Apparently the timing belt broke er whatevever. they say that i need to get a new engine cause i have an interfering engine. do i really need that. and how come some engines can have the belt replaced and then this one i can't. or can i? or is the mechanic just finding a way to make more money by screwing a high school senior out of $1800? or sohuld i just buy a new car. even though i love my car very much. "Ivysaur" (named after a pokemon) is awesome. Its loves me ( i think) and i love it. please help me?

--donnie--

 

well, if it broke at high speed then you may have heard some terrible noises under the hood. That would be your valves smashing into your pistons causing catastrophic failure. If it goes while ideling then sometimes you can get away with it. If the engine is blown he can show you the damaged parts. $1800 is not too bad to install a used engine but I would want to know how many miles are on the used engine (I assume this is used engine and not a complete rebuild?) How many miles are on your 97 Stratus? The original timing belt should be good for 100K according to Chilton's repair manual. Is the body and interior in good shape? What about the drive train and suspension? If you have less than 100k miles and you like the car then it's worth fixing. I just bought a used 97 Stratus with only 54k miles on it for $3500 and the body and interior is in good shape (no dents, just a few scratches) so you could also look around...

Hackman

 

Well. When I bought the car a few months ago it had 147,000 on it. It was only $1,100. It's an r-title too with a few dings and scratches. the body is perfect and everything works great. i'd say by now i put another 2,000 on it? maybe only 1,00 since i dont go very far anywhere. i couldn't tel you about the suspension thing i think my left ftont is kinda shot i think. and yeah its gonna be another used engine. i dont know how many miles that thing has and yeah. thats all i know. oh yeah. i didnt hear any terrible noise when it went. i was on the way to school when it happened and it just didnt acleerate. everything else worked but it didn't accelerate so i was like *beep*. good times. not really. yeah how much does that tell ya?

 

149K is gettin up there in miles. I'd check the tranny fluid. Is the color still bright red? No speckles or flakes of metal? Does it smell OK? Not all burned up and foul? I'd hate to see you spend $1.8K and then have the tranny go cause that will cost another $2k to fix. I would ask your mech how many miles on that used engine? If more than 75K say "no thanks". This is a tough call. Anyone else wanna chime in?

 

I'm sitting here in study hall... thinking. What should i do? good question about the tranny thing. i will hafta ask the mech guy about it. hopefully its not that much cause yeah. i dunno. truthfully i don't know crap about cars except for a couple basic things haha. but the longer i have te car and go to these forums i'm actually learning alot. thanks hackman. and i really wouldn't mind somebody backing us up on this man. come on step it up! this is a big deal for me. minimum wage don't get me crap!

 

look into the eng. some strat 4-bangers ARE interferance SOME ARE NOT. i don't know off hand wich are and wich aren't. if yours ain't you just need a new belt. an easy way to check: go to the local hardware place (take a spark plug with you) and find a pipe adapter that can go from the spark plug sized threads to a valve stem (might need 2 or 3). use a bike pump to see if the cylinder can hold pressure. you WILL have to turn both the crankshaft and cam to keep the pistons from hitting the valves and to close the valves. if the valves ARE bent you can just replace the valves (you will have to pull the head to get to them).

one REAL easy way to check if you have an interferance eng is to SLOWLY turn the crankshaft, leaving the cam sitting in place. if you can turn one FULL rev with no binding (like the pistons are hitting the valves, because not ALL of them will be bent) you just need a new belt.

get a service manual at your local parts store, tool set a sears, and start working on it. everyone that works on cars started just like you. if you can read you can do it. good luck and write back if you have any Q's.

 

Uh... Holy hell. that's a lot of jibberish to me man. ha. the car is still at the shop outside. i saw it this morning cause i had to get something out of it. i kissed it and told him thats he's ok and is only gonna get heart transplants nad is gonna be better than ever! but hm. my girlfriends dads a mechanic. i bet i could sneak him over and look and do the thing with the pistons and crap to see if the other mechanics are really jipping me. That's so horrible though. I guess they'd do anything for extra money wouldn't they? anything to make me broke and to increase their wage er whatever. but anyways. i'd hafta look more on that. thanks though

 

unless you through lots of g-friends, use her pops. he don't want his baby riding in a piece 'O' junk (know what i mean?).

surf this site (search on top of page) or try allpar.com . you should be able to find out if your car's eng WILL get screwed if the t-belt goes (interferance motor) or it will be ok. your girls pop may know already!!

i will still recomend getting the service man from the local parts store. it's a GREAT investment. good luck.

 

hey, if your girl's dad is a mech he might offer to rebuild or swap out the engine with you. You would learn a lot from the old guy plus some amle bonding never hurt. He could save you big bucks if he is willing to help. Ask him to check it out cause you want a second look. Good luck.


paul

 

get the manual... take the head off yourself and have a look. If you dont know what you are looking for after you get it off, you can just take it to your gf's dad and say "does this look jacked up to you?" i know all the stuff people are saying sounds like jibberish, but we werent all born with this kind of knowlege. the only way to learn more about cars is to actually do things yourself. I'm not saying your mech. is BSing you because its highly possible hes not. did he just look at it and say "this is an interference engine and you need a new one cus the timing belt snapped while you were driving", or did he actually have a look at everying before he gave you an answer? also to clear things up:

the timing belt can be changed on an interference engine, it just needs to be done before it snaps while its running.

If you dont know what we are talking about... go to howstuffworks.com and check out their explanation of how a combustion engine works. theyll tell you all about valves and pistons and stuff like that with a nice moving diagram that is idiot proof. If you are really really new to mechanics, id get the auto mechanics for idiots book. its not too in depth but covers a lot of the basics and even my mother could understand it.