that would work. We're going to use a seal installer. Just tap it down some more, and that's good.

I'm going to use a little more brake cleaner on this surface just to clean it up one more time before I put my sealer on. We'll use a little more brake cleaner over on this surface before I start my ceiling. We're going to use some of our engine sealant and put a nice little bead around. This is a little too thick. Go around all the bolt holes. A little bit of oil right here that normally drips while you're sitting there. So just wipe that real quick before you put the cover on. I'm going to put the cover on. Just ease it in there. Try not getting your fingers too much in the RVT, the engine sealer. It's lined up. Now, we're going to push it down. Now, we're going to take our new T30 bolts and put them in the cover. Before we torque them down, you're going to put them all in. To get these two bolts to line up, we got to torque these two bottom ones down a little bit because they're on a different surface, a different plane. Just snug them down a little bit. So to get the bolt from underneath here, we're going to move our tensioner and put that Allen back in so it holds it, and take a little bit of maneuvering. Now, I'm going to start snugging down these bolts, but I'm not torquing them yet. I'm going to just get the whole cover even.

You're going to want to torque these in sequence, and the torque spec is eight Newton-meters or 5.9 foot-pounds. That's for the first torque sequence. The torque angle on the second sequence is 45 degrees. It's going to be hard to get a torque angle meter in here, so do the best you can. 45 degrees is half of a 90. I'm going to make sure this O-ring didn't fall out when you're putting it back together. If the O-ring looks like it's been damaged, you're going to want to replace it, because ours looks pretty good. So we're going to reuse it. I'm going to put the elbow back in. On these bolts, I'm going to just put a little bit of thread sealant reinstall the bolts.

I'm going to snug these bolts up with a five-millimeter Allen. It's hard to get a torque wrench up here. But the torque spec on these bolts is nine Newton-meters or 80 inch-pounds. I'm going to reach around on the back side of that turbo outlet and put these little four-millimeter Allen bolts into the turbo boost control valve. It's easier to get to one of the bolts while I still have the engine bracket out. Now, you can tighten up the bolts from up top. It's going to be easier on this turbo boost control solenoid. You can move this wiring harness back there. Now I'm going to install this engine bracket. Remember, we're putting our new bolts in here. I'm tightening these bolts. It's really hard to get in here, so we use the tool that we made. You want to torque these to 40 Newton-meters and then another additional 180 degrees the best you can.

There's a tool that we cut. But we're going to drop the vehicle down to put the front motor mount on, because we when we install the crank pulley, we want the engine supported better so that it doesn't move around a lot. It'll be safer. So we're going to drop that down now and put our motor mount in place. We have the new bolts and then install.

These two are different. This one goes in the back of the mount on the body side. This one goes in the front on the body side. That stud holds a bracket. Snug all these bolts down. You want to make sure you get them all in first and then we're going to torque them. We're going to torque these engine mount bolts. These are going to go on the engine side. The torque is 60 Newton-meters and then an additional 90 degrees. I'm going to do another 90 degrees, which is a quarter turn. That's about good. I'm going to torque the engine mount to the body bolts. These are 40 Newton-meters and then an additional 90 degrees.

90 degrees is about a quarter turn. Now, you can remove however you supported your engine. We're going to install our dipstick tube. This may have been a little bit easier if you'd done it before you put the engine bracket on. But it's not impossible to do it now. Line it in the hole and push it down. We got our dipstick down. As you can see, it goes down to where that lip goes right to the hole. This is going to be difficult whether you reuse the cover or replace the cover. There's a little bit of force, and you should be able to get it down. Now, we're going to put our crank pulley on and take this off very carefully. Take the bolt out, if you had the special tool or whatever you can use in place of it. There's the nut. The crank pulley has a key, as you can see, right here. I'm going to have to line it up, up top. Slide it up good.

I'm going to put our brand-new crank bolt in. Now, we're going to torque our crank bolt. We're going to torque it to 150 Newton-meters or 111 foot-pounds and then additional 90 degrees. One way to get 90 degrees, we're going to mark the bolt, and then we're going to mark 90 degrees. It's a right angle, so it's fairly easy to get. So now, we're just going to get the bolt to there. On our serpentine belt tensioner, we had put a bolt and a nut just so that we could move it around and stuff with ease. So, we're going to take that off, so that we can put the pulley back on. Install the pulley, the washer, and the bolt.

Snug that up pretty tight. All right. So we're going to install our serpentine belt. We're going to have to go over the alternator pulley up top. I'm going to come down around our AC compressor and go around our crank pulley next and pull it down around our tensioner. And now that it is set, we're able to pull our holder out, and take tension off with our 17-millimeter socket and ratchet. Then we can pull out our Allen, and now, it's good. We're going to put this little bracket on with the T30, snug it up. Now, we're going to reinstall our intercooler pipe. I'm going to make sure these clips are pushed down.

On this one, you can see it's out. What I'm going to do is push it in. And you push it in. Just do the little force till it clicks. Install these two T30s. I'm going to use our T30 socket and a ratchet. Snug these down. We're going to install this cover and this here. There's all these grooves you need to line up underneath here and it pops into place. Then you have these little forks that go in. We're going to install this side panel shield. Install all your teeth, 25 bolts. I'm going to install the tire, lining up with the holes and hold it, and we'll use our 17-millimeter socket to put our lug studs on or lug bolts, whatever you want to call it.

Now, we're going to torque the lug studs to 120 Newton-meters in a star pattern. When you do it in a star pattern, it makes the wheel go flush to the brake rotor properly. Reinstall the two T30 bolts for the dipstick too. Reinstall the dipstick. I'm going to install this bracket. It goes right here, right over that stud, back. Now we're going to have to put this nut on that stud down there. It's kind of hard to reach. We're going to use a 10-millimeter socket and an extension. But to prevent the nut from falling out, I'm going to take a little bit of grease, a little bit of grease on the nut itself.

Put the nut in the socket and then the nut will not fall out. You can slide it down there and then toque it down till it's snug. We're going to put this other 10-millimeter down here. You can do the same grease trick if you need to. This bracket goes right on top of the bolt. I'm going to install this bracket just right here, with two bolts. With our 13-millimeter socket and a ratchet and extension, tighten these down. We're going to install this noise pipe. Line it up. Press it in until it clicks. Put this hose on. This bracket broke off. We're just going to slide it in here. Cut that in, that hose, and install the engine cover.

Hook up the lower pipe for the reservoir. Push it on. Once it's on, we can pull off this clamp and get it out of our way. I'm going to move this hose clamp for the pair of pliers. Just get it lined up and squeeze and get it on there. It's best to try to get in the same grooves that it was in before. We're close. Put this down in here. Install this hose. With pliers, move this hose clamp. Before we install these wires, we're going to install our T25s. Snug it down. Remember, it's plastic so you don't want to go too tight. I'm going to install this wiring harness into these clips.

We can plug in our connector till it clicks. We can install the washer fill to the bracket and use a 10-millimeter socket and ratchet. I'm going to top off our coolant. You want to make sure you use Volkswagen-approved coolant. When doing this, you're going to want to make sure you run your engine for a while before you drive and recheck the level to make sure it's okay. In theory, there should not be any air in the motor. But just in case the vehicle burps, and if you need to add coolant, you should do so. I'm going to install our cap till it clicks.

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