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Josh_PoloGTi wrote:Oh thank god you've sorted it!

My cam belt tensioner went on my old GTi...

The cam belt almost fell off it was that bad (but VERY luckilly for me I spotted it in time before it did any damage)!!

The cambelt tensioner went *pop* on my GTi when I was flying down to Bridgnorth at "60" - drove it for 3 days (gently!!) before VW took it in and explained I was lucky not to need a new engine I had no idea of the damage that I could have done

All fixed under warranty tho but is it a common thing to go? Mine went at 54000 miles, the cambelt change isn't until 60000...

Brilliant sequence of photos DMWRIGHT. Much appreciated.

Mine went at about 47,000 - sounds like another common problem, for 3 GTI's at least to have it go before the 60,000 service???

New thread perhaps ?? - How many people have had new cam belt tensioners?

VW did not like this either, also gave me the whole your very lucky this didn't do more damage etc etc etc. Could this be down to drivers error ( I will admit to playing with my uncle in his r32) but surely the car was designed to be driven hard ish ?

DMWRIGHT wrote:Mine went at about 47,000 - sounds like another common problem, for 3 GTI's at least to have it go before the 60,000 service???

New thread perhaps ?? - How many people have had new cam belt tensioners?

VW did not like this either, also gave me the whole your very lucky this didn't do more damage etc etc etc. Could this be down to drivers error ( I will admit to playing with my uncle in his r32) but surely the car was designed to be driven hard ish ?

This is common to many makes of cars apparently. I know for a fact that V6 and 4 pot 16V Vauxhall Opel engines have a terrible reputation for destroying cam belt tensioners - the worst bit about them failing is they seize up and strip the teeth of the belt when they do - no teeth on the belt equals no timing equals a very expensive breakfast of pistons eating valves.

The older engines are fine as they used the water pump to tension the belt and they don't tend to seize up.

A friend is collecting 3.0 V6 omega engines for a kit car project and now has 3 complete engines - he reckons he needs another couple before he has enough parts to make one good one out of them all

Well, I was surprized by the amount of oil around the filter from the breather pipe. It seems to have seeped around the top the of rubber on the air filter, but not into the filter itself - luckily!

And, whilst I was there I cleaned up the carb pot flap as this was well gummed up with black squidge. This caused problems on my last twin carb'd car so I always keep me flaps clean now.

I also moved the air sensor on the oil breather pipe as this was resting on the exhaust manifold!

It started well first time after putting it all back together again - from cold the revs were at the expected 1200 RPM and gradually faded to 850 RPM. Perhaps I cured the reason for my poor cold starting - will see tomorrow.

So, all in all a good result.

there was quite alot around mine

Josh_PoloGTi wrote:ERRRRM!!!

In the 1st video clip, what's that nasty noise like a toothless cog?????

Sorry to be alarmist, but it didn't sound well

God Damn it ! think i've got the same problem now on my gti, done 82,000 miles and at idle it sounds like the engines cold with a horrible belt whine and revvin it with the bonnet up doesn't sound too good , think the timing belt was done around 42,000 miles, so do u think it'll be a new belt or just the tensioner ? Will it be expensive ?

On a good note, apart from this (which has only been there the last week or so, I hope!) the engine is pulling better than ever, being on optimax for months probably helped, but feels damn sharper than it used to

Prash wrote:

Josh_PoloGTi wrote:ERRRRM!!!

In the 1st video clip, what's that nasty noise like a toothless cog?????

Sorry to be alarmist, but it didn't sound well

God Damn it ! think i've got the same problem now on my gti, done 82,000 miles and at idle it sounds like the engines cold with a horrible belt whine and revvin it with the bonnet up doesn't sound too good , think the timing belt was done around 42,000 miles, so do u think it'll be a new belt or just the tensioner ? Will it be expensive ?

On a good note, apart from this (which has only been there the last week or so, I hope!) the engine is pulling better than ever, being on optimax for months probably helped, but feels damn sharper than it used to

Oh dear oh dear mate, see my post (cambelt sensor problem = one dead engine) I'm just about to pay out for £411 to get this sorted, this is with a vw specialist and they're doing the water pump at the same time (aparantly this is another common fault on the gti) as this has failed as well... To change the tensioner the belts gotta come off, and as the part costs dirt all, they'll change it as a matter of course...

My advice is get it looked at, because it'll really screw your engine if it gets any worse.. Trust me!

Surely this tensioner should be a recall issue for vw, as it has far worse implications for the car when compared to the pedal box, at worst with that you need a new gearbox, with this i may bew having to fork out at best over £400 and at worst £3000 for a new engine!

Any thoughts?

P.S. On the bright side, you've managed to get 80,000 miles out of yours, mine has gone at 44,500 miles

P.P.S I thought my engine was running better than ever about 2 weeks ago - now it isn't in the car!

Thanks for your reply, I read your post but didn't think anything of it

i'm gonna get it looked at on wednesday I hope, booked into a specialist who I trust, will be interesting to see what he says.
Weird thing is the engine sounds fine above if its not idling, I initially thought it was simply because of the cold weather and it'd go after it'd warmed up, unfortunately isn't the case, seems like i've been ignoring it for about a week now.
I really dislike VW atm

Taking the car in tomorrow to diagnose and fix the problem, hopefully driving it until now has not going to have caused any serious damage. The car actually sounds fine atm, but turning the engine off the belt sqeals a little bit, and a vibration has developed at 2-3k rpm

Prash wrote:Taking the car in tomorrow to diagnose and fix the problem, hopefully driving it until now has not going to have caused any serious damage. The car actually sounds fine atm, but turning the engine off the belt sqeals a little bit, and a vibration has developed at 2-3k rpm

You'll have to let us know how you get on - i'd be interested in the price comparrison..

If you've only got a slight vibration then you should be okay, mine sounded seriously broken and it wasn't clipping valves... I think the engine management goes into protection mode and tries it's best to save the day if it all goes t1ts up!

Good Luck

Well...an interesting day i've just had. Took the car in early so they could start on the car asap, got a phone call a few hours later telling me they couldn't hear anything, so I tell them in a bit more detail but still he can't hear anything. I then goto pick the car up, start the engine and its gone ! no whine, and when I turn the engine off no unusual sounds . Only thing is there is still a bit of a vibration sometimes between 2-3k, but he diagnosed that has the centre silencer on the exaust making the vibrations, maybe the baffle inside ?. So the car is running fine, just a bit curious as to why it was happening in the first place, I will make sure to keep an eye on it though

Bit of luck mate! I take it that it's the usual rusty center hanger business with the exhaust..

It could've been that you just got some crap fuel or something?

ttaw2 wrote:Bit of luck mate! I take it that it's the usual rusty center hanger business with the exhaust..

It could've been that you just got some crap fuel or something?

Yea, does feel lucky, turned out nothing was wrong with the car at all
might have been crap fuel, though Its run on optimax for a long time now, could have been a number of things, though its fixed itself now, so I can't complain. Glad you got your car sorted out, is all it running sweet again ?

picking it up on saturday when i can afford to pay for it

Spoke to the garage and they said it's running fine now, but i'm not counting my chickens until i've put a few miles on it and i know it's all working okay.. You'll all hear about it if it's not!

Can't wait to get it back and enjoy it for a few weeks before i decide whether to sell it or mod it ... It's one or the other and today i'm leaning towards sensible and shock horror... it's probably going to be deisel and not a VW

Just can't decide what to get for around 6k