mlake

I have a 03 A6 no compression on drivers side . 30-30-0 pass side . It was overheated before I got her . Timing belt was intact not broke. Start pulling all apart to dig further into , possible new motor needed or any suggestions needed . Live in Pittsburgh area .

Airbag

Oh yeah definitely need a new motor if all your heads are bashed up.

GTA_Driver

The timing belt almost never breaks. It skips teeth, though, if a tensioner fails or a pulley seizes.

A new engine will likely be your cheapest solution.

mlake

The tensioner was fine it was fully engaged , no pully was seized motor was over heated

mlake

pictures of motor

jseklund

Is there any oil in your coolant or coolant in your oil? If the car overheated, it could be a bad head gasket and that is all. You either have timing that is off or a bad head gasket. If your timing is off, you could have bent valves (most likely did) and could need a new head.

Either way, the only way to know is to break it down, use the timing tools and check timing on your way in. If the timing is off, you know you had a timing problem. If it lines up fine, then you know that at least someone set the timing before you got the car (maybe replaced the belt and found it still won't run).

And once you get the timing tools in place, you are about 1/3-1/2 the way to getting the head off to replace the head gasket. You will need a special tool for the bolts (it's an extended star-type drive, but not a torx) to get the bolts out.

Once you get the head off, you can look for any damage to the pistons.

Also, a leakdown test may give you more insight before you go into all this work.

And how is the compression on the other side?

Everyone always jumps on the replace your engine bandwagon, because at some point it does make sense, but I replaced a head on a 2.7T because it ran low on oil and chewed up the cams (this person doesn't know how to use a dipstick) and it cost me about $400 for a refurbished head instead of $1,000 for an engine or more. Not saying one way is right or wrong - but there are two options and both involve a lot of work.

tester123

The car could've overheated due to a coolant leak. I've noticed my car getting 1-1/2 past the center and one time(hot summer 90s), even pulled over and shut off to cool it ... all due to oil cooler pipe leaking! The air pockets would do it.


I agree here. If you are going to do the work, might as well work only on affected areas (of course, after localizing the problem and assessing full damage).

tester123

The car could've overheated due to a coolant leak. I've noticed my car getting 1-1/2 past the center and one time(hot summer 90s), even pulled over and shut off to cool it ... all due to oil cooler pipe leaking! The air pockets would do it.
I agree here. If you are going to do the work, might as well work only on affected areas (of course, after localizing the problem and assessing full damage).

jseklund

I'm not saying the car overheated because of the bad head gasket - just that if it overheated badly enough, it may have damaged the head gasket.

And when I did it, I had a head that was damaged not from timing failure but from oil starvation - so it may be a little different, but I figured that it was easier to unbolt the intake and the exhaust manifold from the turbo and pull the head than to pull the entire engine. Of course, I knew the engine's maintenance history before that and didn't have as many ???s.

Both are options and options are good.

mlake

Ok update got pass side head off one bent valve on intake . So the timing did jump , only one valve not so bad . Order new valve and lifter to be safe . Should be in tomorrow . So I take it the tensioner must have been weak , for it to jump time .