Not yesterday, but the first time I had a chance to get on since last week...
Been trying to diagnose a intermittent sputtering, occasional dying. If it died the car would start right back up after a few seconds. Thursday after limping to the shop I changed the fuel filter and pulled the pumpp out of the tank to check it and clean the pickup screen. Pickup was fine. But found if i jiggled the 3 wire plug on the coil the car would die. Must be a bad connection in the plug..On Friday was going to go by the U-Pull-it to get a coil harness since I thought I had a loose connection in mine. Wrong.. On the way there, the car totally died. 2 hours later finallly got to the U-pull-it and got another coil out of a MkIII.
Saturday I finished up on exhaust orders that got delayed to the Pissant crapping out Thursday and Friday and began to install the remaining items in my goody box from Autohaus AZ.
Did a tranny filter and fluid replacement.
Replaced front control arm bushings(my god they were shot...)
Replaced front rotors.
Cleaned ABS sensors in the front.
Replaced front brake pads..
Since all this took about 9 hours(in addition to what I spent on the exhausts) I was beat and didnt get to install the rear brake pads.
Why did it take 9 hours? Glad you asked, and a heads up to anyone else doing control arm bushings...
On the Passat(first car I noticed to have this) in the pocket where the rear bushings for the front control arms go there are "lips" machined into the pocket for the bushing to sit. its hard to explain, but its like a C shaped groove that protrudes from the surface of the K member, and the bushing gets located by these to keep the bushing from moving around since the hole in the bushing is about 1/4" larger than the bolt....
My aftermarket bushings had a thick layer of rubber on them, and it took a while to figure out that this excess rubber was preventing the bushing from going into that pocket. I trimmed the excess rubber off with a die grinder finally, and the arms slid right back on the car.