Honda Prelude Forum - PreludeDriver.com

I have not been on in a while and i just didnt want to post that my prelude went down again. Low and behold this car has gotten me again. After i came back from Canada i coundnt get it started. I decided to try the next day and it started up fine, like nothing happened. I changed out my alternator belt and cleaned up the engine and went to start the car..........Nothing! I just did a full tune up on the car! I thought my distributor finally went bad, but this was not the case. I ended up finding out that the timing belt somehow jumped off...in the driveway! Im hoping the valves didnt get messed up.

You mean, the belt snapped?

I dont remember exactly what honda said. Im guessing that it snapped. I just had it changed 7 months ago. I put a gates belt on it, which is a nice quality belt. This may be a far stretch, but would a lot of engine braking do this?

Unlikely. Engine braking loads up the clutch and tranny more than anything.

I'm going to guess that your tensioner wasn't torqued correctly and it cooked the belt after a while. Either that, or your water pump was seizing up. A new belt shouldn't break that quickly. Hopefully there's no damage to your head. I'd suggest an OEM belt as well.

ill fine out tomorrow what the damage is, so we will see.

I found out what happened with the timing belt. I got the wrong timing belt for the engine, the last time it was changed. I guess when i got the part from the parts store i got stuck on saying b21 instead of b20. My mechanic said all the valves bent when the timing jumped. He had the head sent off and my car should be running by saturday.

Interesting. I would have thought the belts would be the same between the B21 and B20 as well. Glad to hear you'll be back on the road soon.

Yikes!

Glad you're getting her running again!

spiffyguido wrote:I'd suggest an OEM belt as well.

+1

one more thing, if your timing belt snapped in the driveway you were most likely below 1000 rpm, you were at idle speed. I dont think your valves bent at all. The mechanic is ripping you off and making money from you.

Valves only bend when the belt is snapped while driving and at least 1000 rpm or more.

I don't wholly agree. I've seen situations in these motors where belts popped at idle and valves were stuck open and hit the piston head and bent like a cheap fork. Not every valve, but some. Even one is enough.

Also I've seen where this happened, and the person not knowing why the engine stopped operating, continued to try and start the engine and caused more damage on top of the damage from the initial failure.

If you have any doubt about your mechanic, ask him for the damaged/old parts. In fact, it's always a good idea to ask for the used or broken parts when you have repairs done to you vehicle. It helps keep the dishonest shops, honest.

RedRacer wrote:it's always a good idea to ask for the used or broken parts when you have repairs done to you vehicle. It helps keep the dishonest shops, honest.

+ a million!!! so true!

Ok guys, i have the true story.We thought it might have been a belt problem since everything else looked and ran fine, but through further investigation my mechanic told me the guys who swapped the engine, modified the harmonic balancer taken off the b21a1 to match the b20a motor. The pulley (teeth) he said, were shaved a few millimeters in a couple places. He said they prob didnt feel like changing the part after the engine was swapped. He also said because of this the belt finally slipped and caused all the valves to bend. I'm just glad he took the time to investigate. Im just waiting for the part to come in so i can get my car back.

Glad you got to the bottom of it, although it sounds like some questionable mechanical work brought you to where you're at. It's never a good idea to play with the harmonic balancers on a car, as they are always created by the manufacturer to be a specific weight for that engine. Hopefully the damage you have isn't bad and that you'll be rolling again in the very near future.

I thought i would update. The car is running super smooth like brand new now. After a week of driving it, it was having trouble starting up. The mechanic told me it was probably the main relay. As luck would have it my brother was at the local junk yard and said there was a fresh 91 with all the parts on it. I got the relay and some other parts and she starts up great. I plan to get some other parts off the car possibly tomorrow.