For those of you who dont want to read the entire story about my car and my luck, I'll post the most recent problem 1st hehe.

I was driving my brother to class today and out of nowhere my car just died. I checked the engine bay and all looked ok till I touched the timing belt... LIMP. Well I figure that maybe since I have 8.6:1 pistons that my motor is non-interferance... NOPE. I have at least 2 bent valves. cylinders 1 and 3 have no compression while cylinders 2 and 4 are perfect. Heres the kicker... what happened is the bolt that holds the arm that the tensioner pully swivels on sheared in 1/2. Somehow it backed out about 1/4 inch so that the shroud that allows the arm to swivel was not supporting the bolt anymore and bam. Check it out:


I have the worst luck in the world. That piece of shit Howell block is now also leaking oil out of the oil pump gasket. That means that every single thing that they sealed on that block leaked... "Plug and play" my ass. I have had something wrong with my car ever since I installed that engine in august. Well, I was going to go into all the bs details but its a waste of space... somebody should write a comic about me and my car, it would definately make for a good laugh... Kind of like "Angry dad" on the Simpsons lol.

doh! that stinks, is it the gaskets howell used, or the sealant, or what? I thought 8.6:1 would be non-int too :-(

doood we need to perform an exorcism to get the demon outa that fooker!!! x(

Did you have the head milled or any metal taken off the deck? If so, maybe that would cause the interference environment.

depends on what pistons were used i know that on the weiscos for the 2.0 2.4 they are non interfereence because of big valve pockets cut but not sure about je's

if u want somone else to build u a motor call black dog motor sports they know what they are doing for sure not like howell,

the exact same thing happened to me back in august right after i had my water pump/timing belt replaced.

damn matt, that sucks. if you need help this summer you know the matts are down.

I am on motor number 3. To make matters worse, I am also on transmission number 3. Ah well.
hehe
-=B-=

haha.. yeah gotta love our cars..

heres what happened to one of my pulleys




that is what was left of the inside of that pulley..

i'm on my 3rd tranny, to make matters worst i had to get a new less than a week from putting one in. i'm on head #2 and i have serious loss of compression.

Might as well give a chronology of my motors and transmissions...


Motor 1) lasted until 3K miles after I picked up the car, RIP at 49K miles from a spun rod bearing (actually threw the rod out of the block).

Transmission 1) lasted until I threw the differential pin and blew the differential out the back of the case. This was the first, last, and only automatic. RIP at 92K miles

Transmission 2) lasted 2 days after my swap. Something in the unit let go and punctured the case, leaking fluid and welding all of the gears into a molten blob of parts. This was 5 speed # 1. Rip at 92.15K miles. :P

Motor 2) spun another rod bearing due to oil pickup starvation chasing my friend down a mountain road. Whoops... hehe 2.0 number 2 bites the dust at about 102K miles, drive it until 109K miles with horrendous rod knock.

That leaves me with transmission 3 (M/T with safing brackets and Phantom Grip), and motor 3 (first 2.4L in this car, balance shafts removed, stock bottom end, all the easy bolt-ons).

Yeah, my luck has really sucked. I finish the 5 speed swap, blow up that new transmission in 3 days, bolt in a new one, and lose the motor 7K miles later (about 2 months).

Beat that!!!!! :thumbsup
-=B-=

Yea, thats come crap luck, I guess I feel better now lol. To answer someone's question above, I did have the head slightly milled and resurfaced twice. That may be the reason the valves hit, but I think they would've hit anyway. The reason I say this is because I have 0 compression on cylinders 1 and 3 which hints that the valves are more than slightly bent, so I dont think that an extra .030 of clearance would have made a difference.

you never know though. i'm just on engine #1 (157k miles so far) and trans #2 (just got it back today)

yeah, my gears melted because i ran low on fluid, the main bearing melted also because of the heat.

did i mention i'm kinda close to bone stock?

dude, that's exactly what happened to me too!


Jon

1997 Eclipse RS

14.21@101mph 10/4/02

Man I know what your going threw... In my gs the engine died and I waited 6 weeks to get it back from the shop and 2 days lata died again. I broke a piston in half ,dont ask how because i dunno. So then I had to wait 2 more months after that to drive again. sux


95 gs-t
Sensei front
invader sides
to many mods to list.

SOLD SOLD SOLD
95 gsx -crankwalker

SOLD SOLD SOLD- forever missed
95 gs eclipse
85k miles
99 conversion
blitz body kit
termanator 2 wing
custom iterior
custom exhaust
star t3/t4 stage 1 turbo
1

ouch. i bought my car like 4 months ago with 160,000 miles on it and now its at 171,000 miles on it. and nothing has went wrong and to the best of my knowlwedge it has nothing new in it either. so im just sitting back and waiting for things to start falling apart. its alright though soon as i find a good place ill buy a new 2.0l. my power steering belt did snap going 100mph but thats it. ima cross my fingers though because its becoming a little touchy lately it seems. ive even ran it dry of oil at the beginning for a few days until i realized it. and power steering went dry too a couple of times. ive had it pegged at 9k rpm too for quite awhile too a few weeks ago accidently. and this was my first 5spd so as hard as ive been on the no telling how old clutch im sure it will burn up soon.

^^^ watch out man, sure fire way to kill your car, then again i redline mine very often with 157K miles, once one thing goes out, many many others do too. now i need to start systematically replacing all of the hard lines for coolant, brake lines, wires, coils, etc will be crapping out on me soon,

just watch your stuff under the hood, i could have avoided many costly repairs that way. i know i will have some in the future cause when my dad had this car it was way low on oil MANY times. did i mention he went about 9000 b/t oil changes?

I had the same thing happen to me, I bent all the intake valves. Dodge makes a stronger bolt for the Neon because this is such a common prob.

yah ive had a few lil things happen and they all seem to happen right together. now i have a lil coolant prob and how i dont know or what is happening really. guess ill wait till something breaks heh. im ordering a new engine in about 2 months and everything else to hopefully replace everything before it does give out on me. i do wanna do a few mods and need new tires before i get my new engine tho unfortunatly.

>I had the same thing happen to me, I bent all the intake
>valves. Dodge makes a stronger bolt for the Neon because this
>is such a common prob.


if only they would sell just the bolt. i tryed to find just the bolt when mine broke. nope can't buy just the bolt cause they want you to spend $120 on the whole assembly.

I got just the bolt in Sac Cali for $30. Mopar Performance

>I got just the bolt in Sac Cali for $30. Mopar Performance

Would you happen to have a part# for it???