"special" tools

["Mark Langford" <langford@hiwaay.net>]

>this is *exactly* how i bent two injectors (and all 4 lower inserts).

Maybe you should stick to the factory tools.  I guess my point was that
there is almost always something that will work fairly well if you look
around a little bit.   I wasn't advocating going out and buying a $6 tool to
replace the $6 tool made for the job, but if you have a nail puller lying
around...

I'm the world's worst about ordering special tools, but sometimes you don't
have time to wait on it to get there.  I recently tried to get a  valve
guide stem seal installer for the smaller 7mm 16V valve guides, but neither
Baum, Zelenda, or anybody else had one (makes you wonder where they come
from).  So, faced with not finishing my engine any time soon, vs finishing
this weekend, I started looking thru the tool box for something that would
work.  The immediate result was an almost discarded 12 point 10mm socket
that fits the seals like a glove!  Let's see:  saved $38 on the tool, $15 on
overnite shipping, and I couldn't get it anyway.  A true no-brainer.

I used to work as the heavy line (engine and tranny guy) at a VW dealership,
and the funny thing is that WE didn't have any of those special tools in the
Bentley manual EITHER!  I looked thru my local VW guru's box of valve
grinding stuff the other day (looking for THEIR 7mm seal installer) and it
was all homemade too.  In the future I'm making it a point to try to make my
own "special" tools whenever possible.

Mark Langford,  Huntsville, Alabama
87 16V Scirocco (almost a 2.0)
mailto:langford@hiwaay.net
see KR2S project N56ML at http://home.hiwaay.net/~langford



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