Last week I met a man who told me about his 09 Reg Golf with a 2 litre TSI engine which has 51K miles and was currently in the garage after a failed camshaft chain for which he is expecting a bill for £3.5K. He noticed my 10 reg Scirocco which has a similar engine (TSI 1.4 litre 160HP & 48K miles) and decided to share his grief with me.
I have heard before about failures of these camshaft chains and noted that VW appear to have reverted to cam belts on their newer models. I have previously spoken to my VW garage (where I bought the car new) about whether the cam chain needed replacing and was told it was not necessary.
I have trawled this website and others trying to cut through all the flam and just get answers to some basic questions.
These questions are:-
Just how likely are these chains or tensioners likely to fail - is it 1/10, 1/100 or 1/1000?
Is it worth getting the chain & tensioner changed anyway. A see costs of around £1K quoted and will this prevent the problem occurring or could I be replacing a good chain with a defective one?
Presumably if these engines were failing in large numbers due to this problem then it would be more generally referred to on the second hand websites and the value of the car would be adversely effected which currently doesn't seem to be the case.
Any answers to these questions would be much appreciated.