after owning my A4 for a little over a month, my bad luck reins upon me, and my timing belt breaks....joy....what are the odds that everything is okay and i stopped the engine in time? it made some noise at idle, and i shut the car off and had it towed to Audi of Westwood today...

who has horror storys and who has good ones? lol...im just bracing myself for the worst.

Dom

 

it's an interference engine.. unless it breaks and it's turned off within 2-3 seconds or so you're going to bend valves, there's just a very little chance of it not happening. cheapest way of finding out for sure is to just replace the belt and run a compression test.

 

you might be lucky if it was at idle. Good luck to you! My wife's broke (my red one)at about 2200 rpm and bent 10 of the valves. Hope you have better luck than I did.

 

There is very little chance of not bending valves if the belt breaks while the engine is running. It's now a matter of how many are bent.

What happened to me was the teeth on the belt stripped, and then pistons hit valves, then valve heads broke, then pistons smashed valves into cylinder head, then valves bits punched hole through piston then piston broke, then rod scored up cylinder very badly. All this occured at 70 mph in less than 10 seconds.

So best case is you'll need some valve replacement some head work, new gaskets seals and belts.

Worst case is your engine will be more usefulas a crab trap anchor on "Deadliest Catch"

 

Wow sorry about your luck. How many miles were on it?

 

bent valves and maybe the pistons have the valve markings on them. cheapest and fastest way would be to buy a new engine. if you know how and have the tools, take the head off and examine it. dealership is going to rape you on this one. is it manual or tip? i'll look for engines for ya

 

Buy new valves, slap a belt on it, and ship it. Marks in the pistons are not usually a big deal; the valves take the beating as they are usually the losers in the battle. Do the full TB service with wp and stuff while you're in there.

When they pull the head, they'll know right away if the valve guides are FUBARd.

 

its a stick, it has 85k on it. i love that car. i decided to pull the head myself, get a used head, and put the head on if the compression test didnt check out. ill have the car back next week, when i begin the venture. my first step will be to buy a factory manual, and take the front clip apart. till i get this done, i have to drive my 97 dodge ram....ugh.

ill letcha know wtf is up...

Dom

 

These guys are being nice. Like said above, it is an interferance motor. If your timing is off slightly or you break/skip a tooth on the belt, your valves are toast. You need to remove the head and have the valves and their guides changed (think also machined) and also either replace or clean up the pistons, depends on contact speed. If you have little marks on the pistons, you can just sand of the rough spots and they will be good, if they are deep, they need replaced. i have some used piston and rods assembled and just need new rings, just pm me if you want/need them (they are stronger 16v rods with 20mm wrist pin pistons that are in the AEB motor and will fit all 1.8t's).

Depends on the shop, but some will fix it and some will just replace the motor with a used one.

 

My story didn't really effect me directly... the previous owner broke the timing belt. All but 5 valves were bent. He took it to a small independent Audi shop to have the work done and the bill came to a little over $3000. I have a copy of the receipt and it didn't say anything about pistons so I'm guessing they just replaced the valves and machined the head, replaced the gaskets, water pump, belts and fluids, and called it done. The car has clocked another 100K miles since then and has had another timing belt changed just last year and it's still running good.

If you're going to fix it you'll want to do the work yourself, otherwise it could get expensive.