Our 17 y.o. girl is recovering from a broken heart / surgery
Posted: Tue Jul 23, 2013 1:12 pm
On the way home from the last autocross we had an incident that involved both belts coming off the pulleys of our black '96 Miata (LATRL G). The car overheated and boiled over, so we pulled over as quickly as possible and waited on the side of I-495 for a couple hours for the tow truck (but that's another story). Dan was with us and was a trooper to wait with us as well. Luckily we fit on the back of the rollback tow truck with a few inches to spare, as the tire trailer was attached.
Ironically, we had just finished replacing almost the entire cooling system including radiator, fans, hoses, and thermostat less than one week prior to this happening, due to previous (but unrelated) overheating issues.
It turns out that the belts coming off and overheating was caused by the harmonic balancer coming loose, which made the crank shaft pulley wobble, throwing the belts off. The water pump was no longer being driven by the belts, resulting in the boilover. The pulley (or perhaps the key) scoured and ate away the outer surface of the crankshaft where the pulley sits, making it impossible for a pulley to seat correctly on the crankshaft.
It was cheaper to replace the whole engine than to replace just the crankshaft. So my wife Denise found one and drove up to Scranton to pick it up. It's a JDM import that supposedly has 37K miles. We couldn't prove the mileage, but it certainly looked clean - much cleaner than our old one that had 150K miles.
The work was done Ed York and crew at York Automotive in Mt Airy and they did a good job and it only took a day to swap the engine and re-tune. The (fixed) price wasn't bad at all for the amount of work that was likely involved.
We also had him repair an 18-inch gash in the frame rail caused by the tow truck driver attaching to a hole in the frame rail, as we have no tow hook on the car or other decent spot to attach to. We'll be adding a tow hook to the car as well.
Anyway, she's feeling better now and sounding good and hopefully will be none the worse for wear this weekend.
Ironically, we had just finished replacing almost the entire cooling system including radiator, fans, hoses, and thermostat less than one week prior to this happening, due to previous (but unrelated) overheating issues.
It turns out that the belts coming off and overheating was caused by the harmonic balancer coming loose, which made the crank shaft pulley wobble, throwing the belts off. The water pump was no longer being driven by the belts, resulting in the boilover. The pulley (or perhaps the key) scoured and ate away the outer surface of the crankshaft where the pulley sits, making it impossible for a pulley to seat correctly on the crankshaft.
It was cheaper to replace the whole engine than to replace just the crankshaft. So my wife Denise found one and drove up to Scranton to pick it up. It's a JDM import that supposedly has 37K miles. We couldn't prove the mileage, but it certainly looked clean - much cleaner than our old one that had 150K miles.
The work was done Ed York and crew at York Automotive in Mt Airy and they did a good job and it only took a day to swap the engine and re-tune. The (fixed) price wasn't bad at all for the amount of work that was likely involved.
We also had him repair an 18-inch gash in the frame rail caused by the tow truck driver attaching to a hole in the frame rail, as we have no tow hook on the car or other decent spot to attach to. We'll be adding a tow hook to the car as well.
Anyway, she's feeling better now and sounding good and hopefully will be none the worse for wear this weekend.