I won! A skinned knuckle and a few coins in the swear jar, but I got the new AOS installed!
Took about 3 hours, but I didn't know what I was doing even though I read up on it here, Rennlist, on Pedro's Garage, 101 Projects and the Bentley manual. I couldn't even figure out how to remove the clips on the sides - and still don't know how to do it. I just stretched the clips with a screwdriver and muscled them off. 101 Projects says to remove the rear wheel for access. Well that didn't help at all with my '03. I bought one of those cable actuated clamp removal tools but I couldn't get a good bite on the lower clamp, hence the bloody knuckles and swearing. The clamp on the engine side of the hose was open so I removed the clamp there. The two bolts were on tight with little access for my T-handle hex wrench. But somehow, I managed to break them free and the AOS popped off (also undid the engine ground wire for better access). I hope there's not a next time, but if there is, I think I can do it in under an hour.
I threw a couple of lean mixture CELs - and search prompted me to the AOS. I didn't have any other symptoms of an AOS - rough idle, smoke, etc., except for I couldn't get the oil cap off.
But now that it's changed, the car feels faster and it seems to rev quicker - just my imagination or does a bad AOS affect performance???
But overall, 6 years of ownership, about 12k miles and I've only replaced the tires, the engine mount, and now the AOS. So far, I've dodged the $2k/year maintenance expense. Now that I've said that, my IMS will probably go out
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