head gasket - timing belt?

[Ti Kan]

Brett Dikeman writes:
> At 10:06 PM -0400 4/10/03, Steve Ensch wrote:
> >On my 4 cyl. 80 I recently have noticed oil in the coolant reservoir, and a
> >liquid white residue (oil) on the oil cap.  Someone who will go unnamed said
> >my car was in need of a timing belt.  I am leaning more on the side of the
> >head gasket leak.  Has anyone heard of a timing belt causing oil/coolant
> >mix?

No.  Head gasket is a more likely suspect.

> If the head has to come off, so does the belt- if the belt is close
> to the change interval, it might make sense to do it at the same time.

Agreed.

> If you do a belt change, do the waterpump, idler pulley, and all
> seals(crank, cam).

The water pump on the Audi 80 2.0L 4-cyl engine is not driven by
the timing belt.  It's driven by a separate accessory V-belt off
the crank.  The water pump and its belt can be replaced independently
of the timing belt.  Also on this engine, unless there is a leak or
failure, I don't see a need to replace the timing belt idler (which is
what is used to set the belt tension) and crank and cam seals.

-Ti
2003 A4 1.8T multitronic
2001 S4 biturbo 6-sp
1984 5000S turbo
1980 4000 2.0 5-sp
--
    ///  Ti Kan                Vorsprung durch Technik
   ///   AMB Laboratories, Sunnyvale, CA. USA
  ///    ti at amb.org
 //////  http://www.amb.org/ti/
///