B230f Motor Could my Cam be seized ?

Car died while driving this morning. The lower end is turning, but Ii popped
the
upper part of the timing cover back and the belt isnt turning, but it's
tight
and doesnt appear to be broken. It has been run a bit low on oil lately due
to
a large leak. I am thinking that maybe the cam seized up and the crank
pulley
stripped the teeth from the lower end of the belt. Its still on the side of
the road, havent had time to cut the belt and see if the cam will turn with
a
wrench on it yet. Anyone have any ideas as to what else might have caused
this ? Only other thing I can think of would be the auxiliary shaft seized
but this seems unlikely. Thanks for any info, I will check back later today
before I have a chance to get it home and tear it down.

Thanks,
Jack in Dallas

 

From a point at sea, to the circles of your mind, this is Jack in
Dallas:

When did you last change the belt?

A belt past its use-by date can harden, and the teeth become brittle.
I've seen belts like this where the teeth just flake off; eventually
enough teeth get stripped off and the crank pulley to has nothing to
engage in. When this happens, the crank will turn, but the camshaft
will not - it doesn't necessarily mean the camshaft is siezed. If the
oil leak affected the belt, this could also be a factor.

Hope your engine is non-interference.


--

Stewart Hargrave

A lot faster than public transport


For email, replace 'SpamOnlyToHere' with my name

 

New belt, bout 2500 miles on it. Its 90 model non interference motor.
Finally got it home late last nite, fixin to go out and start wrenchin this
morning.

 

Took the belt off of the cam gear and had to break the cam loose then it
turned freely. Took the cam out, the front cam cap was galled a bit, but
the cam looks fine as do the rest of the caps. Have a spare head sitting
here, going to pull cam cap off and trade it out. Anyone know which hole
the oil should be coming from when I spin the auxiliary shaft ?
Jack in Dallas

 

Thanks Stewart, soon as it stops raining I will go out and start spinning.
Im thinking a socket on my cordless drill should do the trick.

 

You don't need to swap out the cap. In fact swapping in a new one from a
different engine will probably induce some misalignment since the caps
and head are all align bored as an assembly. You're better off just
cleaning the old cap and head journals carefully by hand. If you have the
head machined and re-align bored, be sure that the machine shop recuts
the seal journals on the same boring bar setup so that the seals fit
and don't leak. Also the factory fix was to enlarge the oil feed head
bolt hole to 14mm from 12mm.

Typically, oil starvation in the front cam journal(s) is from
overextended oil change intervals, high revs with low levels or
overheated oil.

Bob