Can anyone tell me if the upper pan can be removed without removing the sub-frame? The motor is a 2.8 AHA.

Thanks

 

Nobody knows the answer to this? It doesn't look like it to me and there is no mention of it in Bentley. The dealer says it does.

 

I was under the mistaken impression that there were experts on this site. Amazingly, no one has ever taken the upper pan off an AHA motor. Thanks so much.

 

yes you do need to lower the subframe thers no way to get it out with in there. you should be able to get by with just lowering the front iirc when i did mine

 

Hey now easy, i just hate removing the upper oil pan, one of the worst jobs by far.
You don't have to remove the entire subframe if you don't want to, but suspending the engine with the cradle tool is almost a must if you wanna do it safely.
Your looking at about 20 hours of labor with hand tools if you haven't done it before.

 

BTW why are you attempting to do such a horrible job? Is it leaking between the upper pan and the block or what?

 

Thanks for replying, I was beginning to think no one liked me. The pan is leaking pretty good between it and the block. The dealer quoted me $350 to re-seal it. If I can just drop it down enough to clean it off and re-seal I thought I'd be ok. I've spent a lot of time working on cars, but no Audi's, mostly older BMW's.

 

$350 to seal the upper oil pan? BS. It can't be done for less than 7-8 hours flat rate so i think they are talking about the lower pan. We usually charge $350-400 to do the lower oil pan.

 

Seriously, it was the upper pan they quoted. Keep in mind, I'm in Ithaca Ny and they get $73/hr. Maybe they were feeling bad because they got me 8 hours for the vc and can tensioner gaskets and I still have a pretty serious leak. On another forum it was suggested that dropping the sway bar, unbolting the motor mounts and jacking up or supporting the motor from above got past taking the sub-frame down. You think that's possible?

 

Yeah, thats what i mean when i said the engine support tool, its a large bar that sits over the engine and has two hooks that are threaded so you can jack up or lower the motor by turning the adjustment wing.
If you have that tool you can do the job without removing the subframe.
But i didn't know they already sold you the gravy cam seals and vc gasket, so im guessing they cut the price a lot to keep you happy somewhat.