Our housekeeper drives a 2002 Audi A4 3.0.

A few days ago she pulled into our parking lot with her husband driving separately and said the car was making a funny sound and it was really hard to steer. When I stepped outside, they had the serpentine belt laying on the hood of the car. Oh boy...

I glanced into the engine bay and down quickly to the crank. The damper was leaning / resting against the cooling fan assembly, sheared off from the crank. I also saw what looked like a spring laying down on the lower plastic guard.

Broken Dampner in Car.jpg

The crank damper should have 8 bolts holding it to the timing gear, which is held via a traditional crank bolt.

I couldn't remove the crank pulley because it won't slide off the end of the crank snout, it's blocked by the fans, there isn't enough room. I told them I had to drive it to my garage, and it could be dangerous (if the crank grabbed or caught on that pulley) - but that I wasn't about to pull or push that thing up the hill around the corner. Fired it up with fingers crossed and drove it around to the garage.

Took it apart, and here's what I found...

Broken Dampner.jpg

Broken Spring.jpg

As best as I can tell, the tensioner failed and dropped the spring onto the main pulley - it chewed some nice grooves in it for a while, and then at some point that spring bound up against or on something and sheared the pulley off. There are two screws still in the timing gear - meaning that of the 8 that should be on there, there were just two small bolts holding the damper. Probably someone at some point did the timing belt on this car and didn't retorque to spec, or just didn't put in all the bolts.

I've got a 90deg drill coming tomorrow to drill / easy-out the two screw stubs, and then the rest of the parts come Thursday.

I told them this is the perfect time to change the timing belt, tensioner, etc - but they just want it back together and they're going to sell it asap. Fair enough! Fine with me, because I'm sure once the timing covers came off I'd find more wrong...