Big day, car is running and moving again. Had to bring my ross-tech in to reset adaptations. Did both the "timing chain after other service" (since it's not a new chain, but it is new to the ECU) and the throttle body valve basic settings. Rear e-brake motor was also throwing codes, had to run the ebrake test setting a couple times.
Got the car out on the road, warmed it up, gave it a bit of throttle and felt what kinda felt like a hesitation, but no codes. Got on it again and it felt totally out of steam, looked at the logs and it's making no boost. Still no codes, wtf.
Pull back in, horrible creaking noise when turning. Turns out the caster bushings are shot, probably from the combination of coolant exposure and sitting on jackstands for months.
Checked some other stuff out, came back and one of the guys said "oh yeah, btw, your throttle pipe bung is missing." Probably explains the lack of boost.
So, 99% there. Waiting on unitronic to let me know what hardware I need and some new black powerflex bushings.
The new motor looked very clean. Did an engine flush on a clean filter, not much there. And the intake valves were very clean already. We had to trim the oil level sensor, apparently the mk7.5 revised it to make it a bit longer and so it didn't quite fit the iABED oil pan. Seems they developed it on the ea888.1, so there's been a few changes, but the baffling is super nice.
Also, used Bosch -AK injectors instead of the shitty continentals that fail all the time. 100% drop-in replacement if you're already on R injectors.
Also, a couple weeks into the replacement I got a message from my wavetrac dealer saying they had the DQ381 diff in stock. Awesome, my trans was literally sitting on a table. Ordered one, paid for it, a week later, nothing and my shop wants to put the motor back in. Called up wavetrac/autotech and they dunno what the vendor was seeing but the new front/rear diffs are still 4-5 months from production.
So we proceed without it, whatever. Yesterday I get an email from a Quaife dealer saying they finally finalized their design for the DQ381 and it's in stock and ready to ship. One week earlier and it'd probably already be in the car! Oh well.
Will be tearing apart the old motor completely before long, one of the techs thinks it looked like coolant got into the bottom end and spun a rod bearing, but it's not clear how that could have happened, at least prior to the rotating assembly making holes in everything.
