So,
First job was to attempt to see why/how the timing belt failed in the first place, and if the engine was seized or failed terminally.
after fully removing the upper timing belt cover and inspecting with a torch... I found the water pump pulley had completely sheared off.... Never seen anything like it!
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The engine could be turned over extremely carefully, manually until interference from valves was felt. so as the bottom end was free, me and a couple of friends attempted to strip the car down and get into repairing it.
So - bit of a hit list to work from, which was added to as the car was stripped.
- Replace Timing Belts & water pump
- Check intake manifold and flaps for signs of coking
- Remove & assess damage to head
- Check condition of water tree, coolant system and "death pipe"
- Investigate misfire issue
So using a common sense approach, along with some of the resources/ links to manuals on here we set at removing the old timing belt assy, intake/exhaust manifold and head. this has been pretty well documented on here before, so I won't tread old ground apart from saying you absolutely do need to remove the left engine mount and lower the engine on a jack a little to give enough clearance to remove the intake manifold. You just cant get your hands in otherwise, or clear the bulkhead/scuttle.
What I will say is if you're a competent DIY mechanic its all completely doable, don't be put off. there's not a lot of space, but all in all it took around 4.5 hours to strip the head out of the car at the first attempt,
...And here are the findings!
8 off very bent exhaust valves. One very coked up combustion chamber & head
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if anyone is in any doubt, this is not what an exhaust valve should look like ?;
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Also, due to the sheer amount of carbon deposited on the inlet valves, as I'm this far it'd be silly to not replace these too. There's just no way these were sealing correctly and would have been contributing to the common FSI problems;
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One very coked up intake manifold/ports - showing that after any amount of previous work, when a car recirculates exhaust gasses it will foul up again. This one operated fine, and wasn't sticking, however this was the amount of carbon build up after approximately 40,000 miles, despite only being ran exclusively on Shell V Power and having regular servicing.
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Right so, root cause of the timing belt failure.
Upper tensioner had completely seized, causing the belt to jam, and shearing the water pump pulley off.
The car had been sat for the last couple of years without much running, I think potentially accelerating failure. Couldn't be helped, Just really unlucky and one of those things...
On the positive side - This car has already had a large amount of the cooling system replaced, including the death pipe. it all looked pretty much brand new, no signs of leaking so thought best to leave in situ and not disturb any of it. could find myself chasing my tail and end up replacing the lot otherwise. also, no damage to pistons or cylinder bores. looks like I got away without a catastrophe.
Due to the amount of coking and the FSI being a direct injection engine, I made the decision to fully rebuild the head and while the injectors were out, have them refurbished/cleaned. With all of the above I thought the car would have half a chance of a clean bill of health. and with a rebuilt head - Give it a real new lease of life.
Next step.... order parts and start the clean up and rebuild.