Charles Jensen

[Charles Jensen]

I am a motoring enthusiast who owns an Audi A3, EA888 engine.
Recently it succumbed to the dreaded timing chain tensioner problem which required a complete top of engine rebuild.
This cost a bit over $11,000.
I am thinking of taking Audi Australia to NCAT for some compensation and am interested in hearing comments from people who have had this unfortunate experience.
I have a little legal experience and have represented myself in this tribunal a number of years ago.

[h100vw]

I have fixed a few of these engines in my time. $11k is a pretty high cost for that job but I can see a dealer charging that. The cost of a head plus all the extras to fit.

Somewhere nearer to $5k if you dont have to go with brand new audi parts.

I dont fancy your chances at Audi unless you had it from new and never serviced it anywhere else. And even then, I'd not expect them to cover the whole bill.

I think you could burn a lot of energy and not get a result, they wont stump up for waterpumps on EA888.3s

[Guest001]

Firstly age and Kilometers would be a big help in giving sensible answers Posting 101 More info = better answers.

[Lucas_R]

Assuming its the earlier version of the EA888 engine fitted to various VW/Audi/Skoda cars from about 2009-2013ish then its very very common unfortunately. The failed timing chain tensionser has prematurely ruined many of these engines. Another less common, but still too common is the cam bridge filter failing which starves the head of oil pressure (this happened to a family member of mine with a 2011 Golf GTI - same EA888 engine) and cost him an entire engine which from memory cost him about 9-10k.

I used to own a 2010 Golf GTI with the EA888 and could hear my timing chain rattling on cold starts, so paid about $1100 out of my pocket to have the timing chain tensioner and other associated parts replaced. The car only had 50,000km on it and had full service history with VW, but was outside of the warranty period as it was about 5-6 years old at the time.

The timing chain which was a flawed design, was revised sometime in 2012 and fitted to the 2012-2013 model cars, but all the engines built prior to this time were fitted with the garbage design old tensioner which can literally fail at any time.


Audi VW 2.0T TSI Timing Chain Tensioner Failure - MINHS Automotive

Audi VW TSI Cam Bridge Problem - MINHS Automotive