Ok, while I wait for my resistors and stuff to arrive to carry this out I thought I would take a gander at what's what underneath so I don't get any hidden surprises when I do come to do it, not trying to step on anyones toes here or trying to teach people
how to suck eggs, the only reason for this is because I've only owned the car a few days so its all new to me and I got a PD150 lump and most of the reading seem for the cupra R with just a mention of if you got a diesel then you need to remove the intercooler pipe, so that's all I was excepting, besides I just like to know what I'm getting myself into
I did this with just a jack and a couple of axles, so unless you're privileged enough to have access to a four poster then there's not much room to work with on your back
First up I took off the engine under cover, I followed cupra-c_ya's handy
guide to doing an oil change to remove it but I'm not sure he had a diesel as he had x4 spline T25 bolts and 3 cross head bolts screwed in, mine had x8 T25 spline bolts, the under tray is I'm sure slightly larger aswell, keep the T25 close by as you'll need it
Again I'm not sure how different the diesels are underneath with any ancillary parts but pop out the air filter duct from its housing and swing it out
This is the view from the passenger side wheel, you can see the hole where the duct feeds through, you do need to remove this whole cowling aswell though
There's a few more T25's to take out to remove that cowling and a couple of spring type washers which are all visible
Use a small flat head to prise behind the washer and it should make its way down, if it doesn't then use that flat head to carefully prise up some sections in the middle then go behind and it should move
And out
If you can remove the inner wheel arch (mine were all T25 splines) it will
help later, I had a few damaged ones so I had to keep it in place, if you can remove then do so, will
help massively later
Once out you can see the fan connector plugs but obviously the lower intercooler pipe is now in the way, view from the passenger wheel again
Wipe a rag down there while your at it, the intercooler pipe comes off exactly the same way as the EGR pipe does topside, if you haven't come across it before then clean up the 'clips' around the ends and put a large flat screwdriver in the recess and turn 90 degrees, the clip will raise slightly so then lever a little more and it should 'ping' into position, you don't take the clip out completely, it will seat itself when its free, then pull out the pipe
While you're here wipe the outside of the pipe and check for any splits/cracks
Once the intercooler pipe is off you can see the fan connector plugs in place, DO NOT cut anything on this side, leave it as it is for now
Pop your head round the other side and look behind it, there should be some convoluted (plastic protective) there, any work/cutting/soldering/testing you need to do is this end
Very carefully cut it down following the lines of the wires, you can easily re-use it with a couple of cable ties once the work is done
You will find the holder that houses both plugs wobbles a bit, just bend it down and it will pop free, there is two small tabs on the side, just gives you more room for the next bit
Any testing you are doing here (thanks to Andy's awesome
guide) will be alot easier now, to remove both the plugs for testing you will see they each have two different connections, basically the tab for one is on one plug and the tab for the other is on the housing itself, pop small screwdriver in malarky stuff just like the MAF sensor up top
Getting the radiator fans thermo switch plug off I found was a pain, once that housing above (the one that wobbles) is off you can look directly behind it and see the tab to release it, push this tab in and pull the plug switch off
Because I couldn't remove my inner wheel arch covering I was unable to test the thermo switch itself as I needed a little more room to able to see clearly inside it as the lower rad hose is in the way, also it was getting late and emmerdale was about to start
getting that inner wheel arch off would of gave maybe just enough room, I will tackle that another time, probably with an angle grinder and some happy thoughts
I know people say there isn't alot of room down there and there isn't really but I've come across worse! I also can't stress enough to be careful when swinging tools or hands, those fans look nice but your hands won't if they suddenly come on, disconnect the battery negative lead and go from there till you need to hook it back up to test etc just remember radio codes, alarm functions etc etc
I tested my fan connector switch and got between .6 and .18 ohms for the red/black terminal, this I believe (from Andy's
guide) indicates the fan is ok, however the red/white terminal should be about the same but I wasn't getting a reading atall - zilch, a very high reading indicates a resistor fault, so I'm hoping no reading means that aswell!
Hopefully I'll get my resistors through this week to check...
