[s-cars] Preparing for next timing belt change...

[Sean Reifschneider]

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On 01/24/2010 01:10 PM, Joe Pizzimenti wrote:
> There has been much discussion on the list about the replacement of the
> vibration damper and the viscous coupling bearing. So I'm wondering if it's

Well, I don't know about the '96 S6, but my philosophy is to replace
anything that the timing belt touches other than the cams and crank.  So I
always ask for the water pump and idlers to be done at the same time.

Now, I have no way to prove this, but at around 120k we lost the timing
belt on our '97 A4 2.8q.  The idler pulley went south and seized and
snapped the belt.  After looking at the idler, I don't believe it had been
replaced at 110k when we had it in.

So, $4k later we had the valves replaced and happy.

So even at $400 for a dampener, I'd be tempted to replace it as insurance
against the valve job.  Breaking in the middle of nowhere Nebraska, of
course.

The rest of the story is that it actually broken AGAIN after the valve job,
because the shop that did the valves didn't verify that that all the parts
had been replaced like I asked them to.  My words were along the lines of
"Well, the idlers and everything were SUPPOSED to have been replaced
10k-ish ago, but it's probably worth replacing just to be sure."

Photos related to the timing belt:

   http://www.jafo.ca/oldphotoblog/entries/20040531_1946.html
   http://www.jafo.ca/oldphotoblog/entries/20040709_0131.html
   http://www.jafo.ca/oldphotoblog/entries/20040711_0220.html

And some others when we had lifter problems earlier that year:

   http://www.jafo.ca/oldphotoblog/entries/20040107_1544.html

2004 was not a good year for our A4.

Sean
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