Hi all
I have replaced a rear shock on my Passat B5 this morning, before doing so I did look for a walkthrough and couldnt find one, so thought i`d write this.

Please take note ... i`m not a mechanic, and have limited experience working on cars, but I found this job very easy. I will tell you what I did , rather than tell you what to do , just in case someone ends up with a car on their head and wants to blame me lol.

For ref my car is a passat b5, 1997 , sport model, 1.9tdi 110bhp

1. I Jacked car up and removed wheel, then lowered the car onto an axle stand next to the jack.

2. I then removed the bolt from the bottom of the shock... used a socket on the outside bit , and a spanner on the inside bit ( if you dont do this the bolt just spins)

3. I then removed the 2 bolts at the top of where the shock is,,,think it may be called the strut. Then removed all this from the car.

4 I then separated the shock from the strut, and removed the cover .

5. Then put the cover over the new shock, then attached it to the strut the same as it was on the old shock.

6. Put the strut and shock into position and attached the 2 bolts at the top.

7. At this point spring is stretched fully, and you cant relieve the tension by hand... so I put wheel back on, lowered onto jack, and then lowered so that I could get the bolt through the bottom mounting bit... this took a bit of fine tuning on the jack to position correctly. And then put the nut on the inside bit.

8.raised car again to the axle stands, wheel off, tightened bottom nuts, and checked top nuts.

9. Wheel back on, car lowered , wheel nuts tightened.

10. The end!

Overall this took me about an hour, and as I said before i`m not a mechanic...just someone who will have a go if something doesnt look mega compicated. Any comments appreciated good and bad. Hope this walkthrough may help someone.

Sorry no pics this time.

Dan