Parents have just called me, their 51 plate elegance 110 was swounding like a bag of nails, so they looked in the engine bay and found something snapped, i thought it was the aircon clutch but they described it as about 8/9 ins long looks like a mini shock absorber and connected somewhere near cambelt but now snapped at one end, car drives ok, any ideas till i get over there?

Hi

It's the aux belt tensioner damper,needs fixing best not drive it.

Happy to help ;-)

Got me confused. The only thing vaguely spring like could be a gearbox cable connector part, but wrong side of the engine for that. I wonder if it is still part of the aircon though.

cheers, looks like the aux belt dampener as suggested, parents say the screws wont screw in and that the casting it was attatched to has broken. Any idea on cost of getting this sorted? I gather they need to check to see if the pulley freewheels in one direction as it its stuck it can cause the snapping.

Hi Rich

No quick fix for this one ;-( VAG only for the parts and possibly broken bolt removal or new castings.

Sorry

Good luck

I think Jorilly Skoda is cheapest for the tensioner, I've been looking myself and I think that theirs are about £53 for a Febi Bilstein unit, which is probably OEM anyway.