How necessary is timing belt cover?

[Tony Hoffman]

You can check it for cracks on both sides. You have to look closely on the
newer ones, as they don't show nearly as much as the older belts. On the
newer Audis, though, you do it on schedule due to the possible failure of
the hydraulic tensioner. The only belts I've seen fail are either severely
over time (I have a 3.0 in teh shop now that went 154k on the original) or
tension damper failure. The older cars don't use that setup, so you check
the belt for cracks and tension.

Tony

On Fri, Jun 14, 2013 at 8:17 AM, Dan DiBiase <d_dibiase at yahoo.com> wrote:

> I was under the impression that you can't really tell via a visual
> inspection that status of a TB, they just need to be replaced
> on schedule. But I could be wrong.