My wife's '89 245 died on the interstate Friday, about 1/2 mile from home.
Just lost power. She was able to pull over to the shoulder. Would not restarr.

After testing on the side of the road by me, and about 1.5 hours testing the next day in a shop by a couple good brickster specialists, we finally found that the timing belt had jumped 3 cog teeth, but was intact. The rear timing belt cover had disintegrated substantially in spots, and the front upper cover also had some damage. Apparently the broken pieces got caught up in the works and made the belt jump the teeth.

Oh yes - one of my mechanic friends who helped is Aye Roll, formerly a frequent poster on this board. Thanks, Rob!

Moral of the story? If a timing belt cover piece is somewhat damaged, replace it. Don't wait for it to come apart and thus mess up your cam shaft timing.

Friday night, I went to the lame car when I got back from work.
I suspected a broken timing belt, as we'd bought it used about 2-1/2 years ago, 35K miles ago, with no repair history.

By looking in the oil filler cap and then bumping the engine, then looking in the filler cap again, I was able to verify that the timing belt was intact as the cams kept changing position. Nope, timing belt not busted.

Checked for spark by putting ign. coil wire end at the hood hinge, that way I could see the sparks from the seat when cranking. Nice sparks.

Sniffed the tailpipe. No smell of gas. I'd been doing a fair bit of cranking by now, too. Bad fuel pump or F.P. relay?? Bad computer??

I had 3 spare FP relays in the car (OK, that's overkill, but I've been harvesting parts and I toss them in the back. I'll clean the car up in the spring, maybe). No go with any of those installed.

Had it towed to my friend's shop.
There, on Saturday, we followed down every fuel/ignition path, in detail. Listened to the fuel pump with car up on a lift. Pump and filter both looked original, good candidates for failure. Tested fuel delivery by feeding it into a bucket. Looked kinda slow to the experienced eyes observing. Measured fuel pressure on a gauge. 40 psi, 35 when cranking, fine. Checked for spark, and changed the plugs (just on spec, I suppose). Swapped in two spare computers. No difference. Checked the On-Board Diagnostics - no fault codes. Measured fuel injector electrical pulses with some kind of whiz-bang tool that another (3rd) mechanic in the shop had. OK, maybe one injector would fail, but not all of them. So, not an injector problem. No specific problem found anywhere.

Finally we figured well, maybe the timing belt jumped a tooth. Let's look at it, anyway. They pulled the cover, started looking at cogs and alignment marks. Sure enough, off by 3 teeth. It took about 1.5 hours in the shop to get to this point.

When they got the complete cover off, they found the damage to the plastic. Also found that the radiator was leaking on the rear side, we put in a better one. Water pump looked good so we left it as-is. Put new front seals on the engine. Runs like a champ now.

Thank you, guys!
--
Sven: '89 245, IPD sways, electric rad. fan conversion, 28+ mpg - auto tranny. 850 mi/week commute. '89 245 #2 (wifemobile). '90 244 (spare, runs).

Ove my 240-owning years, I have gone through a number of crateres t-belts.

In every case I could tell by the sound when cranking the engine. Instead of a smooth " r-r-r-r-r-r-r" sound I heard the "r's" going up and down in an odd sequence. Stopped camshaft means valves are in odd position. Some cylinders both valves open = no compression resistance, valves closed = much resistance. With the belt off three teeth I would think that you would have heard an oddity?? Just curious.

Thanks for a good post.

Bob

:>)

Hello folks (yes it's been a long absence hasn't it?)

The engine sounded more or less normal as we cranked it, even though it was off 3 teeth. As someone else said, we checked that the cam turned, and left it at that, especially figuring it was a more-or-less original 200K mile 1989 240- probably the most likely model to have a computer failure.

Also first year of the crank sensor, and first year of the 016 air mass meter, so we all figured that any of those things were suspect.

As it turned out, the impulse (crank) sensor was replaced not long ago, the 016 was working fine though of unknown vintage, and the computer had a weird undecipherable tag on it- I'm willing to bet its a re-man but who really knows. The Volvo 7-digit part number matched up anyway.

The plugs we replaced because they were thoroughly gas fouled, and weren't going to fire even if everything else was right. As we proved later- when it did finally run, it took about 30 seconds to clear out and sound right.

