My dad was driving down the road last night and the timing belt tensioner pulley shot through the front plastic cover. It's a 1996 960 with the 2.9L.

Does anyone know if this could have destroyed the valves?

I know they probably would be destroyed if the belt breaks, but I don't know if it's a different story with the pulley.

I hope this makes sense!

 

No, it won't make any difference if is a broken belt, a missing pulley or a bad tensioner, the result will be the same, broken valves at best. Have heard of a few who were more unfortunate, busted piston too. Very, very rare though for that amount of damage.

Good luck, junk yards are filled with perfect cars needing heads.

DanR '94 964 350,000 miles (116,000 on the new engine)

 

Thanks for the reply! I think we'll just end up going to the junkyard.

 

Did your dad have any warning signs? It may be helpful to others to know what was going wrong before it happened. Like squealing when 1st starting in the morning or other sympthoms.

You may be able to install a pulley/roller and turning the crank around to verify damage but you have to be pretty lucky not to have destroyed the motor if it broke while driving.

 

The only sign he had was a slight grinding. He said it wouldn't be there all the time, just once in a while. Louder when it was colder outside.

We took the head off and the engine is pretty much gone. Valves were broken and all six pistons had grooves from hitting the valves.

We haven't decided if it's worth putting another engine in yet since the car has 185,000 miles on it.