Well, he should just check the belt via the upper timing cover.

 

That will only tell him one of three things. Either the belt isn't moving or it isn't visible, in which case either it or the crankshaft has snapped. Or, the belt is moving, which does NOT infer that it hasn't jumped a tooth or two because it is worn.

It isn't that I don't like the reasoning, it's just he may need to know what doing that will tell him as well.

 

Jumping a tooth or two isn't enough to cause a problem other than loss of power and CEL. It might have jumped a LOT of teeth, I suppose, but I sort of doubt that it would do that all at once.

 

First thing needs to be done That takes 2min is pull the cover, crank the motor and see if it rotates or not. If it does pull plugs, make sure all the pistons are going up and down, check spark by lay spark plug on a ground(metal), check fuel. Litteralty will take 10 min to figure out is wrong.

 

no you need fuel spark and compression


either you: snapped the timing belt; shredded some of the teeth off the belt; or you broke the key that indexes the timing cog to the crankshaft. the first two are easy enough to tell by looking.

 

Personally, I broke the camshaft gear key on mine. The crankshaft one is beefier on the 1.8T.

 

If you have fuel and spark coming together at the correct time, the next piece is verification of the ability of a cylinder to pump air. This measurement is known as compression.

Even with fuel, spark, and a valid compression ratio, if the air to fuel ratio inside the cylinder is not correct, you can compress all day and while the fuel may try to ignite, it won't burn long or completely enough to accomplish what it has to (lean - rich).

A diesel engine will use compression to cause ignition (spark) of the fuel, but it still needs the right amount of mixed diesel/air inside the cylinder to allow the correct burn rate to force the piston down the cylinder.

 

^ That's great and all, but you still need fuel, spark and air. He is missing one of these. One step at a time here buddy....

 

Check timing belt first. If it all looks good check everything else mentioned. How many miles are on the car?

Josh

 

actually u need fuel, air, spark (combustion)

the engine consists of 4 cycles

intake stroke: allows air and fuel mixture into the combustion chamber
compression stroke: both valves close and piston travels up compressing the air fueld mixture
power stroke: spark plug ignites the mixture and cause and "explosion" which forces the piston back down
exhaust stroke: releases the unused mixture/vapors out

the entire engine runs based off of the timing of how everything is run, one little jump in teeth can ruin an entire motor... so whoever said that jumping teeth wont effect that is wrong


and the odds of snapping a crankshaft from the belt not moving are virtually impossible