Hey everybody, first time poster here.
I have a 1998 v70 5cyl. The other day I went to start up the car and got a loud noise, I opened up the timing belt cover and saw that the tensioner had exploded. There were bearings scattered throughout the bottom cover. The noise was presumably from the timing belt teeth skipping over the crankshaft pulley or the cam pulleys, there was no tension on the belt. Now the timing is completely scrambled and I am in a bind.
I need to know if there is a crankshaft position that will allow me to rotate the cams without interference from the pistons. Alternately, is there a cam position that will allow me to rotate the crankshaft without interference from the valves?
What is the procedure for setting the timing from scratch? Will pulling the head be the only option? Am I doomed? Thanks in advance for the help!

 

Sad to say that you are likely really messed up. If you turn the cams/crank by hand, you will not damage anything because you are not strong enough to break valves, when it stops, turn something else. You have a 5% chance that no damage has been done to the motor. I don't think that there is a crank position that will allow all the valves to move freely, there are 5 sets, one is alway up.

Do you know where all the marks are?

Just for information to help others, PLEASE let us know how many miles the car has, when was the last belt change, how old the rollers were, etc? This will help others see how serious this situation is with replacing the belt, rollers, etc. Also let us know if you were hearing squeeling noises when you started the car lately.

 

The car has around 150k miles on it. As to maintenance, I have only recently taken ownership of this car. It appears as if this car has missed several service intervals. The previous owner didn't take as good of care of it as he could have. I think it's been a while since the belts or rollers have been changed. No squealing, either. The only problems the engine has showed made it seem like the throttle body/valve were gummed up; rough idle, stalling out sometimes, etc. I pulled the throttle and cleaned it and that evened out the idle and stopped the stalling. After a week of the car driving fine, it started acting up Friday on my way to work. I limped the rest of the way to the office. When I got off work, I fired it up and discovered the tensioner issue.
I'm also wondering if it's going to be worth fixing if the engine is dead. Tearing into the engine is more than I am comfortable with at this time.

 

Hey Aaron: Sorry to hear that you didn't know about the timing belt. It's likely that it has never been changed. If it was, there would likely have been a sticker in there somewhere.

If you know where the timing marks are you can try aligning it, installing new hardware up there and turning the key to see what happens. If things are bad you'll loose about $200 on the timing belt kit. Do not do a water pump unless the one you have is leaking. Also, if you it broke during start you likely did minimal damage, may have just a couple of bent/broken valves. I'm not sure how bad they damage when a belt breaks at a starting torque. I could be totally wrong.

Lets assume you have messed up the motor due to a broken timing belt. From what I have read you only need to get a head job, along with the timing belt, etc. At an indi shop you will likely be looking at $1,200 to $1,500. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong. That is about the same cost as putting in a used motor. The good thing about having the head redone is that you'll have a new head gasket, valves, cleaned up and as good as new. Where as a used motor may be worn out and ready to quit in 30,000 miles.

It's your call and a sad situation. We'll assume that the belt has never been changed or if it was done at 70,000 miles the rollers were not.

PLEASE ACCEPT THIS AS A LESSION TO EVERYONE OUT THERE. IF YOU GET ONE OF THESE CARS MAKE SURE THE TIMING BELT IS REPLACE ASAP, LIKE YESTERDAY IF YOU DON'T KNOW THE HISTORY OF IT.

 

My guess is that the roller was falling apart and it jumped a tooth or two on your way to work. Then the torque of starting finished it off.

Believe it or not it happens to a lot of cars. My brother-in-law had a belt break on his Eclipse. I mentioned me needing a timing belt and how he should do the same. He didn't understand till 3 months later when he was reving the motor at a stop light and it popped. got it fixed and the thing broke again 45 days later. So it got the work done again under warranty and it's been fine since. A lot of cars have timing belts and interfierence engines.

 

Try here http://www.tracystruesoaps.com/tutorials/850hg/p1.html
Hope this will help.

 

Sorry to hear about this.
If money is an issue, forget it. Previous owners who don't do timing belts rarely take good care of cars.
If "tearing into an engine" isn't something your able to do right now, I'd start looking at alternatives.
Either way, you're looking at a money pit. Even one bent valve...
I'd be willing to bet that if you have someone else do all the work/ diagnostics, repair bills will be in excess of the cars value.
Again, really sorry to hear about this.

 

My thought is upon reading this is I would put a T-Belt kit on and give it a try . worst case is he has some damaged valves but might be lucky and get away with a belt kit.

 

Put the kit in and then run a compression test on the engine. This will give you a fairly good indication of the valve condition. I hope you get very lucky.

 

wildman: Please don't put B.S. info out there.

aaron: sorry for your misfortune, but at a minimum, you have bent/broken valves.