Bad Car Karma
Bah, only four months after my last bout of car problems, I was struck again. Coming home from my folks after an awsome chicken dinner, just hitting the bypass the car stalled. Luckily right at a light, so after a couple of minutes of asking it really nicely to turn over, I pushed it off the road. After a bit more hoping, cursing, and pumping the gas, with no better results, I called in BCAA, thankful again that I pay my money each year Just In Case™. Tow truck dude arrived quickly and told me “it’s your timing belt.”
Words to strike fear into the hearts of most people who have been told at one point or another “timing belts are really expensive.” So dude was nice enough to drop us off at the bottom of the hill and took the car onto the Honda place. So I’m carless until I can get it fixed, which hopefully will be tomorrow, and hopefully I won’t have to sell a kidney to afford it.
More proof that I should never be allowed anywhere near any sort of hardware of any kind.
How many km’s?
I replaced mine not too long ago (I’m at ~230k now) … you’re supposed to replace them every 100k or run the risk of having a breakdown at a stop light or something 🙂
Ouch. That stinks.
I had a timing chain break on my old 82 plymouth horizon. Amber and I pushed it about 1 km, and spent about 2 weeks without car until my dad fixed it. More labour than anything, it was a pain to get out and replace.
It’s not the timing belt that’s expensive, but the damage it can cause when it breaks… after 2 timing belt break experiences myself I’m kinda familiar with this all 😛
I do believe they can do a leak-down test to determine if the valves are bent, without having to first go through the work of replacing the belt. Otherwise, if they do the belt work first, then determine that valves are bent, they’re doing the belt work all over again when they remove the head, etc…
Sorry to hear about the car dude! 🙁 Hopefully you don’t have an interference(?) style engine? – where bits only move out of the way of other bits due to the timing belt… thus when timing belt breaks, so do most of those bits (makes cost to fix do the 2.5x thing from what I hear 🙁 )
My mech. has been bugging me for quite a while now to get mine done (interference engine of course)… perhaps I should be taking him up on it? 🙂
I do have an interferance engine (148,000 km) but in theory there’s a chance the entire engine isn’t hooped (wasn’t driving when it happened).
Fingers crossed…..
Oh, and in addition to this my insurance is due in two days. sigh
Sorry to hear that Arc.
Not driving is better than driving, but still sucks… Is the first or second timing belt? If the second, there might be warrenty left on it (not sure what the change interval is on Honda’s). Good luck.