Hello. Driving my Vue to work Monday and car just quits. try to start it...nothing. Have it towed to garage and when I went to look at it yesterday, opened the valve fill and nothing is moving while i tried to crank it, so I know it's gotta be timing belt issue. I just replaced this timing belt, etc this past June. Could the belt have been an Ebay piece of junk? Car ran beautiful, other than pesky cat sensor engine code. Could I have destroyed the engine? I'm gonna have it towed back home and take her apart. I love(d) this car... but between New England salt, etc, maybe time for retirement.

 

I suspect that you have damaged the engine. Since the cam is not turning when you crank the engine which ever valves that are open at the time will bend when the piston comes to the top of the cylinder. If you like the car, you will have to decide if it is worth repairing if the engine is damaged.

 

Finally got around to checking her out and put back together. I found the Timing belt idler/tensioner component bent slightly, which caused the belt to wear, as I found rubber and what i thought aluminum shavings. I took the old parts, timing belt, idler pulley and tensioner (which I thought looked better than the stuff from ebay). In putting coil packs back on the firewall side of engine, I found oil on the plugs and coil packs. Cleaned them up, strated her up, and she runs great!
??? Everyone telling me that the engine was toast. It sounds exactly as it did when it died.????
But, I now notice oil leaking from the valve cover gaskets firewall side. ALL THIS work was done last June. In a previous post, I stated how a "mechanic" friend did the valve covers.

So, could I have damaged the valve covers during timing belt break? WTH is going on, but it runs great. I am getting some misfire codes. At first it was all of them when I first started her, but now I believe 2, 3 5?
Idk, but she got me back and forth to work last week.

I wish I didn't like this thing so much.

Oh yeah, NO CAR PAYMENT!!

Any ideas, anyone?

 

If you have misfires on two three and five, you like we've been valves on two three and five. Usually with bent valves, the compression in that cylinder will go to zero unless it is a very slight end in which case you will just have severely reduced compression. If it is a V6 and misfiring on three cylinders, I can't see it running all that smoothly. I am not saying you are not telling the truth, I am simply saying it's not what I would expect.

I don't know how likely the following is but I'll type it out anyway and you can all laugh if it's impossible. Maybe when the timing belt broke, Pistons on their way up did whatever they wanted at the top of the cylinder because the cam was no longer turning so the valves were stationary. Since I believe that is an overhead cam the valves would have stayed closed and compression would have built, but when the belt broke, the valves got pushed out of the way and that compressed charge went straight into the valve cover area. Once the valves were bent, there's nothing left to prevent oil from the head from getting into the cylinders, the affected cylinders that is.

Kind of got to be careful about comparing the quality of work done 9 months ago on a fully solid engine with the aftermath of a catastrophic event.

You could start by doing a compression test on all six cylinders and determine the basic health or lack thereof of the valves.