Died while driving, now will crank but no start.

Could this have been a case of the PO had a timing belt break and just slapped a new belt on it then sold it? Usually that results in a dropped valve, could a broken cam have been the result in this case? Breaking a cam is extremely unusual.

If ever there was a thread that would benefit from Frank's appearance, this would be it!

Dropped vale!!

Hi there I am new to this site, have been a jetta owner for several years. Anyways a same situation happened to me about two weeks ago, driving up hill. I heard a bang then no power, and stalled out. Apon inspection we took the valve cover off we found a lifter had broke and rolled threw my cam, evan worse after removing the head seeing the valve imbedded into the piston. needless to say i am doing an engine swap in my garage

A dropped valve is almost ALWAYS the result of a previous timing belt incident where the head was not removed. The valve stem is compromised by the impact, it's not inspected and thus not replaced, and some time later -- usually anywhere from a few thousand to a few tens of thousands of miles later, the valve head breaks off.

These engines have no record of losing valves "unprompted" although of course anything is possible, so best guess is that at some time in the past (assuming you bought the car used) it had an "incident" that was not properly taken care of.

A low oil event could also create the situation in which case the valve train could be compromised (possibly causing a lifter to stick enough to cause damage). If a turbo has been changed then this might be enough cause for further concern: daughter ran low on oil, blown turbo oil feed line, but the turbo was unaffected, in which case it was likely that the valve train wasn't compromised (turbo more sensitive).

Good reason I suppose to lift the valve cover at every TB change. I have a cam index tool that doesn't require the valve cover to be removed; this could be seen as a downside of such a tool: but if one knows the history and there's no concern then one is OK with not peaking under the cover(s).