A3 Cambelt broken, doh!

[kenney]

You could remove the rocker cover and inspect the valves

[Sly]

You could remove the rocker cover and inspect the valves

What would I be looking for from that side? I assumed that any damage would be caused to the valve face, unless the valve stem itself is bent of course.

[S18KER]

Im think you should be able to see if the valves are bend or not, you should be able to see the valves go in and out as you turn the cam.

Good Luck.

[kenney]

If the valve heads are bent there will be clearance between the cam follower and the camshaft lobe

[Sly]

Okay, I'll have a gander at that tomorrow before sticking the new belt on.

Mrs Sly picked up parts for me from Unipart, cheapest I could find:

Cambelt kit (belt/tensioner/damper) £75.44
Water pump £22.94
Accessory belt £13.94

With the vat, just over £130. (Audi over £200)

Can't help thinking that's just the start of it though!
Remember, optimismoptimismoptimismoptimism!

[Sly]

So I went into work this morning (I know, it's a pain isn't it?!) and had a bit of a forum with the lads. We came to the conclusion that if a valve face is bent, it's only going to be bent upwards, then starting the engine would damage the valve seat. Also, if one of the valve stems is bent, turning the engine could damage the guide or worse. I have to admit I agree with the logic so I'm not gonna risk the new belt just yet.

I'm away for a couple of days but almost certainly gonna need some more advice over the weekend! Cheers.

[kenney]

if the valve is bent it will not return to the valve seat,you can check the height of the cam follower,and if the valve is bent,it will hit the piston,and you will notice this when turning the engine over by hand before starting it

[Sly]

if the valve is bent it will not return to the valve seat,you can check the height of the cam follower,and if the valve is bent,it will hit the piston,and you will notice this when turning the engine over by hand before starting it

Excellent advice, optimism is back again! Will have to wait till the weekend now to get the rocker cover off and have a shifty. (work work work...)

[Sly]

I'm back and who was I trying to kid?!

So I finally got the head off today, been waiting on delivery of a M10 Ribe bit to get the head bolts out. Didn't realise the head bolts had this special spline thing going on as the heads were full of oil and I though they were just hex keys. After sawing the mangled end off my ever shortening allen key twice I thought I should investigate further. Luckily didn't knacker the bolts (cheap allen keys!) Top tip for anyone else trying this at home, the M10 Ribe bit needs to be at least 100mm or so long, the Laser set from Halfords aren't long enough. Sealey do a head bolt tool kit with 8 various bits including a long M10 Ribe for £35. Oh, and Audi have their own tool but you can't just buy it, you have to fax Audi UK and apply for it?! That's when I hung up!

So let's look at some photos then...

As you can see, all my exhaust valves and four of my intake vales are open which isn't going to be good for compression!!! They is bent! The other 8 are gonna get changed whilst I'm at it. Taking it to an engineers tomorrow who's gonna charge 50+vat to skim it and some more again to lap the new valves in, Hopefully the guides are okay.

About those pistons? Should they really have that much crud on them? I don't think the marks made by the centre intake vales are gonna matter much but that crud is gonna get cleaned off.

Now to strip the head then, (it's in my kitchen so Mrs Sly isn't overly happy!) my Haynes book shows a home made tool to keep the chain tensioner compressed. I've made one exactly as instructed but can't work out how it fits in? Any one done this before? Is it just for taking the tensioner out on it's own so can I just take the cams and tensioner out all as one without it?

Apart from that, I'm feeling pretty good about things. Got some good prices for the new parts with a bit of phoning around. Luckily don't really need the car for a few weeks so can take my time and no stress, just hope engineers don't turn out too pricy, there's only the one place locally so no choice really. Would appreciate an answer about the tensioner so I can get it to the engineers tomorrow.

[Sly]

...and here's the problem! The notches align at the top and with a bit of manoeuvring of the camshaft pulley to make the chain tighter you can almost imagine 16 rollers between them! Ignore the cable ties, they're there to hold my ineffective as yet compression tool out the way.

By the way, as the valves are bent how would I go about releasing them. Wouldn't using the valve spring compressor push the bent rod back in and damage the sleeve? I was going to leave that to the engineer but the more I do myself, the cheaper.