Not sure how many have had this issue with the GD series 1 but this motor was in a different place to the FD I had already done this same thing to and a lot of the Youtube advice and even some articles I found seem to be for the older rather than the newer.
Admittedly I have over 270,000km on our 2012 CDi but I have heard this happening to many others with less kms.
I had my flexible coupling (part number 5631-52K000-FFF) out, area cleaned, installed and driving away with in about 30mins.
I am not a qualified mechanic but have a basic understanding of such so with so many claiming it should be a few hours for this job I thought i would share how I tackled it..
Not sure if any have tried this way before or shared it, apologies if I am wasting your time.
Basically after removing the lower plastic under the steering wheel (3 screws), the steering column plastics (3 screws) and the plastic panel (no screws) between the end of the dash and the door.
I unplugged and removed the knee airbag (3 nuts) and afterwards I also unbolted the fuse box (3/4 nuts I think) and removed the main plug and the two others next to it.
This allowed the fuse box to be moved out of the way a little for access to the pivot bolt that the steering column swings up and down on.
14mm socket with a small (10-20cm) extension and ratchet will remove the bolt which you can now see through the former fuse box area.
You can access the bolt through open area above the throttle pedal with the ratchet and attachments mentioned.
Once you take out the last two bolts near the tilt/reach locking leaver that holds the entire steering column up it now drops.
DO NOT PULL ON THE STEERING WHEEL or you can slip a few splines one way or the other giving you headaches later.
Once the column drops you have easy access to the electric steering assistance motor.
By undoing the 3 larger screws around the base of the assistance motor, which need TORX bits to do, I did not need disconnect the motor but just tilted it out of the way for access and cleaning.
First it was cleaned with a very small flat head screw driver and needle nose pliers for the larger or difficult pieces to remove.
Once I had removed a majority of the rubber crumbs I used an air hose with a vacuum clear near the air outlet to save bits going everywhere. After being careful to not move the steering wheel or motor too much I installed the coupling, lined the motor output with the steering column and put the three TORX screws back in.
I lifted the steering column up to a point I could do the two nuts up loosely near the tilt/reach adjustment so as to take the weight.
I then put the pivot bolt back in with a few jiggles of the column then tightened.
The rest was done in reverse a few minutes and test drive was faultless.
Happy to answer questions but sorry for no photos as it was done so quick before I even considered taking a photo.
Cheers
