Rene I believe has not long bought his AEB engined 1.8T Passat. And had been assured the cambelt had been changed before he bought it. However after a ratling noise started at the front of the engine he had his doubts and asked me to take a look. What I found was a cambelt with next to no tension on it what so ever, how it hadn't come off I don't know, very lucky for Rene.
A common fault on the earlier AEB engines was a very poor tensioner design. Similar to the later and much better set up, but the tensioner is joined to the tensioning damper by a little ball joint. This joint breaks and the tensioner roller then goes loose.
This usually results in the belt coming off and bent valves.
The repair is to fit the later spec tensioner and damper and a shorter cambelt.
Here is a comparrison on the old (left) and new (right) set up.
The car is now much happier with its new belt as you can imagine.
