2001 A4 130BHP TDI alternator / fan belt

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Wed 13 Sep 2006 16:16
2001 A4 130BHP TDI alternator / fan belt - Big Vern
Hi

This morning My 2001 A4 TDi 130BHP threw its fan belt. The problem appears to be that the pulley on the alternator has moved forward and the fan belt came off and was running on the shaft between the pulley and the alternator itself .

As far as I know the car was pulled off the road and stopped within a few minutes of it happening. Am I likely to have done any lasting damage to the car? It did sound like a bag of spanners!

What would have caused this? Can the pulley just move forward on the shaft? Or has the shaft pulled out of the alternator? Can an alternator seize and cause this to happen?

The guy who sold me the car is fixing it for me, which is good as I guess I am not paying for it, but like free Kitchen fitting, in a way I would rather be paying for it so I have some sort of control of the quality of the work. What should I look for when I get it back?

The above is for my peace of mind more than anything else. I was very impressed by the guy who sold me the car, and to be fair I expected him to walk away from me today, so far I am more than happy.
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Wed 13 Sep 2006 16:52
2001 A4 130BHP TDI alternator / fan belt - 659FBE
This is almost certainly a failure of the alternator pulley which has a one-way drive clutch inside it. These are notorious, and not too difficult to change, paticularly on this installation where the access is good. Did the bits move far enough forward to damage the radiator? I would renew the belt at the same time.

Out of interest, what was the mileage at failure?

659.
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Wed 13 Sep 2006 16:58
2001 A4 130BHP TDI alternator / fan belt - 659FBE
Should have said "damage the radiator fan".

659.
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Wed 13 Sep 2006 17:48
2001 A4 130BHP TDI alternator / fan belt - Big Vern
Good good, that does not sound too bad. At least if it has just floated off the shaft it is unlikely to have inflicted too much stress on anything else.

It has 80k on the clock if I remember correctly.

As I said I am pretty sure I caught it as soon as it happened and only drove a few hundred meters to pull it off the road somewhere convient so there was only a few of the fan vanes with a small nick in them. Think the size of a segment of a 5p with a chord across 1/4 of the circumference Nothng to worry about.
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