Cambelt Problems

[longshanks795]

I drive an Audi A4 1.8T and my car came to a halt when i was driving it a couple of days ago, The breakdown guy came out and said it was the cambelt and that i would be in for a very expensive bill.
My friend is a mechanic (Lamborghini) so might not know to much about Audi's said that i would have experienced a nasty crunching sound if it had snapped whilst i was driving.
Anyway he came and had a look at it and look off the front cover, the belt is still in place and and tight and there doesn't appear to be any sign of the damage expected although he couldn't see all the belt due to the nice engine design of it being so close to the front of the bonnet.
Does anyone have any ideas as to what the problem may be instead? Just checking any other probabilities encase it may be something else before i take it to a garage and they say its that and rip me off with an extautionate price?
The engine doesn't turn over it just makes some whirling kind of noise.

Any ideas would be much appreciated

Thanks

[nickynibbles]

Could be a multitude of things really. If your cambelt is on one piece & perfectly taught then probably an internal failure. A cheap check-up before you have an engine dismantle would be a vag-com scan to get an idea of electrical failtures, could point you in the right direction of the mechanical failure.

[niffy53]

Hi
It could still be the cam belt. If you try and spin the engine on the starter, and the belt is not going round, then you probably have some missing teeth on the belt around the crank shaft. The wiring noise could be the crank shaft going round or it could be the starter motor spinning but not turning the flywheel.
Good luck
Regards
Brian