Shredded belt
 

I just shredded my alternator belt and I pulled over at a mcdonalds. Can i make the 5 mile trip home without damage?

How big is you cars battery. I did over 20 miles on the battery in my Opel a several years ago and 6 in my old SE-R. I can't think of any long term damage. Short of a dead battery when you get home/destination.

I'd drive it and charge the batt when you can. New battery might be cheaper than a tow bill depending on local rates.

My understanding is the "reserve" on a batt is the length of time on battery alone. This varies on vehicle and what you're running. Drive with NO radio or accessories. YES you need your lights if it is dark, but no high beams. Keep the rpm's low. I've also driven Jeep's and the like back to camp on just a battery.

Ok I got home but tons of bad things happened. My ABS light came on, my temp gauge would go from maxed out to cold. I had the heater on max but it stayed cold until I was right outside the garage. Then I popped the hood and immediately smelled an overheated engine. WTF. The coolant overflow tank cap popped off and now the engine is covered with coolant. So now what do I need to do? Im going to get an alternator belt in the morning but what else do I need to do with all the crazy stuff that just happened?

The alternator belt also drives the water pump, which is why your engine overheated and spewed coolant everywhere. The coolant was just sitting in the engine, boiling away like mad. Hard to say about the ABS light and so forth.

Best case scenario is that everything is fine and you just need to replace the belt, top off the coolant, burp the engine, and drive. Worst case scenario is that you overheated the engine sufficiently to warp the head, meaning it'll need to come off and be re-surfaced.

No way to know until you replace the belt and take it for a drive, and not much else you can or should do at this point. Fingers crossed. If it runs well and isn't consuming coolant or blowing bubbles into the catch tank (typically the first indicator of a warped head or ruined head gasket) then you're probably fine.

^This, and a bit bad on me for not mentioning the water pump part. I will go hurt myself for having beer and posting.

Oh god damnit.

To obad I wasnt on when you posted. I would have suggested that you make a makeshift belt using mcdonalds straws.

Yikes!

Good luck Brandon. Hope it's OK.

Pulling the head isn't that bad if it comes to that.

Yeah, it's too early to be freaking out. You're not the first person to do something like this.

Replace the belt, re-fill the coolant, burp the engine, and drive it. If it's fine, then it's fine. If you notice that you're losing coolant, then it's time to start thinking about plan B.

Sorry bro, but that made me lol.

Here's to Joe's suggestion and hoping it works out for you! :bigtu:

And obviously this would have worked and everyone would have burst into song. Requesitng mt.net Macgyver Hotline please.

Was the belt completely shredded? Sometimes if it starts shredding but doesn't break you can take some scissors or a knife and trim it up. Then you may limp it home on a fucked up belt. Doesn't help now hopefully nothing was severely damaged. Also must point out when your needle starts to get to the hot section you need to pull over STAT. No matter how bad you want to go home and not deal with car issues....

These motors do not tolerate running without the water pump, and certainly not for 5 miles. You may get lucky, but it's probably time to start shopping for a head or a longblock.

my life.

This is good advice.

I mean, not as a first reaction. By all means, get out there and run the engine. There is a non-zero probability that it may be just fine. Check the catch-can for bubbles, check the oil for contamination (it'll become milky if coolant is leaking into a cylinder after shutdown and then draining down past the rings into the block), and if everything seems clean, consider yourself lucky.

But if it is warped, it's not the end of the world. Unless coolant is literally pouring into one of the cylinders, you can probably drive it as-is for a little while, giving you time to purchase a used head and take it to a machine shop to have it checked out.

Even in a worst-case-scenario, you're only looking at a couple of hundred bucks. Think of it this way: you're probably way over-due on the timing belt anyway, so this gives you a good excuse to replace it. If you do go that route, add a water pump and a main crank bolt to your shopping list as well- cheap insurance.

Oil seems to be fine. I got the belts replaced (I went ahead and replaced the power steering/AC belt as well) and filled up the coolant. I started the car and it ran fine. I'm not sure how I "burp" the system though?

I'm going to start a new topic on something that came up during all the stuff today.

How do i burp the car?

