This isn't a full DIY, just a pointer to some other DIY videos plus my comments on lessons learned and what I'd do if I were doing it again.
I completed a VC swap yesterday and thought I would contribute to a thread with some experiences.
As is my habit, I watched a number of videos before attempting this to combine their experiences. Ones I thought to be the most useful:
My additional comments:
- Try as I might, my cutoff glove finger tips did not stay in place to keep the fuel connections clean. Nor did some things I did with tape. I ended up cleaning some dirt out of the connections along the way. I also lost a bunch of time chasing where the heck these things got knocked off to (in around the cams, or down in the engine bay etc...).
- if i were to do this again, I would probably follow the mobile mechanic's approach of removing the fuel rail partially for the reason above - remove the whole fuel rail and then you can tie a latex glove around the large connector which is horizontal, instead of six little connectors which open upwards to collect dirt, and anything you put there to protect them gets knocked into the cam area
- Some techs removed the rear brace and area (like FCP), some remove the front brace. The mobile mechanic removed neither (although that was a 6 series so the under hood layout may have been different. I had to remove the front brace to pull the VC off. I had to remove the rear brace like the FCP guy so that I could remove the plastic which runs along the firewall just to get a tiny bit of extra flex. No matter what I had trouble getting the old one out and it snagged the fuzzy padded firewall material and put a tear in it. Oddly, despite the trouble removing the old, the new dropped in pretty well.
- Remember that the braces have bolts which must be replaced, and all but the one bolt at the very front is single-use, torque to yield. Get them in advance and do it right.
- My F10 engine was different than all others I've seen pictured online. There is a chunk of iron screwed down to the VC covering up one of the bolts. Carefully inspect your personal vehicle for any differences compared to instructions you use online.
- Half of the time of the job was quadruple checking that things which went missing (glove finger tips, pieces of tape etc...) which were supposed to be providing protection so that things didn't go somewhere very bad. Again, I recommend potentially removing the entire fuel rail, and potentially covering the injector inlets with silicone caps which are both too large to go anywhere really bad, and grip the threaded injector connections. I think ECS guy did something like this.
So, in all, my recommended method were I to do this a second time is a combination of all three of these videos.
F10 Technical Topics
