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Topic
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1990 Plymouth Sundance 125k 2.5L DOHC
So i get this car in today, no-start/no-crank. customer stated that they were accelerating from a red light (that subsequently turned green) and the car just stopped. The car is in great condition and the oil had been changed the day before.
so I think in me’ noggin, “ok, this will be easy.. check the battery.. test the starter.. maybe throw in a new starter and done.” After doing all of these things, i was kinda at a loss of what could be wrong. Engaging the starter resulted in a single “clunk.” So i finally resorted to mechanical failure of the engine (which is usually way down on my list of things to check w/ no starts) and the light bulb finally went off in my brain… after trying to manually turn the engine over the little 4-banger engine would not even budge. So, i immediately pull the spark plugs and boroscoped the cylinders; walls look good, rings look good. Ok, get the car up in the air and drain the oil. Oil looks in great condition. I take out the oil filter and hacksawed it open and inspected the inside; no metal. Ok, next I pull the oil pan. I carefully inspect all the main bearing and rod journals. As far as I could tell everything looked ok. I got the biggest pry bar in the shop and tried to get any sign of crankshaft endplay…. and nothing. I could get rod journal play easily just w/ bare hands.
Q: How common is it for this vehicle/engine to spin a bearing at 125k especially when the vehicle was so well taken care of?
Q: Could have this have been something else?
Q: Anyone else encounter this or familiar with this occurrence on this engine?
Q: If you were the customer, how would you proceed after having the news broken to you that your trusty and reliable ride is now just a big heaping steamy pile of scrap?
Q: Why is it so difficult to actually see bearing damage? It seems that such a catastrophic failure would leave some sort of clue.
Q: Why did the bearing spin??? The car was in terrific shape, no rust and well maintained.
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I’m a new member checking out your post. How do you post? I don’t see where to post a question.
This engine may have a problem at the starter ring gear. If a bolt is loose it can lock against the engine block. Make sure the distributor shaft is intact, it might be able to lock the crank otherwise. If something gets jammed in the oil pump chain it might lock the engine.
Seems there is excessive play in the journals? Any play by hand is bad news and points to main bearing lockup from heat. If the journals were loose, the engine was harmed but possibly without generating debris in the oil. Not likely but could happen. Someone may have done a poor rebuild and it locked up before much damage was done.
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