A6 V6 diesel - Power steering gone, see pic.

[asht1987]

Hello.

Luckily this happened just as I pulled up at home. A spindle (I think its called that) has broken on the front of the engine.

Its the weekend and I have no idea how much this is going to damage the wallet. The instant symptom is loss of power steering, but i think this belt also affects the air con too.

Any thoughts on the likely damage??££??

Ash

Thanks all.

[finlo]

Hard to tell from that angle but it looks to have come loose, although it's quite common for harmonic balancers to come apart where the metal and rubber join. As for cost they are usually around £100.

[asht1987]

Thank you for the reply. Sent a pic to a friend and he's also just replied. Thinks it looks like a crank pulley.

[finlo]

Harmonic balancer is the new fancy term for the bottom pulley.

[GreenV8S]

Don't start the engine until it's been fixed - I assume you won't be fixing this yourself so it will need to be recovered to a garage. The part itself isn't likely to be hugely expensive or difficult to replace - you might be looking at a couple of hours labor to get access to it. Hard to tell from the pictures whether it has damaged anything around it, but hopefully not.

[Disco_Biscuit]

Yep front pulley broken, easy job once the fronts removed from the car.

[imagineifyeswill]

Crankshaft pulley/harmonic balancer has collapsed. Remove front bumper cover then remove all bolts and screws holding the front panel radiator carrier assembly, using the two long vertical bolts from the bumper screw them into one of the bolt holes on the ends of the chassis. thisupports the front panel allowing you to pull it forward for clearance without disconnecting the coolant or aircon systems.

[swampdonkeygj]

This happened to my car about a month ago (2011 A6 3.0 TDI). Cost £595 to repair at a specialist, which included replacing the diesel pump belt at the same time.

[asht1987]

swampdonkeygj said:

This happened to my car about a month ago (2011 A6 3.0 TDI). Cost £595 to repair at a specialist, which included replacing the diesel pump belt at the same time.

Oh...

Mine is also an audi a6 3.0 to...2011 too! I'm taking mine to a local garage who I know well...hope it isn't the same price lol

[asht1987]

Well it's been done. Crank pulley and belt. £400 lighter for it....sigh

[BigGee1968]

asht1987 said:

swampdonkeygj said:

This happened to my car about a month ago (2011 A6 3.0 TDI). Cost £595 to repair at a specialist, which included replacing the diesel pump belt at the same time.

Oh...

Mine is also an audi a6 3.0 to...2011 too! I'm taking mine to a local garage who I know well...hope it isn't the same price lol

hmmm so my audi a6 3.0 tdi 2011 has just had the same problem .. seeing a small trend here

currently with the dealer for costing ... (gulp)

[slybunda]

Crank pulley and belt replacement for 400 quid sounds awfully expensive to me.

[shogun001]

£230 for a Corteco pulley and a Contitech drive belt. Factor in a couple of hours work and I'd price it around £330 as a mobile mechanic.

[K321]

My belt has completely shredded off my V6 diesel. I am going to go to garage asap to fix it. These figures of £595 and £400 look scary.
I'll let you know how much mine costs to fix I have no power steering no air con and the internal error message is saying " alternator fault battery not charging "

[K321]

with my car, the tensioner completely broke and belt. got the car fixed, they had to take whole bumper off to fix it. I had oil change and filter done at the same time. All in £200

[RS4-Scott]

Hi PH'ers. Sorry to drag up an old thread but I seem to have inherited the task of sorting one of these out for my father.

I am ordering all the parts up in advance (HvD Pulley, Belt, Idler and Tensioner OE through TPS) and the cost is fine.

My query/concern is regarding the myriad of crank and timing tools that may be required.
Can anybody advise if you required specific tools to do this job please? If so, would you be kind enough to provide a link?
I am not the type of person to be 'guessing' on this car and I don't conform to the "yea, you'll probably be fine without them" camp. If there are specific tools for it, i'll just buy them before I start the job, as I don't want to get part-way through and find that I need something else.

Cost isn't the reason for doing it myself. It's the fact that we simply dont trust our local dealer or independant garages - Had too many shoddy jobs done over the years by them and lack of care/attention to detail.

So if anybody can shed light, that would be amazing.
Thank you all in advance.

[finlo]

Changing the aux belt and pulleys doesn't disturb the cam timing.

[Zener]

Common complaint changed about 3 in total now , all caught doing no further damage than throwing and destroying the serp belt no need to remove front panel or move rads etc done from underneath

[RS4-Scott]

finlo said:

Changing the aux belt and pulleys doesn't disturb the cam timing.

Hi finlo.
Yea, sorry, my initial post was poorly worded. I know the cam timing isn't affected (chain at the rear) but was wondering if there are any tools for setting tensioner or if there were specific locations for crank vs the aux components. I know it's a ribbed belt and is designed to slip under circumstances, rather than being a tooth-timeing-driven belt but I prefer to investigate these things before rippinng stuff off a car and finding that I've shashed it up.

Zener said:

Common complaint changed about 3 in total now , all caught doing no further damage than throwing and destroying the serp belt no need to remove front panel or move rads etc done from underneath

Yes, it seems to be.
Looking at the photos my father sent, it's an awful design!
low bonding surface area + rust + torque = recipe for failure. No wonder there are a dozen revisions on this part!

Thanks for the advice regarding all being accessible from below. My father isn't as flexible as he used to be, so muggins here will end up doing it.
Would you recommend pulling the bumper forward for increased access, for ease of doing the job, or is it genuinely all easily accessible?
Buying £30 of bumper hanger tools isn't an issue to me if it speeds the job and saves me busting knuckles.