My daughter has a 1988 Wagovan. It stopped on her the other day on the freeway and she was able to coast to an offramp. She said the temp was about 3/4 when she looked. It usually runs just under 1/2. I have checked it out and the timing belt has broken. I do not know when it was last changed but the car has 238,000 miles. When I checked the Radiator I could not see any coolant but when I drained it, it was about one liter. I was going to pull the head because this car blows a head gasket about every 30,000 miles. There is no trace of water on the dipstick and looking in each spark plug hole there is no trace of coolant in the cylinder. Can I do a compression check on each cylinder by turning the cam shaft so the respective valves for that cylinder are closed and then crank it? Is it best just to pull the head and inspect it or just replace the belt and see what happens? Any ideas.

 

i have to ask... if this thing blows a head gasket every 30,000 miles... why hasn't the timing belt been replaced while the head was off? just curious.

 

well, first off you should probably have that head checked to see if it is warped at all. im curious, you said you replace the head gasket about every 30,000 miles, how many times have you replaced it??? if the surface of the head does not match up to the block perfectly, it will cause your head gasket to blow. on to the timing belt, the problem here is your timing belt turns your camshaft which keeps your valves opening and closing in time with your crank shaft. when your timing belt breaks, your camshaft will stop turning and whichever valve is open is going to get smashed by the piston below it. by some miracle, this might not have happened and your valves are ok, but more likely then not, this did happen. in turn you would have to rebuild your head (if possible) and replace any piston that was damaged. not to mention cylinder walls or any damage done to anything else. you would not be able to just put a new timing belt on the car and start it up, because when the belt broke, your timing was thrown waaaaaay out. not trying to be negative, but i am willing to bet that engine is toast. you just have to open it up and look. and good luck with this one, i had a DOHC accord that this happened to. not fun at all.
[align=left] [/align]

 

one thing i forgot, you mentioned that the temp was at 3/4, what engine is in this, does the water pump run off the timing belt? could that have caused it to break? i would suggest really digging into this engine to see if it is worth fixing or just replacing.
[align=left] [/align]