Audi 5000 Revival IV - Timing Belt

The timing belt on this car actually doesn't look too bad, but without documentation of a recent change I really can't trust it. This will leave you stranded if it breaks, and potentially damage the engine. Audi mounted this 5 cylinder engine as far forward as possible, so to make my life easier I decided to remove as much of the front end as I could:

That's a little better. The accessory belts come off by loosening the mounting bolts, and then unscrewing tensioning bolts on the alternator, power steering pump, and AC compressor. Then to get to the timing belt, you just remove the front cover and unscrew the crank pulley. Yup, just unscrew the big bolt holding on the crank pulley:

Uggh. Apparently it's torqued by the factory to over 400 ft-lbs. With that much force, I can't simply put it in gear to hold the crankshaft in place. I might break the transmission. There's a special, hard to find tool meant to hold the crank pulley, but I'm not spending $150 on it. Instead I wedged a prybar against the notch in the crank pulley, and then jumped on my breaker bar to loosen that horrible bolt. With that out, the old timing belt could come off along with the crank sprocket and accessory belt pulley.

I decided to take the extra time and remove the rusty valve cover for repainting. The gasket was starting to leak anyway, so why not? Here's what the camshaft looked like:

 

The camshaft seal was starting to leak, so I replaced it while I was in there:

 Time to clean the oil and grease off the valve cover:

 I used naval jelly to dissolve the surface rust before painting it with black grill paint:

 

With the cover reinstalled, it looks a lot better:

And here is that horrible crank bolt: 

 

A curious thing about the timing belt on this engine - the water pump is the belt tensioner. It has two slotted bolt holes letting you rotate the pump in order to provide tension on the timing belt. It's a very strange arrangement, and the water pump makes a seal against the flat engine block with a large O-ring.

Now with a new water pump and belt installed, I can start reassembling the front of the engine. The timing marks weren't easy to find, so I just put matchmarks on the old belt and transferred them to the new one so the cam and crank will still be lined up. Then I pried against the water pump to tension the belt and tightened the water pump bolts to lock it in place. I also added some sil-glyde to the new water pump O-ring so it could slide across the engine block as needed.

Tightening the crank bolt was a little tricky, but I managed to nail some 2x4's together to brace against my pry bar:

Then I put my foot on my breaker bar and called it tight enough. With the engine back together, all that's missing is the rest of the front end:

Job done, cheers!