Disaster averted.

I stopped at the bank to make a night deposit a couple of days ago. I left the car running while I walked around front of it and up on to the sidewalk. I could hear a very faint tinny sound. Very faint and soft, when I got home I popped the hood and this is what I found.




311k miles, the inside lip of the power steering pully had peeled completely off, and was tinkling ever so faintly. I remember thinking, there’s nothing wrong that little noise isn’t anything to worry about.

Fortunately I have a parts car so I just took the pully off the power steering pump on that and put it on my daily. Twenty minutes or so.

The disaster averted is as we all know those serpentine belts don’t just snap, they turn to spaghetti and get sucked behind the timing cover and wind around the crank. I figure my belt was a prime candidate to turn into spaghetti.

Anybody else have this happen?

That is freaky. And terrifying.
I'm currently experiencing a weird jingleing/tinkling sound myself. Sounds like a set of metal car keys hanging off the passenger side rocker beam. Can't see anything under there.

For a couple weeks I've been thinking yeah it's probably something minor like a clip or bracket on the underbelly come loose. Thankfully my PS pulley looks OK lol.
Sunday I'm at gearhead garage on the lift for self-inspection. Afraid to take off the timing cover, but I think I better....

So you replaced this onto your '05 Golf from your '00 Golf? Nice.

Check the bottom spring perch on your front struts. I had that a few years ago and it sounded just like that. About 1 inch of the coil spring had broken off and was just laying in the perch tray.

Ok now THAT's a bizarre failure.....

I've had this happen a few years ago on my alh golf with about 400,000kms.
Aluminum pulley just wore down to nothing.....mine looked even worse than yours....shredded the serpentine belt but luckily no other damage.

I guess as these cars rack up more and more miles we'll need to be on the lookout for weird unusual problems cropping up.

I had a crank pulley rust and come off on my 71 VW pickup.
Was able to go 20 miles to get home OK

Tdijarhead said:

Check the bottom spring perch on your front struts. I had that a few years ago and it sounded just like that. About 1 inch of the coil spring had broken off and was just laying in the perch tray.

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Thank you for that tip.
Turns out it was something just about as weird. A small sheet metal screw is hanging out between the front passenger rotor, and the hub (or something). I tried for an hour to coax it out of there with tweezers, hemostats, magnets, duct tape...I'm just going to wait until I re-do the brakes/rotors. Next month or two. They're all original at 115k miles. How it got in there I can't imagine.

not totally the same but when I still had my old ALH at one point the PS pump actually seized up and started puking fluid all over the place! It was actually spewing out from under the hood and getting on top of it. Being 19 and dumb I didn't stop to see when the noise was or notice the fluid flying out and drove it a few minutes home like that when I checked it the belt had been shredded and was hanging on for dear life by it's last few threads

Tdijarhead said:

Check the bottom spring perch on your front struts. I had that a few years ago and it sounded just like that. About 1 inch of the coil spring had broken off and was just laying in the perch tray.

Click to expand...

I had that also; the left front had broken in the same place. The sound was more of a hollow noise heard only while making sharp turns while parking.

STDOUBT said:

Thank you for that tip.
Turns out it was something just about as weird. A small sheet metal screw is hanging out between the front passenger rotor, and the hub (or something). I tried for an hour to coax it out of there with tweezers, hemostats, magnets, duct tape...I'm just going to wait until I re-do the brakes/rotors. Next month or two. They're all original at 115k miles. How it got in there I can't imagine.

Click to expand...

There is a small screw that lines up the rotor and hub before the bolts go in.
It's not a sheet metal screw though. I think it's a 6mm flathead.
You don't need it.

I thought about posting this up as a new thread, but I think it's on topic in terms of the OP title.
That sheet metal screw I was talking about in #8 here seems to be starting some problem with my braking....
For weeks and weeks previous to my discovering the cause of the noise, I was braking fine. Then about a week ago, I would get stuttering while braking and simultaneously turning. Like the ABS is confused but just on that one wheel (FPS).

Today (raining after long dry spell), the stuttering happens even when wheels are straight....but not every time.
I have rotors and pads coming in from idparts (was planning a change-out anyway), but can't get this done until next weekend.
I know this is dangerous, but my question is if in fact this screw is responsible for the symptoms, what kind of damage can it do to my braking system (besides chewing on the rotor and pads)?

And how the F did it get there? My suspicious mind leans toward some kind of sabotage...
https://imgur.com/a/UTggjI6
I would pull my rotor tonight just to remove that screw, but I'm just not equipped right now. And getting it into a shop in the next few days is pretty unlikely.

