Driving home today, I was exiting 270 S to 70 E, right where 70 splits east and west. There are two lanes going towards Wheeling (East side of Columbus), and two lanes heading downtown (West). Right where those four lanes split, the timing belt on my car broke, and I rolled to a stop. There's nothing like sitting there with four lanes of traffic going around you at 65+ MPH at rush hour to give you some perspective on life...
The damage done is a new timing belt, a new drive belt, and a new water pump, for a paltry $550. I can't really complain, though. First of all, I'm unhurt, and secondly, that car has nearly 175,000 miles on it. I plan on driving it until it dies, since I've owned it outright for a couple of years. Hopefully, it's got a few of its nine lives left. Thank the good Lord that the tax return came on Friday. Fortunately, this won't hardly dent our vacation plans. All things considered, it could've been a lot worse.
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3 comments:
I'm glad you weren't hurt and it didn't hurt your future plans. Just for future reference, timing belts should be changed about every 100k miles.
Ted
Kev, the last time my dad had a timing belt fail, it contrived to whip around the engine bay gathering up souvenirs that ended up including sizeable dents in a couple of valves. Wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't been sat in the car, heading to a presentation evening in the pissing down rain.
I did walk the remaining distance. Soaked isn't the word.
Nothing broken while I've been behind the wheel so far, though our car has a CV joint that squeaks during long right hand corners. Of course, when a CV joint goes a car stops, so I know it'll happen on the one occasion I need to drive to Birmingham or some equally far flung destination.
Glad the damage wasn't too bad, mate.
Cheers,
Adam
Ted - thanks for the tip!
Adam, in certain kinds of engines, the timing belt breaking will bend valves. It happened to me with an '85 Cavalier when I was in college. This is a "non-intrusive" engine (according to the mechanics), so the valves were not damaged. Nothing else was, actually. It's running fine now. Hopefully, I'll get a few more months out of it...
Kevin
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