toyotagrowingpains

Alright, heres my issue. Last week my aunt had given my mom and I their 91 prelude 2.0si. I have been driving it due to vehicle issues and whatnot. The car runs like a raped ape is a lot of fun to drive. But the last few days i have been having a major problem.

1. After being parked for an hour or so it wont want to turn on. It would crank and crank and eventually i would get lucky. Sometimes 2 trys sometimes 20.

2. I was on my way home from work and the oil light started to flash on and off then stay on for a few minutes and then flash again repeatedly. I stopped and checked the oil and threw 3/4 of a quart in. The light went off for 30 minutes and then came back on.

3. I was coming back from a concert to pick up my friend and all the sudden it sounded like a belt broke and everything cut off.

Immediately i thought the Timing Belt broke. The car cranks but doesnt have the same cranking sound. Almost like there is a lack of compression. I am going to pull a compression test on it later to see. I pulled the valve cover off to make sure everything was ok with the timing belt, cams and valve springs. Everything is A ok. I even cranked it over a few times with cover off to make sure everything is working up top. Next thing I figured is to check spark and fuel. Everything seems to work fine there. I have dealt with thrown rods and such in my toyota over the years and it didnt sound like one of those let loose.

Like i said it sounded just like a belt broke and got all wrapped up and then the sound went away as the engine cut off. The auto trannies in those cars, do they have any sort of belts, chains or bands within them? I am completely stumped on this one. I am going to drain the oil to see if there is any metal there. If so then i know my lower is in bad shape.

If anyone has any advice on these engines or things to watch for let me know. I am sorry that this has to be my first post and I didnt properly introduce myself. But i am very up to date on how these forums go and i belong to quite a few others. Pirate4x4, toyotaoffroad, midatlanticttora and so on.

Again thanks fellas.


I will also ask around to my buddies on some JDM engines they might have laying around since they aer all into the honda scene.

Keeper1343

bump for a guy needing help

toyotagrowingpains

Thats for the bump bro!


TTT

brolli

well yea you should first do a compression test. if it sounds like there isnt any compression then there probably isnt. maybe it jumped time and you ran the valves into the pistons? you said the cams were rotating when you cranked it so obviously the belt isnt broken. although with ur oil light coming on it seems apparent that the two occurances are related. 3/4 of a quart low wont make ur light come on btw. your car will run fine on 1 quart of oil, the other 4 or so are just for cooling purposes and so that you dont have to change ur oil as often. and if your oil light comes on you shouldnt drive it. oil pumps dont usually fail but on the offchance it does you will ruin the internals of your engine. but anyways. do the compression test. if it's low then i'd pull the head off check out ur valves and cylinder bores and what not. throw some wrenches across the shop. the usual.

toyotagrowingpains

Salad fingers...LOL

I popped the cover off to check the timing belt. It seems good and tight and intact. All the top end internals seem to be rotating and moving smoothly. I noticed some marks on the cam lobes that didnt look too appealing but that might have been from my aunt or uncle running the **** out of it. I thought it was strange to crank the engine and not see any oil moving around up to the top end. I cranked for 20 seconds and no oil spittin up. I am almost thinking the pump failed and possibly rod breakage. I think maybe the knock sensor kicked in and shut'er down. who knows. The compression test will rule out a lot! Hopefully i will get some time tomorrow morning to do that.

toyotagrowingpains

I am not too awful familiar with these honda's hence my posting here. But are there any ways to check OBDI codes without a code reader. I know my toyota pickup i can do the morris code blink check. I just dont know about these things. The check engine light isnt on, but sometimes codes will be thrown and it not come up.

toyotagrowingpains

bump TTT

toyotagrowingpains

ttt

1funryd

This does sound like your pump went bad. I recommend changing the timing belt and pulling the pump while your down there.

It is hard to say, but that engine maybe on it way out due the symptoms you described here.

I recommend coming over to http://www.preludepower.com and searching the stickys there, as there is a ton of information in the 3rd gen section as well as new aftermarket products that have been produced or is in the process of being produced.

Sean

toyotagrowingpains

Well...after much searching I have figured out roughly what happened but just cant figure out why!

Like i said I had talked to my aunt and they had the car put in the shop roughly 9k miles ago to have it serviced with a new timing belt, water pump and so on.

My friends father came over yesterday and helped me take a look at what happend to the car and we saw that it jumped time by about 100 degrees. Today I went out and started pullnig everything apart to put a new tensioner, water pump and belt on. Well, I am stuck with getting the harmonic balancer/crank pulley off along with one of the motor mount bolts out. I am sure with some persuasion I can get them out.

As far as the oil pump is concerned where is it on these engines? (2.0 si) I think it might be a good idea to replace as well. One other thing i noticed that broke was one of the cam hold down/bearing caps. Would I be able to buy just one of those or am I going to have to pull the cams and redo all that as well?

Hawkze_2.3

The oil pump is going to be right behind the crank pulley mounted to the block....it almost looks like a part of the block.

For the cam caps, as I understand it, the head and caps are bored together so you have to have the cam caps that go with your head. Somebody correct me if I am wrong, though...

toyotagrowingpains

Hawkze
If thats the case with the caps, i reckon i am screwed as far as just putting this thing back together and driving it. I hope there will be something easier to do there then putting a new head on it!


Modified by toyotagrowingpains at 10:57 AM 9/10/2007