It was a bad weekend for me as well as a lot of other people.
here's the run down.

Civic hatchback with B18 motor:





What happened you ask?
Crower retainer failed. Valve just dropped right in.
There were about 15k miles on those retainers.
Nice huh?
Crower can go suck a big fat one.
I wish I had a pic of the retainer but i couldnt get a nice shot of it.
Just picture the retainer missing the outer ring(its diam was reduced by
about 2-3mm)

Now for my problems.....

Someone explain this one:



Nothing went into the cover. This was spontaneous as far as i can tell.
What a waste of a perfectly good head and block.

What a **** weekend.

 

hate when that happens!

 

I broke 3 belts with no damage.
this was #4. I guess my luck ran out.

 

OMG!

Almost makes me happy just to get speeding tickets (almost)!

 

Sorry to hear sgT.

You have a hybrid hb now? I haven't heard what's been going on with you lately. Do you have an updated website?

 

not mine
someone elses.
the upper damage is from the hybrid.
the belt is from my integra

 

damn pics!!! makes me think twice before changing retainers..

 

Steve sorry to hear about the problems, you said the pic of the engine wasnt your cars? what happened to yours with the belt ?

 

Same damn thing happenend to me 3 weeks ago, albeit not nearly as creative (destructive) as this.

My condolences, shitty when that happens. But think about in terms like I did...

Just use it as an excuse to go out and buy all kinds of shiny new go fast parts.

Mmmmmmmm, go fast parts.

 

man that sucks why doesnt honda use chains on all their cars!! Doesnt the s2000 uses a chain?

 

What a mess! That sucks! My condolences to you and your friend. I just discovered today that my car has no oil in the crankcase. Good thing I didn't go to the track on the weekend.

How old was that belt? How hot is it where you live?

 

ahhh its disturbing images like this that im glad my engine is still stock.

 

Just curious, what cam gears were you running. Do you think the broken timing belt could have caused accident or do you think the bad retainer caused the belt to break ?. I haven't heard of too many Crower Ti retainers breaking like that . Can you also tell us what valvesprings and cams you were running ?, just curious as to what may have influenced the parts to break like that. Real sorry to hear about that. Lastly , were you at a high rpm level when things decided to break ?

Joey

 

READ... the broken belt and the blown block/head are from 2 different cars

 

So did the retainer just come apart or what? How exactly did it fail? If you know that is.
Thanks,
James

 

Wow what a mess

Is the cam belt a geniune Honda one????

 

I would SO love to covert to a chain.
yes the belt was genuine honda. i dont buy aftermarket OE parts.
btw, this belt had 3k miles on it.


the crower retainer just fell apart. there is no other explanation for it.

 

err, my original bets are 81k miles now. Perhaps I should change mine and put the plastic covers back on too...

 

I feel deeply sorry for what happened. I know what its like to lose a motor you love so much. Its like a part of your soul.

Let me know if I can help you build another one, I have some good combinations to recommend if you want.

Sorry to hear your weekend was a mess.

Jeff

 

Spoon or Toda or somebody should make a chain drive or even a gear drive conversion for the cams. Formula One cars and Champ cars use a direct gear drive. For a gear drive it could have a bunch of little titanium or aluminum helical cut gears stacked up the cylinder head, and one large adjustable gear for the end of the camshaft. But a chain would be good too....just dreaming stuff up. Man that sucks. Sorry.

 

Sorry to hear Steve. same thing happened to me this weekend with my belt on my r motor except all the teeth just shredded off. Only the ones past the exhaust cam. Looks like the spec b temporarly seized up or something but it seemed to be ok the next day when we took it apart. Ended up bending all 16 valves on mine. I had some odd scratches on the non vtec lobes of the exhaust cam, but only some of them. Looks like possible coil bind but I'm not sure. Its only directly in the middle of the lobes. Anybody seen something like it? oh yeah, I have r outers with portflow inners. The whole motor only had 6000 miles on it.


[Modified by Tbone, 12:11 AM 6/19/2001]

 

I feel for ya Steve. My luck is about the same as yours, those pics are too familiar to me. My crower camshaft shattered at 6k rpms, grenading the entire motor (sleeves included). On my other car, my timing belt tensioner gave out last weekend while idling. I HOPE I did not bend any valves raying:

 

It's funny how people always say "Hey, Turbo/Nos/SC makes your car go BOOM", or "Your NUTS to put **** like that on your car, you'll blow it up".

The fact of the matter is...even NA cars are not immune to engine troubles.

 

ain't it the truth.

 

Couldnt have said it better.