Flywheel off or broken timing belt/chain?

I was driving to church when suddenly the RPM starting bouncing at redline and the engine wasn't connected to the tranny at all. No pull whatsoever. I immediately thought maybe my drive shaft fell off. No. Checked it. Good. Now she wont start. Wont even turn over. She got towed. I just had the tranny replaced. Suggestions so far were that the flywheel came off somehow...? Or the timing belt/chain (which one do we have?) broke, which also makes sense. Also, are our engines interference engines? I'm sure hoping not...

Mine would probably do the same thing if it knew it was going to church.

That aside, it definitely is not the timing belt.

When you try and start it, does it make a low whirrrring sound, or just a click??
Whirring sound means your flywheel has become disconnected and also suits the other symptoms.
Click could mean other things have happen like a seized engine etc.

Now, it depends on what the transmission guys did, as to whether they had the flywheel off. They should not have had it off, but maybe they did.

Good luck.

PK

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Originally Posted by Breezy

I was driving to church when suddenly the RPM starting bouncing at redline and the engine wasn't connected to the tranny at all. No pull whatsoever. I immediately thought maybe my drive shaft fell off. No. Checked it. Good. Now she wont start. Wont even turn over. She got towed. I just had the tranny replaced. Suggestions so far were that the flywheel came off somehow...? Or the timing belt/chain (which one do we have?) broke, which also makes sense. Also, are our engines interference engines? I'm sure hoping not...

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Good news for you....Our engines are NON-interference....it's been debated and discussed a lot....even some repair manuals say it's an interference engines...WRONG! It's not. Somebody's timing belt just recently blew, and caused no damage....that further helped confirm this.

X2 what PK said...and Sue too. :D

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Originally Posted by Triathlete

X2 what PK said

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about going to church?

makes me wonder IF they failed to torque the converter bolts to the flywheel/flex plate and they sheared

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Originally Posted by rowhard

about going to church?

makes me wonder IF they failed to torque the converter bolts to the flywheel/flex plate and they sheared

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Sounds right.

PK- It is most definitely a low whirring sounds. No clicking or anything. Assuming its the flywheel, is this an expensive fix? The tranny shop is the same company that towed it last night, so I'm expecting them to cover costs. Should I? Would my flywheel naturally fall off or crack without someone miss-torquing something?

I've not heard of this happening to a single VX. I'd definitely suspect the shop did something incorrectly...

Transmission shop claims no responsibility. They said they don't touch flywheels. It's just my luck to have one break off 2 weeks after my tranny swap...I'm going in to the shop after work and they are going to show me what happened to it. I guess to replace it the tranny has to come out completely again...This car has just been a money pit since I got it. So frustrating.

Mine gets happy going to church...and meeting its friends, and I get happy when the preaching begins!!

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Originally Posted by Ebenezr

I get happy when the preaching begins!!

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I usually :sleepgray

Then, suddenly wake with a jolt, when I realize I've burst into flames...:eekgray:

i would not take no for an answer, i am a mechanic myself with out actually seeing vehicle i can obviously not be much of a help but if i had replaced a tranny on a vehicle and 2 weeks later the flex-plate broke (flywheel is only on manual tranny auto tranny has a flex-plate.) i would assume that something i had done was most likely the cause. or at very least i should have noticed it was damaged before reinstalled the tranny. i suspect that if it is the flex-plate that one of the following may be the cause, they actually did take off flex-plate and did not re tighten it properly, that they may had damaged it while taking tranny out or reinstalling it or possibly the torque converter was not installed properly or had something on it when it was installed and was trapped between flex-plate and torque convert, and was ok for a while but eventually flex plate fatigued under load and high temps that torque converter reaches.

if i were you i would try to be there when they pull tranny out so they don't have time to hide anything from you if it is there fault.

hope this help and best of luck

Thanks mantis. But I went to the shop yesterday and they showed me the problem. New flexplate should be here today (hoping) and I'm paying for them to fix it. I can't prove they did anything wrong. I asked them specifically about all the things they could have done wrong that would have caused this and they claim to have done everything correctly and have properly inspected all the parts before installation. I can't argue with that. If a man gives me his word and I can't prove him wrong, I just have to accept it. So I can only trust that they are being honest with me =/

Make it clear to them that you can no longer recommend their service to anyone you know. The probability of your flexplate failing is already ~ 0, add in that they did remove the transmission, and this entirely indicates that they are really trying to rape you. Why would you pay the same shop to fix what they broke? Go to a different shop if you feel that they won't fix it for you and you have to pay anyways. Otherwise, they will just keep raping you. Next time, you'll notice that the TOD mounts have failed, and the transfercase needs to be replaced.....

