mmasire88

I recently purchased a 2000 a4 1.8t from a local VW dealership. I got it for 500$! They had one of their mechanics show me the cam tensioner was bad. He had the valve cover off when I arrived. So I went ahead and loaded it up and took her home (= I have since replaced the cam chain tensioner, tensioner gasket, and half moon seal. Long story short, car runs very sluggish, no power. Idles nice and quiet. I rechecked the timing on the camshafts (16 links,nearly perfect). When I went to look at the exhaust cam sprocket timing marks, it's about 3-4 teeth off the timing mark on the valve cover? My question is, is it possible somebody removed the cam sprocket and put it on wrong? I've never actually had to remove the cam sprocket on any of my 1.8t motors, so I'm not sure if it's even possible to put it on wrong. I have attached some photors below. The timing mark on the belt/sprocket was hard to see, so I marked it with a yellow highliter. (I know the timing belt needs replaced, already have a new one on order!)

4Driver4

New timing belt should fix the issue.

mmasire88

Well, after further investigation. I tore down the front end to check to see if the crank was at TDC when the camshafts were lined up. Of course they wern't! Decided to pull the camshaft gear bolt off, and it seems the cam gear key broke off D: Hopefully it hasn't caused any damage to my heads...it was about 3-4 teeth out of time. It was idling nice and smooth, no loud noises. Ordered a new cam gear and will stick it on in the next few days and give it a whirl.