Good Trip Gone Bad...need Help

[SkyHawk]

Hello, I just got back from a trip to up state NY to go skiing. I decided to take my 1999 Audi a6 that had 93,000 miles on it because it was 4 wheel drive and I had never taken it on a long trip. I started out fine but when we got up to Albany we got off to get gas and where heard a loud noise coming from the engine when we pulled up to a stop light, so we turn right and the car stalled. We where luck that we were close to Albany so we had the car towed to a local dealer in Lange, Albany , NY I wasn’t sure if this was a good idea but we had nothing else to do, so we rented a car and drive up the rest of the way to go skiing. We thought that is was something small, but we heard a day later from the dealership that it is going to be 4 hours of labor, with $96and hour, to take the head off to see what the problem is because they thought it might be the timing belt. The next day we heard that we are going to need a new engine. There was two options one to have the engine re-built with a new head and pistons, which was $7600 or we could have a new engine put in which was $12000. They said what went wrong was that the screw to the timing belt tensioner broke because of over tightened and one of the valves or the rods went thought the piston. What I think what happen was that the grease in the timing belt tensioner wore off and it grabbed the timing belt, so the timing belt pulled the tensioner off which made the valve go thought the piston. We did not know what to do, so we called our local mechanic and he said that we could put a used engine in. We later found a used engine online with 22,000 miles from Texas which was an ok deal. The dealer in Albany did not want to fix our car period because it would take to long. So we had to get the car back home to our local mechanic, but the towing charge were so much we ended up using a bulk carrier to bring it back. We were confusioned because before when the car had 89,000 miles on it we had the timing belt check by the Audi dealer in Huntington, they said the timing belt could go to 110,000 miles.

So we are looking to get Audi corp. to pay for the damages. I was doing to research on the 1999 a4 and that car had a recall on the timing belt but the Audi a6 did not does any one know why. Also does any one know the Audi NY State manger email address or name or phone number, because it is going to take a long time to go up the chain in customer service. Also has any one else had this problem. Any comments or helpful hint are welcome I need all the help I can’t get.

Thanks