[audisheri]

First off, I drive an Audi 2003 A4 3.0 Quatro. It has just a little over 50K on the odometer, and I believe I just missed the factory warranty. I was driving on the freeway for about 20 minutes when I noticed a rattling noise under the hood. Next comes the red battery light indicator on, and the car started to drive funny. The steering wheel was becoming extremely hard to turn. It felt to me like the car died out, but the rpm was still up. But anyhow, I pulled over and had my friend come rescue me, because it was getting scary. My friend was able to drive the car, but I can see he was breaking a sweat trying to turn the steering wheel. The good news was I made it home safe. My friend then looked under the hood to see that in front of the engine, the belt was off. He was able to pull the belt upwards, but was unable to get it off of the car. It turns out the the belt had NOT snapped, but had slipped out of the pulley instead. Now how can this happen? I've been driving the car for the past half year, and never had a problem. Now is this a simple repair job where the belt just needs to be placed back onto the pulley, or is it that something broke leading to this situation? Am I looking to spend a lot of money? I did do some research earlier, and saw somebody with a similar situation. It turned out that a seal broke or something like that, and that it was recommended that he change the timing belt as well. Now would this be a similar situation like mine? I'm worried that I'll have to spend an arm and a leg to fix this problem. Please, any suggestions or comments would be highly appreciated. I've also read that the timing belt doesn't need to be replaced until 105K. Is that right? Thanks guys..

Sheri