Hi Everyone,

I was driving to work this afternoon and heard a bit of a noise and then car suddenly started sounding really loud and sort of ticking like a tractor (Octavia Estate TDI 1.9 04 reg) and lost power and became quite guttless. Anyway drove about a mile to my work in these conditions. When I finished work the car started ok but was still really noisy and a bit guttless, about 30 seconds of driving it suddenly kind of died with a bit of a pop and lost the steering for a bit and then I managed to steer it into a carpark ahead of me. I tried to turn it over and it sounded very grim so just left it, The eletrics were still working.

Any suggestions? Am worried the cam belt has snapped and the car is totally stuffed?

Thanks for any responses....

maybe skipped a tooth or something. if cambelt had snapped engine would have locked up completely and wouldnt turn over at all. unclip the cambelt cover and see if cambelt is still in place, rock the car back and forth see if the cams move. or take it to a garage

Thank you, it's already been towed to the garage over the road so will see what the verdict is tomorrow...What is a skipped tooth please and any idea what it would cost to fix? Anything is sounding better than a snapped cam belt right now! Especially as we're supposed to be driving it to France in 2 weeks

cambelt has teeth on the inside to drive the belt, if the cambelt is a bit loose it can 'jump' around the pulley and cause the timing to be out. car will sound like a tractor and most probably not run at all. if it is this you could be lucky and not have any major engine damage, on the other hand you could have smashed the valves into the pistons and written off your engine off.