About to have to do the 70K miles maintenance on my car. As any of the TDIers out there know this means timing belt time. Also since this is a used car, and though records show maintenance was done on time, I don’t know how well it was done so it’s time to thoroughly go through the car. I’ll probably be taking off the intake manifold and egr valve and doing a good cleaning. Maybe I’ll try to tackle the turbo cleaning too.

As of now I plan on doing this all myself to really get to know my car. This means buying all the special tools VW uses, a timing belt kit with water pump, and some new gaskets. Any suggestions would be appreciated. I know of dieselgeek.com and tdiparts.com. I’ll also be supporting one of the sites I’ve learned the most from tdiclub.com and buying the timing belt video. Anything else I’m missing or not thinking of? Thanks everyone.

That crazy bastard, Sir Richard Branson, who you can’t help but like is at it again.  This time he’s trying to bring biodiesel to the UK.

Shai Weiss made his first investment, as head of Virgin Fuels, of $60 million dollars buy a good sized stake in Cilion an alternative energy company.  There will also be many more investments to come in altenative energy companies.  Cilion will make bio-ethanol from corn for the California market, and Virgin Fuels is also developing a biodiesel for Virgin Trains, and bio-alternative jet fuel.  They want to offer biodiesel to British drivers to start with and in the future, other alternative fuels.

This comes at a time when Ford is investing 1 billion pounds in flexible fuel vehicles, and hopefully the Government will start offering incentives to drivers to switch.

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