Hey, just looking for some general help I was goin 40ish up a slight hill and my engine just died. No noise just died and then now it won’t start. When turning the key for the starter it just whirs and never even sounds close to starting. I checked for damage and no visible damage. No oil, no steam, no coolant. I’m at work atm and have a suspicion it overheated or the timing belt broke. Any help helps Thanks!

 

Sounds like the timing belt probably broke.

 

Yeah but I hope I got lucky in that my pistons all were in mid phase so I don’t feel any crash or clunking but yeah it’s dead. It also got rattley this morning but I didn’t have time and it went away so I let it ride and it ran great right up until that point. I’ll dig into it tonight and post it here

 

Timing belt broke

 

Install a new belt and cross your fingers/pray that you didn't bend any valves.

 

Pull the valve cover off and check the belt
If you havent done a head gasket in a while, now would probably be a good time
I recommend pulling the head and visually inspecting the pistons/valves (which you should do if the belt did break)
Might as well replace head gasket while you're in there but if the valves are bent its probably cheaper to just get a new head

 

Checked the valves and did a leak down also had some damage from the towing got that all figured out. Valves seem to be ok no leaks from the tests on both in cylinder and from exhaust/ intake. Got a new belt and gasket. Head gasket is in and just need to figure out what happened (belt wasn’t old only around 1600ish) and clean and replace. Thanks for the help!

 

so you were driving, the belt broke? and you didnt bend any valves?
If that is what happened you should go buy a lottery ticket. you got lucky

 

“so you were driving, the belt broke? and you didnt bend any valves?
If that is what happened you should go buy a lottery ticket. you got lucky”
Yeah I know did leak downs and compression tests and it’s giving good readings so it’s going do rn. My ecu got reset bcuz my battery was disconnected for so long but just doing some oil leak hunting and we’re golden!

 

If oil gets on the belt, it will break the belt down fast. It's the only time I've broken a timing belt.

When I was doing a water pump, the belt slipped down into the bottom timing cover where is sat in some oil from the front main seal for a bit. I put it back together a few hours later and the next day driving, the timing belt snapped.

You may want to root around to see if there is anywhere the belt is being exposed to oil. By design, leaks should not be able to reach the belt but that is the only thing I can think of that causes premature failure. Might check the tensioner pully to be sure it's turning smoothly too.

 

It was just a pinched seal it straightened out now. Belt looks fine and is cleaned off. The main cause of damage I think was the tensioner bolt came loose and slapped the crank position sensor which took a chunk of the ball with it. Then the belt wrapped around the crank gear and broke the lower timing cover. Beside that though it’s great now with some new parts.