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Seized intermediate shaft while driving, how fucked am I?

E

Epic2112

Well-known member
Joined
Sep 29, 2007
Location
Silver Spring, MD
I did the timing belt & cam/intermediate/crank seals on my wife's '93 240. The car ran fine for a couple of weeks then died without warning, hours away from home. I popped the inspection cover off and there's frayed belt and oil everywhere. I must've fucked something up but I've done more B230 timing belts than I can remember. Got the car towed to the nearest seemingly reputable shop (no Volvo shops anywhere nearby). The mechanic insists it's an interference engine, no matter how much I argue otherwise, but I convince him to put on a new belt and seals. He said it was gonna take a few days for him to get to it, so I rented a car and headed home. Today he calls me and says he told me so, I must've bent valves because the "middle gear" is seized. 🙄 Now I have to figure out how to get the car towed back to my house.

So the intermediate shaft seized while I was driving it. Reading about things now, I see that the cam and intermediate gears on roundtooth cars are actually slightly different, which I hadn't realized. There's a decent chance I accidentally swapped them. I have no idea if it's the oil pump, the distributor, or the shaft itself that's seized. Could this have been caused by mixing up the cam and intermediate gears? If they've got slightly different outside diameters or something like that I guess things could have gotten progressively more and more misaligned until there was metal on metal.

I've got a parts car that should have a good shaft, distributor, and oil pump, so if I've got to swap out damaged parts for good, whatever, no big deal. If the intermediate shaft bore is fucked and it needs new bearings pressed in or needs to be machined, this might be the end of the road for the car.

While I'm trying to figure out how to get the car back to my house, anyone interested in spitballing what went wrong?
 
ZVOLV said:
Did you replace the front cover and put RTV instead of a new gasket? I have heard of people doing that and the aux shaft won't turn.
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It wasn't me, it was the mechanic at this random shop.

I've been reading a bit and also came across some situations where the front cover was sealed with rtv instead of a gasket, and didn't have enough clearance. I called the shop to ask him to loosen the front cover slightly and see if that frees up the shaft, but he said he took a breaker bar to it and got it to turn freely, put the timing belt on, but the car still won't start.

But if the intermediate shaft was seized because of something the mechanic did rather than something that happened while I was driving, I still don't know what happened to shred the timing belt in the first place.

Now I'm worried he busted the intermediate shaft with a breaker bar somehow. I need to just figure out how to get the car back here.
 
There is a chance the aux shaft bearing seized.

Unless you bought the car new, you have no idea if oil changes were neglected.
 
Is it possible the belt guides were put on wrong/not at all and that's what shredded the belt?
 
Swapping the cam and aux gear would not cause anything to seize. The difference is the offset. The cam sprocket has the washer/spacer built into it instead of the separate spacer that used to go on the front of the cam. The two sprockets would not line up. That could possibly make the timing belt walk off the sprockets and get shredded.
 
2manyturbos said:
Swapping the cam and aux gear would not cause anything to seize. The difference is the offset. The cam sprocket has the washer/spacer built into it instead of the separate spacer that used to go on the front of the cam. The two sprockets would not line up. That could possibly make the timing belt walk off the sprockets and get shredded.
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Ah, this makes sense. That, coupled with my apparent bungling of the oil seal replacement, would explain how the belt walked out of position until it got shredded, and the mechanic making a new cover gasket with RTV would explain the seized intermediate shaft.

I guess now all there is left to do is the autopsy once I get it back here.
 
It was just an idea I tossed out there. If somebody were to replace that front cover and use RTV they would "probably" notice immediately that the aux shaft wouldn't turn. You would have to turn the gear to get it into place unless you timed it perfectly before pulling it apart.

I would drain the oil and look for metal shavings.
 
I'm pretty certain he used RTV to seal the cover. So now all I have to figure out is what the hell happened when he "broke the intermediate shaft free", and why the car now won't start even though the intermediate shaft now apparently spins freely.

Assuming RTV was the problem, if the mechanic did somehow manage to snap something, I imagine it'd be the part right at the front where the gear bolts on, which I, uhh, assume the shop would notice...
 
He could have sheared the dowel pin on the aux shaft and now the gear spins. The bolt would be stationary and I would think that would be noticed.

The dist could be timed wrong now.
 
2manyturbos said:
I doubt he has the cam, crankshaft and auxiliary shaft timed correctly. He sounds like a completely incompetent boob.
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I dunno. It's basically middle of nowhere farm land. The guy was totally decent to communicate with and everything. I just get the sense that, if it ain't Ford or Chevy, it's exotic to them. I'll see what's going on once I have it all apart in my driveway.
 
I try not to talk shit about anybody in the industry. Who knows what REALLY happened?

I would get it home and POST PICS!
 
It is possible to lock the intermediate shaft up with a seized oil pump. I know that the oil pump normally shears the drive but there were sleeves available for a long time.

I have seen this failure mode exactly one time in a bazillion b230s that I've had my paws on.
 
sbabbs said:
Why would he or anybody take off the aux shaft cover to change the timing belt? That is the part that has me confused..
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You never know what somebody is going to do "while they are in there", but I know what you are saying. It was just a longshot suggestion.
 
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