serpentine belt broke, overheated. opinions?

So my serpentine belt snapped and it overheated. I drove it for a few miles while it was smoking until I could park it. I fixed the belt and it seems to be only running on 2 or so cylinders. Would you assume the engine is damaged or is there a possibility that the plugs could have fouled due to it overheating? Thanks for any input.

You probably warped the head or maybe cracked it. Pull the spark plugs and take a look, but overheating won't foul the plugs. Look for water in the oil and oil in the coolant.

My call... you blew the head gasket. Let us know how it goes. Look around online if you do this job you can get a reman'd head for like $250 prob less. thats new valve stem seals, flat deck on her, and everything within factory tolerances. fully cleaned/painted ect. Def worth it.

Also perform a compression check. I bet like what was stated before that the head is warped.

yeah you don't get more than a minute when that happens

X2 on compression check telling the story.

Hell, just for fun pull all the plugs and see if she will pump coolant!

joe_peters said:

Hell, just for fun pull all the plugs and see if she will pump coolant!

Click to expand...

Why not? You need to pull the plugs to check compression anyway.

I had to get a head job done on the overheated 95 I bought. Cost $250 and I had to provide the seals(so $250 for one to your door is good).

This is not meant as an insult so please do not take it that way.

If you did not know how to diagnose the results of overheating you do not want to try to do the job on your own. You will save a lot of headaches to just have the job by somone qualified. This does not mean take it to the dealer. A local shop or a friend that has done the job before is fine.

Good luck

yeah a head gasket install while not terribly difficult, is an involved job and one must know what to look for and how to go about things in several instances while doing so. I'm not sure how much in labor that would cost anyone know? Like i said though i'd def splurge the few extra bucks for a reman'd head. b/c at minimum you will have to have the surface skimmed on the old head to make sure its flat. this will usually run around $50-60 for an aluminum head. I am not sure if that price is any different for the cast iron. So figure from there you are only $200 or so away at that time from a totally 'new' head. I've had good luck w/ these guys for a GREAT price. That was on a 1.8 8v vw head though. http://www.aluminumcylinderhead.com however, hence the name i'm unsure they could help us out.

BTW are all cylinder heads for the 4.0 cast iron or were the 2000's and 2001's aluminum?

All stock 4.0's are cast iron. You don't really want an aluminum head on an inline 6 cast iron block. (expansion differences with temperature)