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My girlfriend has just phoned and told me she had her Polo GTi (R reg?) fail to start, and the AA diagnosed it as having a cam belt tensioner failure.

The car never started, so I'm wondering how much damage this will likely have been done to the engine, and obviously she's asking me how much I think it will cost to fix.

True to form the AA took her to the VW main dealer in Bournemouth, so not the cheapest place.

I'm guessing they'll charge £300 just to take off the head and poke around...

I was thinking that unless the pistons are holed (unlikely?) bent valves and maybe damaged seats would be around £1K to fix???

Any ideas/comments appreciated - thanks!

GTi's start at V reg mate, could be a Mk4 but not a POLO GTI

OK, I got the reg wrong. It's W reg.

Theres loads of info in the "sticky" post at the top of the gti forum page.

Neil

WormSign wrote:My girlfriend has just phoned and told me she had her Polo GTi (R reg?) fail to start, and the AA diagnosed it as having a cam belt tensioner failure.

The car never started, so I'm wondering how much damage this will likely have been done to the engine, and obviously she's asking me how much I think it will cost to fix.

True to form the AA took her to the VW main dealer in Bournemouth, so not the cheapest place.

I'm guessing they'll charge £300 just to take off the head and poke around...

I was thinking that unless the pistons are holed (unlikely?) bent valves and maybe damaged seats would be around £1K to fix???

Any ideas/comments appreciated - thanks!

I had the tensioners go on mine which bent the valves the camshaft and a few tappets all on the exaust side, everything else was ok, cost about 900 quid in the end

What you've said is pretty much spot on i'm afraid, hopefully the least damage possible is done though !