So, I am at a stop light earlier today, and all of a sudden my steering wheel gets real hard to the point where you need to put muscle into it to turn (I'm guessing no power steering) and my car starts to sound weird and I keep driving until I get to a street where I can pull over, and my car overheats and my battery light comes on. So, I pull over and pop my hood and I see a belt or a few belts broken. I was with my brother and he said he thinks it's the power steering/alternator/fan/ belt... Is this all just 1 belt (I couldn't tell it was all in pieces). So, luckly there was a shop right down the street I get there and the guy looked at it and told me I needed a belt that broke off and I also needed a tensioner. He is charging me 160 to fix my belts without the price for the tensioner (his parts supplier had to call him back for the price on that). So, is this too much to pay to get this done and does it sound right? How much more should I expect to pay for the tensioner? Has this happen to anyone? How much was it to get it fixed? I have a 97 A4 1.8t...

 

I guess around 50-75 for the tensioner. Its a little high but not to crazy just make sure no shreds got into the timing case. It happened to a customer of mine and damaged the timing belt. We all know what happend next. Let us know

 

Just the accessory belt, price doesn't sound too bad. Like he said ^^^ make sure your timing belt wasn't affected and doesn't have any belt shards on it.

Isn't the accessory belt supposed to be changed when a timing belt is done? If so, I would worry that your timing belt is overdue to be changed as well. And of course if you need to do the TB, get the car in to do all of it at once. You will def pay more getting accessory done now and TB later because its double work. Check out how many miles ago it was since your last TB job. Belts don't break after 20k miles.