Firstly the vehicle must be jacked up and the front right hand wheel removed.
Remove the engine cover by turning the fasteners indicated, anticlockwise by 90 degrees. Lift off cover
 

Remove the pipes and electrical connectors indicated by the red arrows and then undo the bolts marked by the green arrows. You should now be able to lift the coolant expansion tank, pipes and power steering reservoir (black container with green top) out of the way). But throughout you may need to temporarily place them back to access certain components.

We now need to remove the ribbed belt that drives the alternator, power steering pump and air conditioning compressor.

To do this, attach a spanner on the lug of the ribbed belt tensioner and rotate it clockwise as shown by the red arrow. There are holes in the tensioner lug and body to place a thin dowel that holds the tension off the belt. I used a small allen key shown by the green arrow.

Now remove the ribbed belt, but be sure to mark the direction of rotation so that it is replaced in the same way. If used belt is fitted the wrong way round it can cause it to break.

Now undo the four bolts that hold the ribbed belt tensioner to the engine and remove it completely.

Unclip the fasteners for the top plastic cam cover. I was unable to remove it as the engine mount appeared to be in the way, but it is required to gain access to the cam sprocket so the timing mark can be viewed.

Next undo the two jubilee clips for the metal turbo to intercooler pipe and the bolt that holds the pipe to the car body. Remove the pipe.

Undo the clips and screws for the engine sound insulation plates underneath the car and on the right wheel arch. Remove these plates.

Remove the crankshaft vibration damper/ribbed belt pulley by undoing the four allen headed bolts.

Do this by holding the centre of the pulley with a 12 point 19mm socket whilst undoing the allen bolts. Remove the pulley.

Remove the rubber plug from the top of the gearbox and turn the central 19mm bolt clockwise until the engine is at top dead centre (TDC). There is a mark on the flywheel that can be viewed through a hole in the top of the gearbox.

The camshaft sprocket timing mark should line up with the mark on the cam cover (ignore the second white mark on the right of the pulley in the picture).

Now using a jack, support the engine under the sump and remove the six bolts for the engine mount console that holds the engine to the right hand chassis leg, marked by the red arrows. Remove the engine mount from the car.

Now remove the three bolts that hold the other part of the mount to the engine.

To remove the left hand bolt the engine needs to be jacked up a small amount. To remove the bottom bolt, the engine needs to be lowered a small amount.

I found this part of the mount very awkward and I was unable to remove it from the car, so I just left it hanging. It does need to be unbolted though, to gain access to the timing belt components.

Undo the five bolts holding the middle and bottom cam covers and remove the covers. Note, when replacing these bolts you need to use locking compound on the threads as they are not done up particularly tight.

Here is an exploded diagram of the timing belt components for clarity.

BTW, you should now have enough room to remove the upper plastic timing cover.

Before the timing belt itself can be removed, the tension on the belt has to be slackened. There are two ways to do this. I personally removed the bolts in the sequence below. Idler pulley bolt (red arrow), then tensioner fastening bolts (green arrows) and then finally the tensioner pulley retaining bolt (blue arrow).

I later found out that Audi mechanics slacken the tension by inserting a bolt through the brass coloured section on the pulley into the tensioner body and then inserting a pin to hold the tensioner piston. The bolt position is indicated by the yellow screwdriver in the picture below.

The choice is yours, either way works well.

I was surprised to find that my car was fitted with the updated tensioner and pulley already. I expected the earlier version on a 1998 car. The parts were definitely original, maybe I’ve just been misinformed as to what year vehicles were fitted with the older parts.

See picture above, new parts on the bottom. Note the pin in the new tensioner holding the piston in.