Pat it on on the back with an open palm.

Jack the front of the car up as far as you can safely get it, secure it, start it, remove the radiator cap (remember: its cold) let it run or give it a little RPM until the thermostat opens and it starts burping coolant out the top of the radiator. In my somewhat limited experience, you may need to rev it up a bit/or for a while to really flush the air out.

Search " magic funnel " and read all 8 threads that result for more clues.

The goal is to get the radiator cap opening as far above the engine as possible, and use gravity as your friend.

Ok I didn't do the magic funnel thing because I didn't have the time, but did manage to "burp" the engine as much as I could by jacking up the front. It drove the 100 miles to get home and to work and it didn't overheat so I guess it worked? It did pick up a new problem though. Now it refuses to go into full boost when I floor it. It will just sit at 80mph and sputter and not go any faster. My boost gauge shows full boost, but the car goes nowhere...

I unleashed hell when I replaced my spark plugs and wires apparently.

Have you compression-tested yet?

What gap are you running on the new plugs?

I am no has understand?

As Sav suggests, this is probably a good time for a simple compression test. That'll give you an excellent indication as to how everything survived the experience, and perhaps a little peace of mind.

Beyond that, I'm afraid I can't quite understand what you're trying to describe above. Are you saying that the car feels like it's producing less power than before? This is not a symptom which I would typically tend to associate with having overheated the engine to a degree not sufficient to cause significant (and obvious) damage.

I apologize, the way I worded things makes no sense. When I floor it, the rpms sit in the same spot and the car just sputters basically. The boost gauge shows a max of 12 psi but I feel no extra forward motion. This came into play when I tried to pass a car and it wouldnt accelerate any faster so I obviously couldnt pass. I can accelerate at half throttle with no sputtering but thats not fast enough to pass either.

No I havent compression tested and I have no idea how to do that. Do I need to go buy something?

I got them from Trackspeed and the page said they were pre-gapped so I put them straight in. Trackspeed Engineering
I got the BKR7E-11's.

Id pull the plugs and gap down to .025 and try again. Sounds like spark blowout.

Sounds like water injection caused by a blown head gasket. When you over heated your engine, your head most likely warped. It probably drives ok out of boost, but when you enter boost it's blowing past the head gasket that's no longer sealed great with the warped head, compressing the coolant, and pushing it into the cylinders. If you take your spark plugs out, you most likely have very clean piston tops if you shine a flash light on to them. If you look at the bottom of your oil cap, you might see a milky residue, that's the water thats in your oil steaming off and condensing on the cap. And you could probably drain you coolant or look under your radiator cap and see a milky brown coolant if it's real bad.

Not all of these signs will be present with every blown gasket, but I'm sure you'll see one of them. The symptoms you're describing is enough to tell me what's up. I've been wrong before though.

For the compression test, you simply replace your spark plug with a pressure gauge, and crank the engine over with the starter. The gauge will measure the compression your piston is capable of. I think the tolerance for that is 160-180psi or something like that.

You sound like a super-noob. You need to be patient with yourself. You've got a lot to learn. Here are random thoughts:

1. You should not be driving a turbo-Miata unless you wrench on it yourself. Prior experience is highly recommended -- but not mandatory. Expect learning pain if you're new. Don't get frustrated with yourself. Fortunately, Miatas are easy to work on, rugged and forgiving. If you had a BMW or MB, your car would be headed for a junkyard right about now.

2. A turbo-Miata should not be your only car. It will be down from time to time for maintenance and to satisfy your "mod" bug. By the way, what you did here -- driving 5 miles without a water pump -- would have brought any car to its knees, modded or not. It sucks now, but in a couple of years it will be a funny story.

3. Pick up a copy of "Mazda Miata MX-5 Performance Projects" by Keith Tanner. Easy to read and great illustrations/pictures. It will help get you going on basics like changing the timing belt/water pump, pulling the head, etc. I've been doing this a long time, but I still like to see pictures before starting something whenever possible.

