Things are different now that I’m married and have a child. I have to be responsible, both with my time and with my finances. So when, last night, I went to move my 1989 Chevy K1500 Silverado to the other side of the street to avoid a street sweeping ticket, only to listen to my 350 V8 blow up for no apparent reason, I was really upset. More than I would be usually.
Back in my single days, if I blew up an engine, it wasn’t a major concern. In fact, as shown below, when I hyrolocked my first Jeep XJ’s 4.0-liter straight-six, I bought a new motor the next day and hat it installed within the month. I think the whole repair might have cost me $400, and yes, it took many hours, but that was just good content. And fun.
Nowadays, I’m responsible for a small family, and what was once a little setback is now a major problem.
I didn’t need the Chevy Silverado K1500 that I bought for $4,900, but I told my wife Elise it was such a great deal that I couldn’t lose. She trusted me, but I was wrong. Last night, something happened that I simply cannot explain — something so “out there” I’m still having a hard time believing it.
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It was late Monday night, and Elise had suggested I move my truck instead of waiting for the morning, since I’d have an easier job finding parking on the Thursday-street-sweeping side. So I walked up the street, installed the fuse I use as a kill-switch, put my key into the truck’s ignition, cranked, and listened to the engine rev to the sky — but before I could even think to shut anything down, the motor died making a horrible noise. I went to crank the motor again; no dice. I kept trying — nothing.
I put the truck in reverse, allowed it to roll backwards, and let off the clutch. The motor didn’t move. It was then that I knew I was screwed.
Elise knew right away something was wrong when I walked into the house, so she asked what was up.
“I… I think I just lost $7,000 dollars,” I told Elise as I stood there, clearly shocked. “What? How?” she replied.
“Yeah, the truck, which is worth at least $8000 is now worth probably $1000 because the engine just blew up.”
Elise was also surprised, asking me how a motor can just blow up for no reason. I had no answers. She was supportive, as she could tell how bummed I was.
I remained in disbelief, so this morning, I tried jumping the car myself with Elise’s Lexus (see above). The motor still wouldn’t crank.
So I called AAA, who put a high-powered jump-starter onto my battery, and got it to crank over! But the sound that motor made was absolutely horrific (follow our Instagram to listen, as I plan to rank it again as soon as I have my battery charged up). “Yeah… your motor is done,” the AAA driver told me.
I’m still stunned. The truck was driving great when I parked it last week. Now, just starting it up to move it 15 feet to the other side of the road, it just blows up? Why did this happen?
I hadn’t changed the oil since purchasing the truck in January, but the oil looked good, and the previous owner confirmed he was a religions 3000 mile oil-changer. What’s more, even if the oil were bad, the motor wouldn’t have failed like this. This was a catastrophic, abrupt failure.
It seems like perhaps there was something afoot with the Throttle Body Injection system; perhaps there was a major vacuum leak. And maybe it was the engine revving really high at idle that caused those rods to fail.
I suspect that’s what happened. For whatever reason, when I started the truck, it over-revved and the rods let go. Without warning. Or maybe the motor was flooded with fuel?
I’m not sure how I’m going to move forward with this truck. On one hand, selling it for a loss is going to be tough for me since I’m a cheap bastard, but fixing it will take many hours that I should be spending with my child. I also planned to use the truck this Saturday, as we are moving across the city. The timing couldn’t be worse!
I’m really bummed here. I’ll get through it, as I live a life of gratitude these days, but this is going to make future car-purchases more difficult to justify. I figured a 350-powered 4×4 manual Chevy truck was a low-risk buy that I’d actually be able to make some money if I sold it, but I figured wrong. Between the bondo discover on my old Willys Jeep and this, it’s a reminder that buying used cars can be risky, even for wrenching veterans.
Anyway, I will soon be getting a $75 parking ticket. Thereafter, I’ll tow this truck… somewhere and figure out what to do. I’m so tempted to just find a used truck and swap the motor in, but again — time!
TBI injectors go rich at startup. Failed injector dumps fuel causing the over-revving on starting? Full throttle detection, (limit switch of some type???) fails, same result, dump fuel. When engine revs like crazy, timing chain jumps and dead engine.
Once had an Oldsmobile Reliability Engineer tell me of a warranty claim. I was a co-op student (Intern???) there in the late ’70s. Lady had a new Delta 88. On the assembly line, a zip tie that held a cable in place is snipped next to the ratcheting thing you pull the tie through. Clipped piece falls into throttle linkage. Intermittently on startup the engine would rev like crazy on cold start. Repeated trips and the dealer could not replicate the issue. Dealer told customer to not do anything except call when the issue happened again. Dealer receives a call from customer with the sound of an engine at WFO (Wide F**king’ Open) throttle. Lady is screaming into the phone…”It’s doing it!!!”. Engine goes quiet.
Cold start consisted of setting the choke by fully depressing the gas pedal once, release, then starting. Strip of plastic from zip tie would catch in the linkage sometimes…
So my theory is:
If you can still crank the engine, observe the rocker arms. You may be able to see them thru the hole where you add oil. No valve action? Timing chain issues…
Your truck is 36 years old. GM has done so much to the small blocks over the years, but I don’t think in ’89 they had fixed things like the timing chain cover that ALWAYS leaked on small block Chevys or the 50K mile water pump on Chevys or the random fan clutch failure on GM in general. SBCs had a life of about 100K miles before rebuilding. Olds small blocks were around 125K. Don’t know on the other divisions. At least that was the way before the truly corporate engines like the current LS series.
One other question…Is that 2 batteries, one on each side? If so, why? Some of the earlier diesels had them, but on a gas engine? Cold weather package? In Southern California? If it ever lived where it got really cold…
That reminds me of a thing that could happen to with the infamous Olds diesels. In very cold weather if you took off the cover over the air filter and squirted starting fluid down the throat, the glow plugs would light off the starting fluid, it would rev like crazy and start. Around 5 or 6K miles later, the bent rods from that cold startup would fail. It was not pretty. I have held chunks from the oil pan that were pieces of a con-rod.
Starting fluid was supposed to get a light whiff at the intake tube so it would pass thru the air filter reducing the concentration. There was a big warning about starting fluids on the air cleaner cover. Squirting down the intake was a don’t do that or bad things happen. And they did.
Never heard of anything like that with gas engines other than the piece of zip tie mentioned above. It is just a thought.
I know, lengthy…just throwing out anything that seemed related.
FYI there is a followup article to this, the engine isn’t dead but something is going on. Water or smog pump maybe.
https://imgflip.com/gif/70ne32
Maybe the oatmeal and sawdust in the crankcase finally dissolved.
Had torch borrowed the truck?