Get real Breezy - no one in these sorts of business is honest.

Not to throw salt on your wounds but my engine went bad at the same time my trans was reworked. The trans man kept it for several more weeks and put some significant time into it trying to solve the problem. He did it free of charge. He didn't have too.

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Originally Posted by Ldub

I usually :sleepgray

Then, suddenly wake with a jolt, when I realize I've burst into flames...:eekgray:

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Come join me Sunday morning. Sit near me and I'll keep a fire extinguisher nearby. Ha ha ha ha ha. :p

My flexplate (flywheel) broke the day after I picked my VX up from the dealer after they had replaced the motor. They towed and repaired at no cost. Not the same I know but, just saying.

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Originally Posted by Breezy

Thanks mantis. But I went to the shop yesterday and they showed me the problem. New flexplate should be here today (hoping) and I'm paying for them to fix it. I can't prove they did anything wrong. I asked them specifically about all the things they could have done wrong that would have caused this and they claim to have done everything correctly and have properly inspected all the parts before installation. I can't argue with that. If a man gives me his word and I can't prove him wrong, I just have to accept it. So I can only trust that they are being honest with me =/

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I would be very interested in hearing their explanation.

Even if they did not remove the flexplate, it could have been damaged by them as they re-installed the transmission.
Not saying it was - just that it could have been.

Too much of a coincidence for me at the moment.

PK

Doesn't the flex plate bolt to the torque converter? How could they NOT "touch" the flex plate when they removed the transmission/torque converter. If they didn't re-install it correctly they could have put some uneven pressure on the flex plate causing it to snap. I find it hard to believe that they are not responsible.

The flex plate does bolt right up to the TC. I'm not sure how one would go about replacing the tranny and stuff without touching it. I asked all the probing questions about stuff they could have done wrong...but it does seem like too much of a coincidence...

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Originally Posted by Breezy

The flex plate does bolt right up to the TC. I'm not sure how one would go about replacing the tranny and stuff without touching it.

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been awhile since I did a auto box but am thinking, converter bolts to flex plate, transmission input shaft plugs into converter, so yes, you could remove the box and not really touch the converter/flex plate

i had an old 84 ford ranger that the flex plate that had some missing teeth i used to keep a beaker bar with a socket and cheater bar behind the seat and just turned the motor til i found a good spot to turn it over with just saying that worked till the day it went to the junk yard

Not a doubt in my mind, zero, that the trans removal and install was the cause of a failed flex-plate. If the trans was forced on to a torque converter left bolted to the flex-plate, bad juju happens! If the torque converter was on the trans input shaft and bolted to the flex-plate incorrectly during install, bad juju happens! If the flex-plate wasn't inspected before the trans install, bad juju happens! As a matter of course, the flex-plate should ALWAYS be replaced in a high-mileage trans install, or BAD JUJU HAPPENS!!:mady:

Well she is all replaced now...Working good, at least for the time being. I kept the old flex plate though, and upon inspecting it, I found the the stress/strain cracks where it had fatigued where on the inside (facing engine). So if the shop had inspected it without removing it, as seems to be the proper way to do it, then they wouldnt have seen the stressed parts of the plate, sending me back into the world with one that is about to go out. But maybe I'm just on the optimal side because I've put a lot of money into this and I just want to side with the brighter side of things =]

Then, that's all that matters. If you're happy, there's nothing else to say. Hope everything continues on the sunnier side of life, NEVER ask "what next?", or bad juju happens...LOL!!:bwgy:

It was actually a bad flex-plate then, huh?

I've done many transmissions & I've never seen or heard of a flex-plate going bad. (I had a flex-plate on my old '77 Diplomat lose a few teeth, so I carried a wrench around to manually rotate it to a good spot to start it once in awhile too! But that was a starter issue that ate the teeth off by not fully engaging the starter / flex-plate ring gear.) In my mind a flex-plate is just a part that doesn't go bad... Guess I'll file this one away for future reference!

With that being said. I have never given much thought about, nor would I have ever had reason before to remove the flex-plate when doing trans work. It's also not standard proceedure to leave the torque converter bolted to the flex-plate when removing the trans. It usually wouldn't be feasable due to the increased distance the trans would have to be moved backwards in order to disengage the trans input shaft from the torque converter...