4. To do a compression test, do the following:
-Buy compression tester at parts store. They're inexpensive.
-Make sure battery is fully charged.
-Remove all spark plugs (while you're at it, check gap -- .025 is what you want on a turbo car unless you've modded to run COPS -- that will be less than the manufacturer's pre-gap). As you remove the plugs, take a look at them and sniff them. Are any of them discolored, wet or smell like coolant? Can you see or smell coolant in any cylinder?
-Screw compression tester into 1 spark plug hole at a time to test a cylinder.
-For each cylinder, sit in the driver's seat, press the throttle pedal to the floor and crank at least six times. Your engine will spin more quickly than usual because you've removed your spark plugs and eliminated engine compression. If you watch closely and you have coolant in a cylinder, you may even see it shooting out of the spark plug hole.
-Return to engine, write down the compression reading from the tester, and move tester to next spark plug hole. Repeat.

5. Other signs of blown head gasket:
-Rough running (like Curly mentioned). In my case, I've had rough running at idle/low throttle and good running at open throttle before. Symptoms can change depending upon where and how the head gasket has been breached.
-Coolant smell.
-Milky oil (like Curly mentioned). Again, not always present -- requires a path between a coolant passage and an oil passage.
-Oil in coolant. Same as before, not always present.
-Coolant being consumed -- low radiator level. Almost always present.
-White smoke (steam) from exhaust. Present in severe cases.

6. Recommendation -- do the compression test and regap the plugs. If everything looks normal (even compression across all cylinders), then drive it and be watchful for other symptoms. In particular, be checking the level and condition of your coolant and oil before each drive.

Oh, BTW, welcome to the hobby!! ;)

Excellent post, Hornetball.

Did your boost issue only come up when you replaced the plugs and wires? And it ran fine immediately after the overheating issue?

Keep us posted on the compression test. The procedure is fairly easy and can be applied to other cars.

How do I make the gap smaller on my plugs? I pulled them all and theyre all about .035. It was recommended to go down to .025 so how do I do that?

I am also about to do the compression test and Ill let you know how that goes.

Holding the spark plug in your hand, with the ground electrode facing down, tap the ground electrode against a flat surface lightly to close the gap up.

Here you go:

BTW, I like to put my plugs in a bench vice and SLOWLY/GENTLY press the electrode in to the proper gap. Gives a bit more control than tapping, but either way is fine.

Ok counting the cylinder closest to the radiator as 1 and counting back towards the driver the results are 1 - 125, 2-115, 3-125, and 4-140.

So is my engine healthy or on its way out? What is normal?

The service manual says:

Ideal = 192 PSI
Minimum = 135 PSI
Max differential = 28 PSI from highest to lowest.

These numbers assume the following:

1: You remembered to hold the throttle plate fully open during the test.
2: Your battery is sufficiently healthy to achieve 300 RPM while cranking.
3: You had all four plugs removed during the entire test.

1. Throttle plate was fully open
2. Battery seemed to have no problem crankibg. Is there anyway to check the rpm reached?
3. All 4 plugs were removed.

I did some more searching on here and I did not know the engine was supposed to be warm so do I need to reinstall everything, get it warm, and repeat?

Having a warm engine does make a bit of a difference. You can re-test if it's going to keep you awake at night.

That said, the numbers you posted aren't the end of the world. The engine in my '90 right now did numbers like that warm, and yet the damn thing just keeps on running. A quart of oil every thousand miles or so and it's happy.

Well I tried doing the test again warm and the results were the same. Now the compression tester is stuck though. Something always goes wrong lol

You also need to factor in your altitude. You will see lower numbers at high altitude vs. Sea Level. That's why were more concerned about even numbers vs. absolute values.

Also, based on your tester being stuck, you may have had either equipment issues or operator error.

Any indication of coolant in any cylinder?

No the piston tops were all carboned up so I dont believe any kind of coolant got in there. No oil present either so maybe I dodged a bullet? The numbers seem low but I am at 4500 feet altitude.
I got the tester out. The threaded part was steel so that going into an aluminum head probably had something to do with it?

Cross threading the compression tester will definitely impact your numbers -- you can't get a good seal that way. Always carefully thread steel into aluminum by hand for the first 5 or so threads to avoid this (applies to spark plugs, bolts, etc., etc.).