I had a busy day today, gave my daughter 03 1.6 Cab a bit of a service. The car has covered just over 121,000 miles and last had a belt change, according to the paperwork, in 2010 at 66,000 miles. The cambelt that I removed was a Gates one so I assume the paperwork was correct. Fitted new VW belt plus tensioner and new VW aux belt. By the state of the old aux belt I would say it was original from 2003! It was a bit of a fiddle to get the engine mount off and back on, also tensioning the cambelt with a mirror and 2 bent nails in vice grips took a while! Good for another 4 years or so now though. Shortly after buying the car in 2013 I realised that the engine under tray, I think VW call it a skid pan, was missing. I also learnt that the Cabriolet has a metal one as apposed to plastic on hard tops and that it was probably structural too. Since then I have been watching eBay and some scrap yard search engines for a replacement, but until last week had only seen one that was for sale in the USA. However last week a company in Germany put 3 new ones on ebay and at a very reasonable price of 49 Euros + shipping. Needless to say I grabbed one, so now our Beetle is complete again. Simon.
