TRTW

Snapped my timing belt on the way to work this afternoon. I could hear the tick-tick-tick as the belt was coming apart. I thought it was my accessory belt at the time it happened. I put in the clutch as I started to coast over and seen that I was still charging. Of course I was instantly concerned but in the time this all was registering in my head I got a good thump from the engine and that was it. At the side of the road I popped the hood and my top timing cover is cracked and bulging. The car won't turn over, it's facked.

My dilema is how to proceed from here. The exterior of the car is terrible. My plan was to replace any worn and junky looking parts (i have some of them already) and do a respray. But now I am not sure if this is worth it. The interior of the car isn't great either. The seats are quite nice still but the carpet is terrible. Headliner has some issues..... I am just not sure if I can justify this. Plus I am seriously discouraged. The belt had 55k km on it. That should never have broken. I should never have had my RS2 turbo break it's shaft at 30k km either.

The options I am considering are cutting my losses and parting it, rebuilding and respraying or rebuilding and putting the motor in a differant shell. If I am going to go the rebuild route in either fashion it will take me a little while to pull the money together. I suppose that if I go the rebuild route maybe it would be good to use stout parts......

Anyway I need to consider this for a little while. It only happened today so I certainly haven't had enough time to think it through.

4Driver4

A picture would help, but it sounds like parts to me.

S6 4RiNGS

Luckily it was the mechanics fault, so I got a rebuilt head for free.

Fastscirocco

worry too much about the interior.

I'd recommend finding out what the real damage
is to the engine and go from there.

Are you mechanicly inclined, can you pull the
head yourself? If so it would be worth your
while to pull the head and see exactly what
it would cost you to fix it.

Don't jump to quickly into the "it's only good for parts".

The interior can wait to be fixed, right now
your main concern is what will it take to fix
the engine.

HTH
Chris

TRTW

can I convince myself that it is a good idea to go down that road and spend thousands more or bite the bullet and buy a new Jetta and drive it till I die. I know that no one can answer the money question for me but maybe there are a few guys out there who have made this decision before and they can let me know if they regret anything either way.

Whenever a person upgrades a car like we do you have to go into it knowing that you'll never get all that money back out again but it's a bit hard to walk away from after only enjoying it for a year. Maybe that would be the smartest thing to do though. I'll have to decide.

UrS4boy

bad. Remove the head (and the exhaust and intake manifolds), get the valves redone (change all the seals and the guides while you are there), new head gasket and bolts, go back in, reinstall the head, redo the timing belt (maybe not as tight this time) and start driving and liking your car again.

ThetaTau87

Only because I want your turbo, RS2 exh manifold and software.

The smartest thing to do would be to pull the head off your self and assess the damage. That is the only accurate way to estimate what it will cost to repair. If it's just the valves that are damaged you can get away with just rebuilding the head. If you damaged the pistons you're in for a full bottom end rebuild as well.

It would be a shame to see it parted, but you have to realistically evaluate what it would take to fix it vs. what you could buy another car for and transfer parts or go a completely different direction (Jetta) and just part the car.

c4S6

2nd. From an economic standpoint, this makes most sense.

quattro.pilot

and he's wrecked the engine.

Next most pricey is probably the front bumper, but it's a bitch to ship and living in WAY northern Alberta doesn't help.

kday

Might as well fix it and get back to enjoying the car, flaws and all.