$1500 Poof! All Gone!
 

Timing chain, new brakes, fresh oil. Ah well, 100k miles on the VW. What can I say? :D

Was that your gubmint rebate you used to stimulate the economy, Kuan?

A Vw? Whhaatttttt. I thought those things used a sepentine belt.

Oh that! It got put in the general fund, now I'm just stealing from it. :D

Yeah that runs the stuff on the outside, this is actually a timing belt that runs the drivetrain.

Happens. My buddy is dropping like $2k at the dealer on his E300D. MB's are worse!:D

I had that happen on a '78 Honda Civic and a '96 Ford Contour. Both cause no damage to the car. I think the Honda had a non-interference motor and the Contour might have, but I hear most survive this. I did have a slight tick in the valve train for a while afterwards. I did look at the valves while rotating the motor and didn't see any valves stick open. THe belt only had about 45K on it. Sorry to hear about your luck though.
Tom

Nah no bad luck, just preventive maintenance.

My reading skills must improve. For some reason my mind went to destruction of an engine. Yeh, PM does cost. I think it was about $400 on the Contour. I think the kit for the timing belt is about $185, then a new water pump etc. Smart to take care of it before problems.
tom

Way cheaper than a new/rebuilt head...We had ours done at 98k, and the dealer had to put a new head on three days later. The oil pump I had him test (which he said was ok) failed. cam seized. valves bent. head trashed. VW replaced the head on their dime. Would have cost me about 4k

50k later my wife ignored the temp light. Now we're sporting a used engine....I got to look at the old piston tops- they had a few dings in em from the first trashed head. Not to mention the broken rings/scored cylinder walls from the overheating/massive coolant leak out of the turno cooler line.