The Engine Swap

When I bought Strawberry back in March 2008, it had about 102,000 miles on the original engine.  It also had a faulty Idle Air Control Valve, which of course for this little egg isn’t cheap to replace brand new.  I have since discovered the great treasures available at the U-Pull-And-Pay sites near me, so I’m not so discouraged by problems, as I’m not going to buy new unless I have to.

Anyway, the faulty Idle Air Control Valve didn’t cause a major problem; it was just annoying to have the Check Engine Light on.  This wasn’t what caused me to swap the engine, a damaged pulley did.

It sounds extreme, I know, but here’s what happened.  Sometime in April I hit something on I-4 coming home from work (I think it was a piece of tire tread).  Whatever it was banged up the passenger front wheel well, and bent the pulleys on the front of the engine.  I didn’t know the pulleys were bent until I went to work a couple days later and lost the accessory belt (I don’t have any accessories actually, just don’t know what else to call it).  This was a few weeks after I found out the alternator was bad, so I wasn’t having a banner month.  I bought a replacement belt and put it on the car, but the belt kept slipping off, I couldn’t tighten it enough to keep it on.  I showed my mechanic buddy, Kevin, and he noticed the pulleys weren’t inline with each other, and the one on the crankshaft was actually wobbling.

We took the car to his house and he dropped the engine to try to tighten the pulley down, we thought maybe it was just loose.  It wasn’t, and we also noticed the timing cover was damaged, so we pulled that off and were going to replace it as well.  Then we saw the timing belt also was not on properly, and was rubbing against the engine block.  Despite trying to put it back in place, it kept slipping back against the engine.

Dropped the engine again, removed the crankshaft pulleys and found the sprocket and key were damaged on the crankshaft (sprocket drives the timing belt), and it had a lot of play.  Replacing these were not cheap, as they were sold as a unit with another item for about $250.

Kevin suggested I swap the engine, as a replacement engine was only about $450 plus his labor cost (he charged me $250 give or take).  So for $700 I had him put a salvaged engine into Strawberry that had only 47,000 original miles on it.  So instead of hoping to fix the problem for $250, I solved it, and the timing belt cover, and the Idle Air Control Valve for $700, and got a younger engine to boot.  Not a bad deal in my mind.

Steven