Talk about Exasperating!

I'm almost too embarressed to talk about this but here goes. I decided to replace the dipstick tube on my 90 300 TDi today as the securing bracket had broken away from the tube itself. A simple straight forward job which I suppose would normally be about 15 mins or so of work, but no, not for me. The end which enters the lower block was incredibly difficult to fit in to the hole but with a succession of socket extension bars slotted together with a screwdriver bit on the end, I managed to tap it home squarely without damaging the O ring.

I clearly must have upset somebody because I spent hours trying to get the securing bolt to engage with the thread in the block having passed it through both lugs of the clamp. My neighbour is a CNC engineer, I'm an ex military aircraft engineer and we both took it in turns with no success - we laughed at how something so simplistic could not be achieved. The bolt engaged directly in the block without any difficulty if you did not pass it through the two lugs so clearly it was an alignment problem. In the end and now at the end of my tether, I ground the bolt to form a reasonable reduction in diameter (up to the second thread) to ease entry, cleaned up the thread and got a broom handle pushed against my stomach with the other end precariously putting pressure on the bolt head whilst gingerly teasing the bolt to do up with an open ended spanner. Because of the angle of the broom handle against the bolt head, it slipped off many times but in the end I won.

When I think of all the complex aeronautic equipment I've worked on, you will hopefully understand my reluctance to tell you this tale.

All's well that ends well!

Could you have filed the holes in the bracket out a bit to allow the bolt to line up with its tapped hole a bit better?

Yes it did go through my mind but the holes are quite a bit larger than the bolt diameter and really they should have been large enough - also to do this I would have had to pull the pipe out of the lower block to work on it at a bench. I was reluctant to do this because it was a devil to get it the pipe end with the O ring on in to the hole - I was a bit concerned about damaging the O ring. The nitty gritty of this job is to find a way of pushing the bolt in to the threaded hole against the springiness of the double clamp whilst at the same time turning the bolt with a spanner. Not enough room for two people and you need four hands.

A garage would have pulled the engine out and charged for the labour! I'd like to see a photo of the broom handle installation method

I had simlair once and eventually succeeded but needed to do the job again a year or so later so fitted a stud in first and used a nut to replace the bolt. I can't remember for the life of me what the job was though....