It's not because as is correctly noted above, it's almost always the tensioner, not the belt, that fails. Having a 100k mile belt (which, by the way, an OEM belt is more than capable of doing) does you no good if the tensioner grenades at 85k. Do the service every 60k - accept it, do it, and don't screw around.

 

This x1000. Doing a TB isn't exactly child's play. It took me almost a whole day in my garage, but it's nothing that's impossible.

 

bahahaha. J is telling ppl not to screw around with the T belt.

here's the thing with the comparisons you are making up give.

Legend: family size car. it's gonna have a little more power than a regular sedan

B5 A4 2.8 30V: a somewhat ok comparison to the Legend and will corner much better and dominate the Legend in the snow any day with the same tires on both. engine is pretty solid, i recommend this motor if you get this car

B5 A4 2.8 12V: a bit slower than the 30V version however this motor is an absolute workhorse. you will usually get more miles out of this engine than a 30V but you do get a power tradeoff. handling is the same as the 30V.

B5 A4 1.8T: if you are new to turboed cars and can't do the work yourself or know how to diagnose Europeans, you will be crying and hating Audis for the rest of your life. it is a good engine but a turboed car comes with other vacuum and boost control devices that are no found on the NA motors. with that said, if you have extra money left over and great with diagnosing Europeans, go for it and you will like it
65464546846464564864884748974894x better than the legend.

E36: i don't much about BMW except that they are mostly NA motors and they usually get slightly/better gas mileage than the Audi NA comparisons. in the snow with a RWD BMW, you won't like the handling. if you have snow tires, you won't like it much more however it is very much improved. with the AWD version with snow tires you should like it.

have fun choosing

 

Lol Yu, I think you know I don't mess around with maintenance. The kicker with my tensioner failure is that I was still in the window and hadn't exceeded the mileage recommendation for a t-belt. OP, check out the "what did you do to your B5 today" thread - in the recent posts there you'll find my incredibly lucky account of how my hydraulic tensioner collapsed and somehow didn't even jump a tooth, let alone destroy the engine. Believe me when I say I was unbelievably lucky to be that .001% who had a tensioner failure and didn't lose the engine. The t-belt was fine.

 

haha is a audi reliable i have never owned a reliable GERMAN car..

 

Okay so the right question to ask is their a better tensioner? Yeah hiwords the Legend is probably more like an a6 than an a4 cause it isn't a compact excutive car but I image that the a4 is slighty lighter. If only the a4 came with a straight 6 I wouldn't consider a bmw. I seen a couple 2.8s(30v) that I'm now looking at maybe I might strike a winner out of one of these.

 

funny **** redline.

 

i love audis, most all audis, but i refuse to buy a non-quattro.

i feel thats half the pride and joy of audi, the fact that quattro has to be an Option when u buy one off the lot i, think is dumb.

Personally, i own a 2000 b5 1.8t with quattro, i love it. the pre-facelift models (early 99s and older) are nice, i personally like the updated look, but by no means wouldn't buy a pre-facelift.

 

...grammar

 

You know I could become the forum Engrish teacher. I spent 5 or 10 minutes a few nights ago cleaning up someone's awful grammar in a post they made.