Crank sensor & rear spring job
Our A4 project is almost at an end, and regular use has thrown-up a few more faults – nothing serious but stuff that is part-and-parcel of running a 15-year- old car. The spark plugs are regular maintenance as are the oil, air and pollen filters. We replaced the oil and filter last month when we dropped the sump but as I’m used to BMW’s it surprised me how simple all these jobs were on our A4 – the pollen filter took me five minutes even with photos – that’s good design. The air filter took ten minutes.
When we changed the spark plugs we did find a couple of problems. One is that the plastic connectors for the coil packs had broken clips – “they all do that” apparently as the plastics get hot and brittle. Never mind – the repair costs eight black cable ties, rather less than replacing the upper engine loom. The other was that the spark plug wells in the head were full of oil. That will be the 15-year-old cam cover rubber gaskets baked rock hard then, and it had been leaking a little down the exhaust side of the block, something I noticed during the sump job.
As for the oil in the plug wells, you really need to clean all this out before you remove the plugs or the oil will just run straight into the cylinders and create an enormous cloud of oil smoke when you fire it up – it will take
