My Mechanic made a good point about the timing belt. I had mine changed on my 2005 A4 avant 1.8T at about 93,000kms. While I was far below the recommended mileage on the car the timing belt needs to be done in 5-6 years regardless of the mileage.

 

so maybe a dumb question , but obviously im not very well educated on the automotive world.
I have an 05 A4 1.8T , and im at around 130k , what are the key clues that you need to get your timing belt done?

 

Your water pump will start to leak and you may get coolant warnings. That is if you are lucky. Most of the time a timing belt will just quit and then it's game over, insert $10,000 for the repair job.

You are really pushing it by not getting your timing belt done. Your options are;

Pay the $1,000 to $1,500 to get it done OR wait until you have a $10,000 repair bill. There is no way around not getting your timing belt done.

 

thats steep , thanks lol.
i guess i better get that done asap...
do you know how much the belt is itself?

 

The belt and all the associated parts are not that much it is just a labour intensive job that has to be done right.

 

Yeah, parts are cheap...
Pulling the whole front off your car and then your engine isnt - lol

Complete kits for $300 approx...

Heres a guy doing it himself on a 1.8T

over 4 hrs work squished into 5 minutes...

YouTube - 2001 Audi A4 1.8T Timing Belt Job In 5Min! Time Lapse!

Chad

 

yeeah thats the only thing about these cars that people dont realize until they own one , everyone thinks parts are expensive , in reality theyre really not , its the labour , which sucks , because not too many places work on them , so the places that do charge through the ***.

 

ultimately shops charge by the book time, so if you know the book time on a job, mulitiply that by the hourly labour rate and thats how much labour your going to be paying, if a shop is not charging book time I would start looking for another repair shop.