Ok, Lots of questions for the more experienced heads here. 2007 Acura TL 3.2. timing belt replaced maybe 10K+ miles ago. Snapped on the highway(wife driving, don't have details). numerous peeps attempted to start car before I got there(not that it would have mattered)
I start investigating. If ive got piston damage the car is up for sale so being optimistric since i have seen several videos of very minor to no valve damage.
What i found so far. belt snapped, it did not strip teeth. rear bank(123) is at 6oclock. Front bank(456) is at 12 oclock. crank spins freely. Do those cam potions seem favorable to min damage? I seem to have normal lash (.5m) on two cylinders.(normal for 200k miles i think, probably
never adjusted.
Any thoughts on why the belt snapped, any known issues that could have stressed the belt. i have not tried to move cams. car threw no codes accept POS sensor(duh).
water pump, tensioner and idler pulleys all spin freely and seem undamaged. Damper is still on so i cant see further and I have not gotten the belt out to see if its wet. I can just see the torn edge.

My next steps were to possibly pull my rockers and do a leak check with oil on my intake vlvs. exh vlvs are a bit trickier.I am also tempted to simply put a belt on and do a rotation too.
Is there something i could instead? pulling heads puts this in red zone. car was only 3k.

 

It snapped because you likely installed a kit that was from Amazon or eBay and it was counterfeit.

Can't really help with the rest, but I'm sure someone more knowledge will chime in.

 

Yup. Confirm where did you buy the parts for the timing belt, that will determine the root cause

 

Yea, that was my guess too. Its ebay. thought I actually avoided the dodgy parts but guess not. Ive never had problems with my VW parts guessing those are more forgiving being 4 cylinders.
I saw one youtube vid where the guy had no damage so im optimistic. Havnt gotten to leak checking yet. I think ill try air gun on the spark plug hole instead of fluid in the intakes. waiting for crank/damper wrench i ordered so i can finish inspection before messing with heads further.

 

Bought it from this store. https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_ssn....m3561.l161211

 

Jesus something identical happened to me two weeks ago; I did the timing belt 16K ago in January, Aisin TKH-002 from RockAuto. Install went perfect.

The Friday after Halloween two weeks ago I'm driving to work, 80mph in the fast lane, engine completely dies. Get towed back home, took off the front upper timing cover, and the timing belt is shredded to half of it's original width. F*CK.
Spinning the crank by hand, the cams AREN'T spinning. F*CK F*CK. Then eventually the crank comes to a HARD stop. So I know I'm beyond FUBAR'd.
Took off the crank pulley and lower timing cover, and inside the timing cover is 1 extra bolt that doesn't look anything like the others, I wonder where it came from.
So I looked at the tensioner..... it's only holding on by 1 bolt.
November 5th I ordered a J35A from JDM Engine Depot, it arrived on Nov 8th, and just yesterday I dropped her into the car.


There's no magic "potion" out there that can fix piston to valve contact. The damage has already been done. If I were you, there's no point in messing with rockers, oil, etc. Just put crank and cams @ TDC, put a belt on, and pray for the best.

 

Im still going to leak check simply because several people have reported either no damage or just heads. If its just heads. I fix it. it was a 3k car. not worth putting an engine.in and i cant do it at my house(unless you can pull pistons from a dropped oil pan)
Spent all day just shopping for belts. I guess these are gates belts under a japan name. so im gonna get one of those if looks like im fixing it.

 

If it makes you feel any better, the same thing happened to me years ago. Learned my lesson while managing to escape serious damage. "OEM" parts on ebay, and many on Amazon cannot be trusted. My belt snapped, and damaged the crank gear cover plate, the crank position sensor, and the lower timing cover. Was able to replace those parts, then put on a new belt from the Aisin kit off Rockauto. Started the car with everything still apart (just to see if it would run, I ran the car directly off the battery for a few mins since you won't have a belt on your alternator), and by some miracle the engine ran smooth as ever. So I then replaced all of the other parts with the Aisin ones, and the car is still going strong today with 267k on the odometer. Across all of the Honda forums, it sure seems like the J series escapes unscathed more often than not from a tb failure.

 

so you didn’t tighten one of the tensioner bolts and it came loose after a fews miles.

 

Now you got me thinking I should look for other damage.it would suck to put it together and find my POS or something got smacked. Lost the war to winter though. damn cold slowing me down now.

 

BTW. Just ordered OEM complete timing belt & components from Japan - ~340$ + 63$ shipping (to EU) + probably about 100$ import fees in Poland.
​​​So maybe not as cheap as replacement available at rock auto, however not as expensive as OEMs at dealers shops.

 

Small update. It warmed up so I went out and did a pressure check on front head (pulled rockers and sparkplug. put air gun in sparkplug hole with rubber cork).and it passed. This heads cam stopped at TDC(12oclcok) Back head stopped 180 out at 6 olclock. It a little harder to check and will get that tomorrow if no rain. Evidently some TLs can have their pan dropped making it possible to pull pistons. Makes me rethink selling it if back head fails a test.