Thread: Africa to tough for Amarok?

Originally Posted by Discomark

Not a good ad for VW but i guess anything could have happened, unlikely to be water ingestion though as snorkel fitted....
63 days in Africa - SA 4x4 Community Forum

Most of it is written in Africaan , sorry having trouble understanding what they're discussing on that forum .

they're discussing in essence the crappy cheap design of the timing belt cover, being a cheap nasty clip in design, if you have the accessory drive belt fail just so it can loop the cover open and pickup part of the accessory belt into the timing belt, that makes it do wierdo things and from that point the injection timing can be off and the valves meet the pistons.

Tdi owners can tell you what that amounts to.

theres some back and forthing at different marques and a good dig as dumb ass advertisers who make the vehicles look tougher and more capable than they are as well as a well placed shot ad idiot engineers who work down to a price rather than up to a standard.

Translating the important bit: Seems that the fan belt broke & bits of the belt somehow got into the timing belt. This resulted in bent valves.

In kort: In short

Die beetle bakkie se fan belt het gebreek. The beetle UTE's fan belt broke
Stukkies het in die timing belt gekom wat gemaak het dat die kleppe gebuig het. Bits got into the timing belt which caused the valves to bend.

VWSA het 'n expert soontoe gevlieg met genoeg onderdele om die kleppe en top te vervang.VWSA flew in an expert with enough parts to replace the valves & head.

It is interesting when we start looking on 4X4 utes to go to tough parts in the world.
When I was maintaining John Deere and Ford machinery in the rice fields in South America we used Ford F100 with Perkins 4 cyl engines and the venerable Peugeot 404 diesel ute. Both rear drive only and loaded up to the maximum.
The ground was mud and pot holes and in many occasions we have to do 30 km or more in second gear.
I do not recall any major breakdown on the 404 and on the F100 only the rear axles used to come out until we used different way to hold the bearings.
The old Perkins was overhauled with one mre that 600000 Km!!
What happens now, are the old utes and trucks better that new generation?