Holy crap nuggets that sucked, Batman…
So I took off work between Christmas and new years to tear this down. Engine supported, subframe down, lp egr cooler removed, dpf out, large (lp) turbo out. Out the top went the vacuum “spider” of doom, small (hp) turbo, etc..
The soot was horrendous. A thick layer of it everywhere. Lucky my vcg isn’t leaking oil out or it would have been too much mess to ever get cleaned up. As I disassembled, I left the soot alone to try to work out exactly where it’s come from. I still can’t tell for certain. I see evidence of the changeover valve leaking which is terrible because a new CHRA won’t fix that. Nothing will. So I ordered a new lower turbo from fcp euro.
The compressor side of everything was caked with soot so I suspect it’s mostly coming from the manifold to head gasket. I still have the exhaust manifold to remove and since I’m back to work already, I figured I’d soak the manifold studs with aerokroil every day till the weekend. It can’t hurt, right?
So I broke a few bolts during the removal process. Bracket bolt and lp egr cooler bolt are broke off in the dpf. I’ll send it out to be cleaned and evaluated anyway. I’ll be putting a new dpf in so I just have to buy the bolts I broke and I’m all set there. I also broke the def metering valve trying to unhook the disconnect on the line. It was just old and brittle. And the most fun part I broke is one of the bolts for the small turbo (yes, in the exhaust manifold). This won’t be fun.
So I’ve ordered another $4000 worth of parts for this job and it’ll be here next Friday. I am seriously considering just buying a new exhaust manifold for 2 reasons. 1) I don’t want to have to drill out that already broken bolt. 2) it’s been leaking exhaust from the gasket to aluminum head connection. I’m fearful that trying to reuse the old manifold will just cause me to have to do all this work over again. I’m sure those of you who’ve done this job or do it for a living are laughing at me calling it a lot of work but in a driveway with no lift and having to massage every bolt so the remainder don’t snap, is a lot of work. Especially when your hands aren’t meant to be where they need to be to do it.
So what say you? New manifold is ~$800. If I sell the CHRAs for a small loss, I’ll recoup half the $ for a new manifold. I’m tempted to take it to the machine shop and have them tank it and spec the mating surface, but idk if it’s worth the risk. Just the gasket set for both turbos is ~$600. Seems like the potential to spend 1400 (manifold and gaskets again) instead of 800 is too much to risk.
Advice?

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- Tom
‘10 E70 diesel, hud, hot/cold weather, 3rd row.