Not starting at all - Oil warning lamp flashing

[alex_mcc]

Hi there, broke down today with no warning. Was in 5th gear and started losing power. Dropped a gear and was still losing the power. Finally pulled in and engine cut out. Can't get it started at all now. When the ignition lights come on, the oil warning lamp flashes. It continues doing this as I am trying to start it and continues after I've stopped trying to turn the engine.
Have checked obvious things like petrol, oil level, spark plugs, battery and everything is ok. Any ideas what this could be and where somebody with very little experience and knowledge would start.

BTW 1996 VW Golf Mk3 Cabrio. 2.0l

[Crasher]

You car has an AGG engine (or possibly ADY but they are virtually identical) so it has quite good self diagnosis abilities so get a fault code read done and the most likely code is the engine speed sensor. If you don't have any fault codes that are relevant, then the two common causes of symptoms like this are the ECU relay (but they usually come back to life) or the coil and these have a nasty habit of burning out. From GSF they are reasonably priced but if you buy a new coil, you will usually need to buy two new much shorter mounting bolts (two M6 x 20 bolts, four M6 washers and two M6 nuts) as the new coil has a redesigned mounting base. A quick test would be to take the centre HT lead from the distributor cap and position it about half a centimetre from an earth BUT DO NOT HOLD IT WITH YOUR HANDS! Then get someone to crank the engine over and see if there is a spark and if not you are looking at coil or engine speed sensor usually but engine speed sensors normally recover when they cool down. The oil pressure warning light should flash with the ignition on but it should go out as you are cranking the engine so that is slightly worrying. Did you get a beeper warning as the engine was dying?

[Anton Magus]

Same thing happened to me. The cam belt had stripped. Check this by removing the top cam belt cover (two nuts on the tappet cover and the flat allen screw further down in the middle) and the see if the camshaft is turning when you swing the motor.

[Crasher]

This was in September last year.