1999 Vw Passat turbo gasket replacement AEB 1.8t

There's been a exhaust leak on the 'work truck' Passat for a the past few months. So with a moderate break in the schedule I had at it and gave it the old college try of fixin' under the shade tree.  In general I've taken the exhaust off a few months back and replaced it with a 2 1/2 inch stainless turbo back system after the Cat up and went.  I good size of matrix broke out and plugged the muffler blowing out the seams, hence the replaced stainless system.

Also included is a picture for those that may try to do this job on their own, not many tools are needed; jack- stands, philips driver, 10mm wrench, two 13mm wrenches and a 15mm wrench for the turbo nuts. Mind your skills, you be on your own, these pictures are to just show you what I was up against- mind you.

Ok, ripped out the air filter and air box top. pushing it to on top of the engine. I didn't want to pull the wires out of the connector.  The aluminum heat shield on the side of the air box needs to come off; its held on with 4 philips screws.  keep in mind that with the age of a 17 year old car, the screws are pretty worn.

after getting all that off, the one thing from under the car that needs to be done is a support bolt on the down pipe. this needs to be disconnected to let the Cat get pulled back and out of the way. I found that the sprung bolt would not turn so rather than fight it, I pulled the upper support in the rubber mount. It was somewhat difficult to get back together as thhis also has two extra washers on each side of the rubber isolator. Be mindful.

Back to the top side, now the lower airbox unit can be removed. this will give better clerance to the third turbo bolt on the underside of the flange. its tight but not undoable. Again, I removed this a few months back and for the most part used a 3 inch 15mm wrench. you can use the ring end of another wrench as an extension to get the leverage. play around with it, it dose work.

Once the three nuts are off the whole system should slide back and out of the way. Now you can install the new gasket, easy peasy. Do put some copper anti seize onto the studs to help the install.  Below you can see the wasted wastegate. Not having a new turbo on hand, I just levered out the old bit of wastegate. It was going to come out soon anyways, but better now than bouncing around the cat or impellers.

On a side note, while dragging myself out from under the car I grabbed onto the grill section; only to find that somewhere down the road a penny had found its way. curious as to how long its been there? in anycase, all is quiet and the rattle is gone. I'm pretty sure that the power will be down until it gets twisted up to four grand.  Eh, its a work truck...