I live out in the country in the salt belt and often during the winter a tiny stone from all the material spread on the roads for ice control will get kicked up into the brake area.

A little stone will get caught between the pad and the rotor and make an incredible noise. It happened to my daughter about 2 months ago, as she parked into our driveway that day she backed in and the sound magically was gone when I took it for a drive.

From your picture something like that has happened to you. The tire tread picks up debris, in this case a screw which lodged where it is now. One issue I see is, it’s lodged against the abs tone ring which of course goes around and the wheel speed sensor “counts” those little square holes to tell how fast that wheel is spinning.

If the screw is rubbing against that ring it may damage it and cause your abs light to come on.

You probably spent more time trying to coax that thing out of there than it would have taken to Jack the car up pull the wheel. Loosen the two 13mm bolts holding the brake sliders , pemove the pads and the rotor will pop off after removal of the single screw holding it on.

If that ring is damaged some of them are replaceable most are not. At that point you’ll be into a new hub.

That sheet metal screw is an odd one to be sure.

I mentioned it in another post, but maybe something like this is what caused an odd situation in my '02 Golf. Since I got it, I was hearing what sounded like a heat shield rubbing on the left front and was also getting a pretty bad pulsation in the brake pedal, figured the rotors were warped. When I was prepping it for inspection, I found that the ABS tone wheel was bent inward toward the strut by a good 1/4" or so over about an inch of area. I carefully pried it back to approximately straight with a screwdriver and both the noise and the brake pedal pulsation was gone. The tone wheel was lightly contacting the sensor and evidently kissing the inner brake pad enough to reflect back into the pedal as well.

I wonder if a piece of debris was thrown up by the tire and fell down between the tone wheel and hub when the PO had it? It must have rattled around until it finally caught and bent the tone wheel before being kicked out.

Well, this AM I got it on the lift at gearheadgarage (woot!) pulled the rotor and the little bugger fell right out.
The ABS ring survived, but apparently the pointy end of the screw poked out of the ring just enough to fubar the ABS sensor.
Like pretty much ripped it's face off!
Removed the sensor, wrapped the plug end in cellophane and ziptied it up onto itself. idparts is 2-daying me a new sensor grand total $23 delivered YAY.
Local stores want over $40.
For now I can drive with the ABS light on, and the GF proved wrong she actually bet me $1,000.00 that the brakes were just plain "gone" lol pads are OK, and the rotor looked amazing for 116k miles! IMO I got lucky

My serpentine belt shredded the plastic side shield before I got the car. Tensioner was replaced, the ac pulley about to fall off and the alt pulley bad upon arrival..so the tensioner must’ve let go.
With 160k my alt suddenly died with new pulley still good. Alt smells burnt and on hard acceleration voltage would drop slightly. It’s tempting to replace everything in the belt’s path. I can see ps pump delamination on the edges. Ac doesn’t work, too high of a reading to take a charge. Seems like the pulleys might’ve taken it hard.

Too HIGH pressure on both low and high side on the A/C (and approximately equal) with the clutch engaged, engine running and compressor turning = RCV is dead. Fixable without replacing the entire compressor.

Genesis said:

Too HIGH pressure on both low and high side on the A/C (and approximately equal) with the clutch engaged, engine running and compressor turning = RCV is dead. Fixable without replacing the entire compressor.

Click to expand...

Nugen's car above is an ALH, no RCV to replace unfortunately

Uh, there is an RCV in the compressor in my ALH.. it's inside the compressor though and is mechanical.

Genesis said:

RCV in the compressor in my ALH.. it's inside the compressor though and is mechanical.

Click to expand...

Good I couldn’t find the rcv on mine and figure it must be me. I’d rather replace the compressor and open up the old one at my leisure, however the alternator replacement made the serpentine belt much smoother. I did find an rcv for my sanden compressor at polarbearinc

Genesis said:

Uh, there is an RCV in the compressor in my ALH.. it's inside the compressor though and is mechanical.

Click to expand...

sure, but not nearly as easily replaced as the external electric solenoid type

True that, but still much cheaper than a compressor replacement and in any event you have to discharge the system and then recharge it anyway, which means you SHOULD replace the dryer and you NEED a vacuum pump (and to be legal you also need a way to recover the refrigerant if there is any in the system now.)

If recharging after component replacement you also need to replace the correct amount of (the correct type!) of oil. There is material risk if you just replace the compressor with another one of *over* oiling the system which can result in a locked up (and destroyed) compressor since unless you flush the entire rest of the system out the oil in the remaining parts of the system remains, yet a new/reman compressor usually comes with a "full" amount of oil in it for a fully-clean and "as-new" system -- if there is old oil still in there you now have too much!