Mk 4 Golf timing belt.

[cpas]

Hi there.
I am looking to buy a 2.0 Golf (MY 2000) and I am wondering how difficult it is to change the timing belt and if any tensioners etc need changing. The car has done 110,000 miles and has had one bely change at 60k ish.

Thanks

[Tame Technician]

Engine mounts a bit of a pain, need a trolly jack under the engine to hold it up while you take the mount off.

Coolant and PAS bottle moving out the way can make a mess, and there's not masis of space as you up against the inner wing, other than that, pretty easy.

How many other timing belts have you done??

Google found you this, NOTE - no idea why he pains the belt, after all thats coming off.
http://forums.vwvortex.com/zerothread?id=2271429

[cpas]

Hi.
Thnks for that.
I've done a few on transverse engines (including a Calibra wich pleasantly only took 2 hours!), and most recently on a Land Rover Defender 200TDi which was a reall ball-ache - so I'm pretty handy with the spanners!! Like you say, access is tight and the engine mount seems to be in an awkward place, but as long as there's nothing obvious, it should be fairly straight forward.

[cpas]

Yippee.
We've now won the Golf on e-Bay (or the missus has!!) and we collect it tomorrow. It's a Colour Concept Cabriolet and I now am led to believe that they were all a hybrid of Mk3 and Mk4 Golf, so I need to find out what engine is in it as apparently there were 3 different types of 2.0 8V engine! We've now joined the world of VW ownership!!