having serious problems with my 1985 240 DL. Its been making a squeeking noise for the past month ive had it. tonight it finally tanked, when all of a sudden it made this horrendous squeeling noise and my steering wheel locked up. I am no mechanic, so someone, please help!

Hi Dave, As Don said it might be your crankshaft pulley making that "awful wicked metal to metal scraping sound. My car is an '85 w/ a b230f. At 1st, I had no idea what the sound could be coming from, until all of these EXCELLENT brickboarders meantioned it. A month after hearing that particular sound turned out to be a bad crankshaft pulley aka harmonic balancer. It will fail due to the rubber on the pulley getting dry, causing the two pieces of seperated metal on pulley to scrape. Paid $90 for one, which seemed like a lot for just a big hunk of metal. I don't get why the steering wheel would have locked up then? Maybe the pulley to the power steering-to-crankshaft pulley wasn't working... due to the slipping of the c. pulley? Make a note of this, get it checked out and update us on it. G-day.
--
Michael 'Street'... one AZ '85 244DL 188K miles

'85 is a B230F, which has the "donut" style two-piece engine pulley. Your description sounds somewhat like when the pulley fails.
--
Don Foster (near Cape Cod, MA)

Did the power steering belt break?
Did the steering pump sieze up( try, with the engine off, to turn the pully by hand).
--
-------Robert, '93 940t, '90 240 wagon, '84 240 diesel (she's sick) , '80 245 diesel

the belt is on, im gonna try pulling it up right now