tabone

I am in the middle of doing a timing belt with a neighbor who I just found out is a Mercedez mechanic and worked at an Audi dealership for a few years (lucky me). Car is an 03 A4 3.0 with 67k miles. He said the belt was good but the tensioner was going bad and would have started giving trouble very soon. Sounds like the tensioner might be a common problem causing belts to fail prematurely. Possibly the lack of proper tension is throwing off the timing of your valves??