Well Hello There Fellow Technicians And Hivers
I've made a post before where I stated the caption as the first of it's kind, well this is another one of those. What I mean by "those" is that I've never worked on that specific vehicle and this is the case for this Volkswagen Touareg. Although I have worked on plenty of Volkswagens before they aren't built quite like this one.
This is a AWD (All Wheel Drive) Volkswagen and most of the Volkswagens I work on are FWD (Front Wheel Drive) BUT with that said it can't be much different than the Audi Q5 and such.
Well we shall see.
I do fancy this car A LOT and I would be more than happy to buy myself one, driving pleasure is at it's best.
For this one we have to remove the front differential and boy they are sometimes a unpleasant task to set in motion, but I am more than keen on doing it.
There's a feeling that I can't really describe but whenever I get a vehicle in that I've never worked on before I am somewhat excited about it since it will be something new and somehow poses a challenge that I am willing to take head on.
With that said it's really just removing parts, no real challenge behind it. 😅
Taking a quick peak at the underside of this vehicle it does seem to have a resemblance with the Audi's but it does still look wildly different from them, I want to go as far and say it looks like a much better design on the chassis.
But let's not make assumptions yet, let's loosen a few bolts and see what goes for what.
Before we dive in to deep, for those who read my previous post I mentioned in there that I like to do a self inspection of the vehicle before I start tearing it down.
Low and behold I came down on some bolts that are loose on the braking system, turns out that the client had new brakes and discs fitted at the dealers and well they didn't do their job properly.
None the less we shall tighten it and do a thorough inspection of the vehicle, since we are the last to work on it if anything is to fall out or even worse break out the fingers will be pointed towards us and only us.
So this is the front differential and by the looks of it, it's packed in there quite tightly.
Now as I said I've never done a removal of a front differential on these vehicles, let alone even work on one of them. It does look like I will have to remove the sub-frame from the vehicle but to start of I am going to loosen all of the bolts on the differential first and see if I can't wangle it out that way without dropping the sub-frame.
I might as well just drop it now since I know what to expect but let us see what happens, the good thing is that I can remove all the bolts from the differential and it will stay in place with zero risk of falling out.
I would have to say that this is the most annoying part of removing a front differential is the drive shafts. They can be insanely annoying to remove especially the two cv's driving the front wheels, they are held in place with 12 M10 torque drive bolts and boy oh boy you don't want to strip those so I'll take extra care to make sure that my socket is aligned 90 degrees on the dot!
The propshaft for the drive of the rear wheels... well that's a different story they just pop off, well when I say they just pop off it doesn't necessarily mean that they are easy to remove and I almost want to go as far and say that I hate to remove that one even more than the CV's of the front wheels!
Giving the whole wheel hub assembly a look over I can clearly see that this isn't just about removing the parts, you have to puzzle out what is in the way and what not, it's going to be a tricky one but we will get through it.
I'll have to remove the shock mount from the lower control arm either way, if I drop the sub-frame I will have to do it, if I want to remove the CV I'll have to do it. So if it goes in the direction of me having to drop the sub-frame I would not have wasted a whole bunch of time really.
Let's just do it since I'll have to do it in any case.
The big CV nuts will have to be loosened as well in order to pull the CV's out of place to give me some room to work and wangle the differential to get it out. no big deal we will need to inspect them as well to make sure they are still in a good condition.
Laughs now if there is ever one thing that looks bad when you are tearing down a vehicle it would be when the wheel hubs are hanging to the sides, I do believe that there is nothing wrong with it but yet it looks REAL bad when it hangs. The only problem with it when a wheel hub is hanging like this make sure that all the wiring and break lines are removed so that they don't pull out the wiring of the sensors along with bending the brake lines.
Yes, most people just leave them hanging like that, I on the other hand hate it. Either remove the cabling or keep the hub bolted in place.
With the CV's bolts removed I can now head over to working on the differential itself, I still need to drain the oil and remove the bolts holding the differential in place.
Looking at the oil condition it doesn't look all that bad, it's a little discoloured but it is still somewhat see through meaning, what bothers me is the amount of oil that came out, it was far less than a liter of oil around 600 ml... Now even I know by looking at the size of the differential it would take at-least 1,5 liters of oil so this thing has been running dry so I would say a lot of damage has occured inside.
The other thing is that the filler and drain plugs were both sprayed with these blue spray paint and that means that the VW dealers did check the oil on it BUT I am assuming that they didn't add enough oil.. Hence the breaking of it.
Now that I've unbolted most of the bolts holding the differential in place it's time to remove it... BUT wait look at this crap. I legitly got every bolt out of the differential except for one.
That one bolt is the cause of having to remove the whole sub-frame, although it's not that bad after all since I basically didn't loosen any more than I had to except for the big CV nuts I could have left them in.
I should have listened to my gut and just started with the whole sub-frame removal. 😂
It's not my first rodeo so why act like it is xD.
The Bolt The Engineers Must Have Missed
Laughs they could have just made a little dent in that frame, like a 2mm dent would have been more than enough to let it slide past without any interference BUT NO the Germans wont allow that.
Seems like they do want us to remove the whole sub-frame assembly but as I said it was no biggy.
Tormentation.
And here we are! The job is so to say done or the removal of the differential is done and dusted with.
If I just started from the top to remove the sub-frame I might have saved an extra 20 minutes on the job, although with the delay I think I made pretty good time sitting at an hour and 40 minutes for this removal. I can definitely improve upon that for sure!
The only problem with improving on that time is that I have to get another vehicle with the same problem.
Dated 07/04/2023
Take note this is not a how to guide, merely myself talking about the work I do and my thoughts around certain things.
To everyone who made it this far into my post Thank you for the read and the support.
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Most of all please leave a input in the comments below, whether is good or bad critic I would like to know, whether its your opinion or your way of doing things in a different manner I would like.
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