My car just recently died after I took it for a trip about 30 miles away then tried to return.

It drove fine on the way there but on the way back I started hearing a weird grinding or something from the engine area

Well actually I had been hearing a strange squeeling from one of the belts upon acceleration which would only stop if I let my foot off the gas for a while. I just got the car and the former owner told me that noise was because it had new belts and they were squeaking and belt spray would help...

On the way to my destination I had turned on the A/C while going approximately 70 and heard the belt squeek. I thought woah, much too fast for that noise to be good, so I turned off the A/C immediately and that helped.

It drove fine for another 15 miles after that, it was only when I left where I was that it started the noise.

I pulled over after hearing the loud obviously bad noise, and noticed my temperature engine gauge was at around 70%.

This gauge had gone to 100% a while back and I noticed the coolant was gone so I put more in the resovoire.

After pulling over I parked it, got out and looked and couldnt see what the strange grinding (really hard to describe but bad mechanical) noise was coming from, but it was doing it when I was idling I'm pretty sure, then I got in and drove it forward a bit to see if something from the area I was driving in got stuck and was dragging, then my car died.

When I turn the key to start it, it goes rerrrerrrerrr like its trying to start, it doesn't make that weird clattering starter noise that I heard my friends car make when his battery was dead, it sounded like it was trying to start but just wouldn't.

I looked and it didnt appear to have coolant in the reservoir this time, I thought perhaps because the engine was hot from driving and sucked all of it into the radiator. I put some in there anway, I also poured in some oil but when I checked the oil it looked like it was at the full mark on the stick. The gas was also full.

It seemed like the engine could have overheated but it has gone higher than 70% and not created grinding noise. It seemed to be maintaining good temperature on the way there because it has been constantly at about 35% and ive been checking to make sure it doesnt overheat.

Can this squeeking noise from belts that is affected by accelerating and modifying the air conditioning settings during travel be also associated with the grinding noise I heard when I had to pull over and then my car not wanting to start?

I tried hooking up my extra start-up battery thing with clamps on it and that didnt even help my car start...

Any help/advice is appreciated

 

first of all your belts squeaking prolly has little to do with it not starting unless its an alternator belt. i would tighten up the belts first, throw a battery charger on there for the night, top off the fluids (even if this means standing over the overflow bottle with the engine running. . when you can get it there and adding fluid as it sucks it in. this may take awhile) then with the coolant full check to see where it leaked from. . it just dosent dissapear. . . was it raining when this happend?

 

I ended up having it towed to firestone. They told me it was the timing belt on the engine that had broken. I looked this up and most people agree that if your timing belt breaks while your driving there will be engine/valve damage. At first Firestone said it would take until monday afternoon to fix and then they called saying the waterpump had broken and that caused the timing belt to break and they replaced that stuff and the tensioner. I think they did a compression test on it to check for valve damage. They said that they had test drove it after they fixed it. They said there was NO valve damage which I find very hard to believe.

I found about 3 or 4 different people saying that 99% of the time valve damage occurs when timing belts break on the SOHC that my 98 has I think its a 2.0L which is an indifference engine or something

 

its called INTERFERENCE engine. it means that your valves will touch the pistons if the engine is running and the timing belt breaks 99.9% of the time. BTW find a real mechanic. Firestone hires wannabee tire changers with a degree from Pep-Boys.