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I'm looking for advice for my girlfriend's '89 Honda Prelude (2.0SI 5-speed). Specific questions are at the end. I'll start with the story:
Driving home from work (about 10 miles on Route 2 in MA), she hears it misfiring. Two miles from home, starts making louder noise and the engine light comes on. Parks it at home, gets up next morning to drive it to the mechanic. One block from home, it stops running. Towed to the mechanic, takes off the valve cover, and sees that the gear connecting the timing belt to the camshaft has sheared off the camshaft.
Most probable events: Camshaft is already weak for some other reason (bad manufacturing? Some strange event during previous ownership of car?) Misfiring was first sign of a distributor gone bad. The noise started when the distributor started to seize and the gear twisted on the camshaft (this also triggered the CEL). The car stopped running when the gear sheared off completely.
The car was in great shape otherwise...only 131k, which is nothing for a Honda. Transmission feels good, and brakes are all new (new calipers in rear). We think it's worth sinking some money into.
The plan of attack is to replace the head with a junkyard unit. The new head will be checked out at a machine shop before being put in the car. Before we pick up a new head, the mechanic will remove the old one and look into the cylinders to check for bits of metal.
Here's the big question: if there is no obvious visible damage to the cylinders or pistons, what are the chances that they are still good? If the entire engine needs to be replaced, then it's a more serious and expensive operation, and we might be looking at junking the car.
Can you tell visually if the pistons and cylinders are ok? If not, is it possible to do a pressure test on the cylinders without the head in place? How can we find out if the engine is still good without replacing the head, reconnecting everything, and starting it up?
Thanks for any ideas,
Matt
'99 9³
posted by 65.106.18...
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