[mitiemite75]

I've owned a '81 300D (last non-turbo year) for almost 3 yrs now, great car, 28 mpg, rides well, never left me stranded. I put about 1000 miles/month as my drive-to-work car (weekender is a TJ Jeep), but wanted to join the 50 mpg club....I've picked up an '00 Jetta TDI for dirt cheap and am dying to put a wrench on it.

First problem is the clutch won't fully disengage (previous owner just had a clutch installed by an East Texas auto shop immediately after having brake job). I figure the system just needs to be bled but the installed slave cylinder has the plastic bleed valve, now rounded off. I'm looking to order one with a steel bleed valve (I've seen them somewhere on-line) but the photos on-line are usually only representative. Anyone know which brand comes with a steel one?

Second, the Haynes manual and others shows the timing belt change out without the use of the VAG COM to check exact timing. Any guess to the odds of having to adjust the timing after the typical belt change? 50/50 ? Seldom? Always?

Third, if VAG COM is required, anyone out there have any luck running it on Ubuntu? I lost my windows copy on a hard drive upgrade and I'm not about to shell out $140 for a new copy that I'll only use for this program...

 

[pakofa]

Is the bleed valve universal? A plastic one? I didn't even know they made them in plastic! IMHO, see if someone local has vag com and then have them help you instead of buying it. I don't know how close your timing could be, maybe it'll be perfect

 

[Seatman]

Hi, welcometomyturbodies

Could you not just get a selection of bleed nipples and see what fits? There's various ones for brakes and some garages have boxes of them for spares.

Also I changed my belt without vag com with no problems but I'm going to be taking it to friends garage to see where it's at and get it adjusted if needed but it runs great at the moment.