Dang it Dad's car killed the timing belt

[rs4pro3]

It's an 89 325i automagic with 120k miles. Today I got a call saying My stepbrother was driving it down a dead end road(no pun intented) and the car just died. He tried restarting but it wouldn't and he said it squeled. So I go over and feel the belt first thing, it was super loose. So we towed it to my house and I just spent an hour yanking everything and the belt was missing 28teeth. Both crank and cam were close to TDC, and rotated smoothly back into place but who knows. I told my dad when he buaght this car at the End of June about the T-belts. and to offer the seller $300 less if they had no record of when it was last changed. He said we'd replace it sometime but everytime I was at his house and brought it up he said he wanted to help and would have to wait till a weekend he was home long enough. I guese he waited to long, my guese is this belt was the second belt the car ever got.
I'm going to slap a new used belt on(used it for under 100miles on the E28). And rotate it by hand to see if I hit any resitance and maybe do a leak down test. To see if any valves are bent or worse.

[trent]

Re: Dang it Dad's car killed the timing belt

It's an 89 325i automagic with 120k miles. Today I got a call saying My stepbrother was driving it down a dead end road(no pun intented) and the car just died. He tried restarting but it wouldn't and he said it squeled. So I go over and feel the belt first thing, it was super loose. So we towed it to my house and I just spent an hour yanking everything and the belt was missing 28teeth. Both crank and cam were close to TDC, and rotated smoothly back into place but who knows. I told my dad when he buaght this car at the End of June about the T-belts. and to offer the seller $300 less if they had no record of when it was last changed. He said we'd replace it sometime but everytime I was at his house and brought it up he said he wanted to help and would have to wait till a weekend he was home long enough. I guese he waited to long, my guese is this belt was the second belt the car ever got.
I'm going to slap a new used belt on(used it for under 100miles on the E28). And rotate it by hand to see if I hit any resitance and maybe do a leak down test. To see if any valves are bent or worse.

Bent valves don't cause resistance. You should do a leakdown on it as-is.

[rs4pro3]

Can you do a leak down, when the cylidners arn't at topdead center for the one your testing? Just talked to my dad and he said to go ahead and test it, so I guese tommorow I'll go buy a leak down tester(as I don't have one but been meaning to buy one)

[grapedrink]

If your step bro was driveing it while it broke it has bent valves. If they didn't brake when the belt broke it sure did when he tried starting it again. Time to rebuild the head with all new valves. :D

[rs4pro3]

Ya he was driving it which realy suprised me as My dad hasn't ever let him drive it before.
He was going to go play basketball with his dad and was early so he was killing sometime driving around, the car died at the end of a deadend streat so I doubt he was going fast, but My dad said he tried to crank it 3-4 times.

[808BMW]

Hopefully you get lucky.

My cousin was driving when his t-belt broke, he even tried to crank it a few times too. New belt and all was well.

[rs4pro3]

Hopefully, If not maybe the m30 will get swapped into my 88 a little sooner and my dad will get my old cylinder head :twisted:

[grapedrink]

we just had an 86 eta towed in. It bent all valves and the engine was at idle when the belt broke. Its not if they bent valves but how many. I am sure anyone that just threw on a belt and went for it has some bent valves. Pull the valves out and stick them on a leth or roll them on a counter top if you can't already see that they are bent.

[rayz]

my belt broke at around 50mph, engine just cut out. my valves tapped and are bent.