2004 (54 plate) 1.2 6 valve Fabia. 12,500 miles. Battery light came on a couple of days ago. Inspection revealed absence of serpentine belt. New belt bought (hardly worth a warranty claim!). Seemed a little too long. After some head-scratching and consulting a photo of engine, further inspection revealed absence of idler pully (the fixed one below the tensioner). Probing with a slim screwdriver in mounting hole indicated an uneven stud end about an inch in. Car recovered to supplying dealer by AA for Skoda auto recovery. Dealer says it is an engine-out job to try to extract the remnants of the stud. Say they have not experienced this before. Access is reasonably good and (from memory) I should say there is about 8" of free space to work on the stud hole.

Tentative diagnosis: retaining stud just broke, or idler bearing seized then belt tension and/or heat sheared the stud. Both pully and belt exited the engine bay and were not recovered. Two days before, the car was driven a 400 mile round trip with no signs of distress, screeching or anything like that.

Anybody else had this? Is this a blind end stud threaded into the block? (so much gubbins in the way, alternator, alternator bracket, aircon compressor I could not check whether it comes out at the other end). Am I right in thinking this must be a self-evident warranty claim? Belt was not touched from new.

Any info would be much appreciated by this newbie. Never had such a problem with my old 120LSE or Favorit! That was before VW of course :(

I'd say its a warranty job for sure!

2004 (54 plate)

Tentative diagnosis: retaining stud just broke, or idler bearing seized then belt tension and/or heat sheared the stud. Both pully and belt exited the engine bay and were not recovered. Two days before, the car was driven a 400 mile round trip with no signs of distress, screeching or anything like that.

Anybody else had this? Is this a blind end stud threaded into the block? (so much gubbins in the way, alternator, alternator bracket, aircon compressor I could not check whether it comes out at the other end). Am I right in thinking this must be a self-evident warranty claim? Belt was not touched from new.

Any info would be much appreciated by this newbie. Never had such a problem with my old 120LSE or Favorit! That was before VW of course :(

The idler bearing seized up on mine last year when the car was just over a year old and had done about 15K. The bearing made a fine screeching noise on and off, and was just about to book a visit to the dealer when the night before the belt came off, thankfully driving not too fast. Called out the AA who said it was due to lack of grease in the bearing, and did a temp. fix enough to get down to the gargage. The belt itself was still in the engine bay and not broke. It was repaired under warrenty with new belt and idler pully.

Suspect that theres been a batch of iffy bearings used by Skoda (Not on purpose) don't know where they source the bearings from, maybe from a certain far eastern country.

Thanks for that very useful info, Reece_1.

Present state of play is that at the dealer we bought the car from (who is no longer an official Skoda dealer) we got the car going again by fitting a shorter belt that missed out the missing idler.

Am going to the main Skoda dealer tomorrow to let them "investigate". Naturally they don't have the pulley in stock. At least I now know that this has happened before!

Thanks once again.

OK, guys, just to let you know the outcome, the dealer's tech looked down the hole of the missing stud with a mirror and said there wasn't much if anything left of the stud proud of the block. He made a list of the items to be ordered including a new timing chain cover as the stud hole had been damaged.

Weeks passed by with the parts being "in transit" so eventually I blasted off a couple of emails to Skoda UK and even Skoda CZ. (It was then that I learnt, according to a computerised on-line translator, that in Czech "