Timing belt and head gasket job on a 4.2
 

Hi guys&gals. So i was doing some maintenance work on my car, changing oil and air filters and i noticed some oil around the head gasket and under the vehicle. Also the car idles really bad so after doing some research of the past records I found that the timing belt has never been replaced. So my project this summer will be the timing belt and I'm thinking of doing the head gasket as well. I have the bentley repair manual for the C5 and it seems to have pretty good instructions but I'd appreciate any tips from anyone that has done it before and where would be the best place to get the parts at a reasonable price. Thanks

I've done this before and you are asking for for some major down time. This is not something you do in a weekend. I spent 3 weekends doing this job (or a full week if you can work on it every day).
I do have to admit I basically took each head out of the engine, cleaned the valves from deposits, remove the intake manifold, split it open and cleaned it out too (fixed the flaps while I was at it).

For the oil deposits you saw on the top - wouldn't that be something valve cover gasket fix instead of the head gasket?

Either way make sure you have the bolt pattern as well as the torque requirements. You have to tighten the bolts in a very specific order and do not exceed the torque or you are asking for trouble!

The only thing that got me was the clutch fan pulley. You remove this sucker with a clockwise turn. Hold the pulley with a fan clutch tool, while using the wrench to loosen the bolt (again clockwise)

Otherwise it is pretty straight forward and just remember each single hose, line, screw, bolt and whatnot - there are quite a few :D

timing belt
 

Thanks Sheldon. I have another vehicle that I drive daily so downtime is not really an issue. I'm taking my time to make sure I do everything right. Also I would like to make a correction, it was the valve cover gaskets that I need to replace, not the head gasket so that should be an easy one. Any suggestions on where to shop for the timing belt kit?

Valve cover gasket
 

So some progress on my project. I took the valve covers out and noticed that the plastic piece on the left side cam chain tensioner was missing and the chain had been rubbing on bare metal. There are some marks on the chain but I'm not sure if that means I need to replace it. Also as I was pulling out the ignition coils, 2 of them on the right came out without the rubber piece, I'll try to attach pictures to explain better. There was also some deposit on the valve covers.Attachment 21161

Attachment 21162

Attachment 21163

Valve cover gasket 2
 

In the center pic there should be a brown plasctic piece under the chain, I hope the pictures are clear enough.

Pictures are clear and I see what you are mentioning.
While you are at it and doing all this work I would replace it. The chain is cheaper than he tensioner!

Take a look here: https://www.ecstuning.com/Audi-C5_A6...e/Mechanical/4
They have all the parts you need.

Valve covers
 

Yea, I'm just going to go ahead and do that. I also saw a valve cover kit with all the gaskets and tensioner gaskets and end caps so I'll get all that ordered and replaced. This is turning into a full blown project and I'm excited to get this baby back on the road. I'll post updates and issues, hoping I won't run into anything major. Thanks again for the input. Keep it coming.

I told you this is not something you tackle on a weekend ;)

I'm sure I still have a picture floating around if you are interested in seeing the "beast" dismantled :)3

*Edit:
Found it - see attachment

http://imageshack.com/a/img921/1136/i2bWjr.jpg

I started taking stuff apart over the weekend, didn't get as far as i wanted due to the holiday but i did run into some issues(hopefully visible in the pics). When i took the timing belt covers off i found the belt to be a bit loose, i could wiggle it with my finger. I'd also like some advice on whether i should do the timing belt first then do the cam chain tensioners or vise versa. I DO NOT want to mess the timing on this thing.
*how do we upload pics on here? It's so much easier on tapatalk.*

Uploading a picture requires you to host it somewhere else on the net - the button in this forum only allows you to embed the pictures by linking directly to it (in other words you don't upload pictures into the forum, you link them from somewhere else).

The belt should be very tight. I've seen the tensioner fail - especially if the last person who did the job decided to be cheap and compress the tensioner instead of buying a new one. There are several posts mentioning that these tensioners can be compressed but about half of the time they don't like it, start leaking and either fail while driving or loosen up to where the belt is not tight. I recommend always buying a new one.

As for which order to start this with:
I've not had to play around with the cams too much when I worked on this so I'm not sure how much wiggle room you have to remove and replace the cam tensioner. From the sounds of it though I would do the cam tensioner first while leaving the timing belt on so that timing doesn't get messed up. When done start marking the cams, remove the belt, remove old timing belt tensioner, replace any pulleys that need replacing, install tensioner (but don't pull the pin yet), install the timing belt and make sure all is well and aligned - then release the pin on the tensioner.

I do have to admit that it's been a while and I had some help from a mechanic while working this so I'm not 100% my advise is spot on.