Bought a really nice condition Pacifica aside from a broken timing belt for $850 last night. Over 195k miles and looks in better shape than ones that had less than 100k, so I'm wanting to rebuild this one. Has anyone survived the timing belt breaking, or does it tend to break pistons and do more damage than just bending the valves?

 

dont brake a piston it will take a vale out U have a 50 50 chance of doing that. Install new belt dont reassembly everything fire it up see what it sounds like. Runs like **** bent valves.

 

I'm pulling it down to short block to be certain. Even ordered new valves just in case and can return them if they aren't needed. Just needed to know the odds. Thanks for that. Others have said 9 out of 10 pistons/valves are fine and those seem to be high load failures. A cracked piston was my worst fear and those seem to be really rare.

 

let a machine shop do a valve job not just put them in they wont seat correctly and you will will have low compression.

 

Only if it actually needs it, but yeah.

 

I recently finished timing belt/water pump/valve job on mine,yep,really smart thing to spend $1500 and a couple days of my labour on a $400 car,but just couldn't let myself scrap it.Pistons have nice little half moon marks from the valves bouncing off them.I cleaned the carbon off and knocked down the sharp edges a bit,put it back together and it seems to run fine maybe a good time to sell this thing while all is good...

 

I had a 2001 3.5 Chrysler 300m I bought used with 140xx on it that had never had a belt done on it. I ordered the belt and on the way home from work the day the belt cam in the belt shredded. I think the water pump actually locked up on it. I put in the new belt/water pump/tesioner and fired right up...compression test showed all was good too. I didn't do a leakdown but put 20k on it after that with no issues...