Its now officially a TDI!

Slow and steady progress...

Silicone hoses arrived, and Ive now fitted the maf and airbox in the factory locations.
TDI conversions are quite common in a T3 nowadays, but I'm not a fan of the way the engine bays always look. I wanted it to look standard... Battery and Airbox in the standard locations, and as little evidence of the conversion as possible.

Ive also made a wiring loom for the front end wiring... 16 wires in total.
6 for the throttle pedal, 4 for the cruise control, 2 each for clutch and brake switches, and one each for the speed sensor and the immobilser wire.
All sleeved and routed sensibly down the chassis and up into the front through the original wiring grommet behind the headlamp...

Immobilser is mounted in the dashboard.
Ive fitted speed sensor to the speedo that will give the ECU the correct signal... As mine already had cruise control, it had a speed signal unit in the speedo, so its simply a case of removing it, fitting the RJES unit, and connecting the wiring.

Cruise control wiring is connected to the stalks, and pedal switches are wired.
The Sharan brake pedal was a 4 pin switch, as the ECU requires 2 signals from the brake switch....but to simplify things ive used a 2 pin switch on the pedal and given the other signal to the ECU from the brake ligt wiring in the box in the engine bay.
Front end loom connects to the ECU with 3 multi connectors. That way if i need to split the loom for any reason, I dont have to remove the whole lot.

A couple of other bits... one is the Intake Air temp sensor that up until recently was just dangling. Its now fitted into the intake pipework from the chargecooler using a fitting from Mario at M V Engineering.

Ive also blanked the blow off valve on the original JX manifold with a machined plate.

Accelerator pedal has been mounted on the bulkhead, im not particularly happy with this as there is quite a bit of flex in the bulkhead when the pedal is pressed. I'll add a bracket here to strengthen it before I call it "done", but for the time being it works...

Ive discovered that the turbo is passing a lot of oil into the exhaust, so will fit a new replacement.
The AFN with a JX pump seems to produce about 6 bar of oil pressure at idle when cold, which may be something to do with the oil in the turbo, but I figure a new turbo will have the best chance of keeping the oil where it should be.
Currently waiting for the Turbo, but Ive assembled the exhaust and done the maiden voyage... a short drive of about 10 miles. Nothing to report really... It pulls incredibly well, especially at the bottom end of the rev range. Sounds great too! Just smokes a little which I put down to the turbo.

Once the new turbo is here I'll swap it and refit the exhaust and undertrays properly.

Other jobs... mount the ECU properly, wrap up the wiring loom in the engine bay, and sort the cruise control... Then decide where I'm going to take it for a shakedown :)

Merry Christmas...

Early finish on Christmas Eve, and nothing in at work until January means Simon has allowed me to use the ramp and pull the engine.

At Midday on Christmas Eve I still had a running Bluestar...

and by 2pm it looked like this:

Engine out, mounts, sump, manifolds stripped off and everything bolted up to the AFN read to go in.

Ive also pulled off the bell housing and swapped the input shaft for one to suit the DMF fitted to the AFN. This took me up to 4pm so time to go home and do Christmas.

TDI Input shaft fitted - Note the South African Oiling plates fitted when I had the box rebuilt a couple of years ago.

AFN all together and ready to go in. Im Leaving the dipstick in the engine bay for the time being, I may rethink that later...

And the AAZ minus the Diesel bits I need for the AFN

Turbo..

Turbo...
Im using a VNT from a Passat mated to a 1.6TD (JX) manifold using turbo adaptors from Ultimate Engineering.
My aim is to use as many off the shelf parts as possible, so in the future if something breaks I can just buy one and bolt it on... and this way I can use a standard exhaust instead of fabricating something, and everything will bolt together.

Once attached to the manifold the oil feed and return points on this turbo are almost horizontal in a T3 due to the angle of the engine, so no use at all as the oil wont drain from the turbo.

So, the turbo has to be indexed to suit the position in the engine. This was one of the only things I was a bit concerned about, but its really not a big thing...

It involves splitting the turbine housing (exhaust side) from the centre housing, and rotating it until things are where you want them. Obviously its not that simple. Turbos tend to be rusty dirty things, so getting it apart can be a challenge... and cleaning it a bit messy.

Things are a little more complicated with the VNT (Variable Nozzle Turbo) as it has a plate in the turbine housing (exhaust side) with a number of "vanes" that change position depending on engine speed. This helps the turbo spool up quicker and reduce lag... clever stuff.
On the outside of this plate is a moving ring that connects all the vanes together. On the outside of the turbo is a vacuum operated actuator which moves this plate and in turn moves all the vanes together.
This actuator connects to the plate with the vanes on it in one position only (see image).
So change the orientation of the centre housing in relation to the turbine housing we need to move the plate.
Its held to the turbine housing with 3 screws which luckily for us are evenly spaced. So that gives us 3 positions it can be in its simply a case of finding the best one.

In the image below, on the left is the original orientation. The red X shows the position of the actuator connection before and after moving the plate. You'll see its moved anticlockwise by 120 degrees. Effectively moving the centre housing around 120degrees anticlockwise too... which puts our oil feed and return right where we need it.

Its then a case of putting the turbo back together and moving the actuator around the body to put it in the correct position.

Its worth noting that before you remove the actuator to check its adjustment. They are adjustable on a small wheel and locknut. Check how much the arm is away from its stop with the actuator at rest, as you'll need to set it back to this position once youve moved the actuator...

The actuator attaches to a bracket on 2 of the 5 bolts which hold the centre housing to the turbine. In an ideal world you'd just use a different two, but as you can see theyre not evenly spaced so my bracket now bolts to the (unused) turbo mounting hole (top right) and the small hole next to it.
This puts the vacuum connection close to the block, but I think it should be okay...

So, here it is bolted up. You can just see the oil return connection in the middle, and whilst it looks as though its pointing sideways, the engine of upright in the photo. Once its tilted over in the back of a T3 it will be almost vertical.

Here you can see the actuator close to the block. The vacuum connection is on the right of the canister in pointing towards the block.
The compressor housing can now be loosened and turned to point wherever I need it, so i'll adjust that once fitted to line up with the existing chargecooler pipework.