id heard before you can strip and clean the hydraulic tappets found on most later vw's , its nearly always the reason they tick

1, take your tappet and slam it onto some wood as hard as you can , might take a few goes for the center to fall out

2, work over a sheet of white paper as the parts are tiny , the small cap on the left simply pops off with some pliers to reveal a spring and a ball bearing , take some time to clean all this up and reassemble with some clean engine oil , the center take a good shove to click back in place

Edited 11 August, 201115 yr by steveo3002

I will be doing this weekend beleive it or not!

Cheers for the guide

Really useful info, thanks for this. The ones on mine were quiet but badly worn on the tops and the side of the tappet (scored), so they all ended up in the bin.

I shall add this to the FAQs. I may need to use this guide myself soon. :)

I tried this on my AFH tappets but ended up losing a few tiny bits so it's new tappets now. I kept each tappet in small pots when they were stripped with petrol in over night to Losen years of gunk up & then re oiled them with fresh clean oil before reassembly

Something similar here is case the above pics stop working etc.

I did this once btw and it seemed to make them looser than the should be.. mayb I cocked up, but I was pretty confident it was going OK.

out of the packet they give a good deal of resistance to squeezing, wheras after I refurbed my old ones they were springy. Just a thought.

Its because they probably were assembled using thicker oil. If you haven't put them back together incorrectly then you've got nothing to worry about.