The timing belt was loose. I doubt it was ever tensioned properly, as it had a lot of slack. Hard to say. The main problem as I see it, and I think confirmed by extra bits n pieces found once it was all apart, is that the center bolt of the timing cover cracked through the plastic boss in the upper cover. It splintered into little thin plastic fingers that went south and made the crank pulley walk a tooth, then another tooth, then finally it couldn't run. Several of these little bits were down in the aluminum bottom timing housing around the crank pulley. A few of the pieces were pretty crusted in there, so it survived a few of them dropping in there.

Moral of the story seems to be, replace that cover when it gets brittle!

Take care and happy bricking!
Rob Bareiss
--
Rob Bareiss, New London CT ::: Roterande Fläkt Och Drivremmar!

Hi Rob;
Great to see you back, you have been missed!

Best regards,
Erling.
--
My 240 Page

And nice to see you too Erling!

Its nice to see all the familiar faces around the Brickboard.

As you can see, I still get lots of Swedish grease on my hands....
--
Rob Bareiss, New London CT ::: Roterande Fläkt Och Drivremmar!

I think I would have had a tough time of it too. If I saw the Lobes moving, I would assume the Timing is fine and look elsewhere.
Glad you got it up figured out.
--
'75 Jeep CJ5 345Hp ChevyPwrd, two motorcycles, '85 Pickup: The '89 Volvo is the newest vehicle I own. it wasn't Volvos safety , it was Longevity that sold me

Two related items.

A friend once told me of a car spitting air out the carburetor intake. Also some fuel, I suppose, due to a kind of reverse-Venturi effect. Apparently sucking air in via the tailpipe! An early 70's Ford V-8, if I recall. I deduced it must have gotten the timing off. That was before timing belts became common; it would have been timed using gears or a timing chain.

Lastly, I think it's good that ours jumped enough teeth to shut down the motor. If it only jumped one or two, it might have run poorly, sending us all over the place searching for a cause.
--
Sven: '89 245, IPD sways, electric rad. fan conversion, 28+ mpg - auto tranny. 850 mi/week commute. '89 245 #2 (wifemobile). '90 244 (spare, runs).

Yes with the Chains, You can almost feel the air puffing up through the carburator. The Valves are open and closed at the wrong time so it's pushing air up the Intake instead of having the Intake Valve closed for Combustion or Exhaust.
--
'75 Jeep CJ5 345Hp ChevyPwrd, two motorcycles, '85 Pickup: The '89 Volvo is the newest vehicle I own. it wasn't Volvos safety , it was Longevity that sold me

I only had my (1st) Volvo for 3 days. I had been cleaning the engine bay—specifically I had been cleaning around the thermostat with a brush and I believe I knocked a piece of plastic off of the back timing cover into the cam gear.

My car had been overheated by previous owner so this plastic was very brittle.

It took me a long time to figure out. My t-belt was OK though I used it for another 1.5 yrs.
--
Norm Cook; Vancouver BC; 1989 745T 210,000KM

Had a similar issue happen in a borrowed 85 LeBaron (please note, I didn't buy this, it was a loaner!) It was 20 below zero and believe it or not the sucker started... as soon as I put it in gear (still on high idle), it died. The post mortem was that the timing belt cover broke and the pieces got between the belt and the cam pully. The belt jumped 4 teeth and had a cut in it, but fortunately no valve damage. The scary part was this car only had 14K miles on it... yep, warranty!

jorrell

If the problem reoccurs check for lack of oil to the cam.

True, I guess a siezed or stiff-rotating cam could make the belt jump teeth. Is that your thinking? Due to clogged oil passages??

We're going on the theory that the plastic junk from timing cover pieces inside the timing belt "chamber" made it jump.
--
Sven: '89 245, IPD sways, electric rad. fan conversion, 28+ mpg - auto tranny. 850 mi/week commute. '89 245 #2 (wifemobile). '90 244 (spare, runs).

Hi Sven's Maintainer,

Sorry to hear about your troubles however, thanks for the great posting. I agree with you, this is an area that must be looked at during a timing belt change.

Best Regards,
Mike Craig
--
1984-244 GL with 192K and 1984-244 GL with 260K, 67 Mustang and 62 F- 250 4x4