Blown engine?

Ok, so today I was driving down the street and my engine shut off. My oil pressure was fine and there were no noises or symptoms before it happened. I took the serpentine belt off and made sure no pulleys were locked up. then tried cranking it over by hand but it was stuck. i have a mean green starter and it wouldnt crank it over. i took out the spark plugs and trie cranking it again and it turned over, but seemed like it was struggling to turn the engine over. when i towed it to the house in neutral there were no noises so i dont think its the tranny. what should i do next? where should i look? oil looks good also. thanks!

Try a good battery, it sounds like a electrical problem.

its not the battery. i swapped my red top with a brand new yellow top.... same problems.

You might look at the distributor. If the oil pump drive failed, then the engine won't turn over. Its sort of a safety feature. Not sure if this is your problem, but worth a look.
Tom

I dont think it has a distributor. It has a nifty rail that you unbolt and pull off the plugs. thanks.

XJjosh said:

I dont think it has a distributor. It has a nifty rail that you unbolt and pull off the plugs. thanks.

Click to expand...

what year is it?

It is a 2001.

Your engine still has a cam sensor in place of the distributor. It may not be funtioning. I think its only function is to make sure the cam and oil pump are working. I am not sure of this though. As before, if the oil pump is not working the engine is designed to shut down. Your sensor might also be bad resulting in a malfuntion.
Tom

Would that cause it to not be able to turn over by hand?

And how would I check if something like that is bad?

75SV1 said:

Your engine still has a cam sensor in place of the distributor. It may not be funtioning. I think its only function is to make sure the cam and oil pump are working.

Click to expand...

You've got a crank position sensor that precisely measure what position the crank is at, to fire spark plugs and open injectors to squirt in gas.

BUT, its a 4 cycle engine, and it take 2 rotations of the crank to go thru all the cycles. So the PCM has to fire that spark plug and injector every other rotation of the crank, not every rotation of the crank.

Thats where the cam position sensor comes in, it tells the PCM what postion the valves are at, so that PCM can decide if its this rotation of the crank to fire spark plug/injector, or the next rotation.

Sometimes when the Cam Position Sensor Fails, the PCM will just guess, its a 50/50 shot, and the motor may start up fine or not at all or will start but run horribley with lots of misses. Depends on the ignition, if the ignition shares a coil for every 2 spark plugs, it fires the plugs on each crank rotation, the plugs that share are coil so that thier fire sequence is such that one plug fires when it shoulds and the other fires during the exhaust sequence when it doesn't hurt. In this type of ignition, the PCM guessing 180° out, still will give you the right spark plug firing, just the wrong injector firing, which the fuel will still stay in the intake manifold waiting to be sucked in, that why it can run, but it will run really bad.

This does not sound like a cam position problem to me, nor a sensor problem.

The motor quite in a moment, and now acts like it is siezed.

Hopefully its a bad starter motor, that shorted and killed the electric supply that caused the motor stalled, and thus won't crank. With the plugs removed and the car in neutral or park, a wrench on the bolt at the end of the crank should be easy to crank over by hand, if you can't do that, then it probably isn't the starter, unless the starter is siezed into the start gears.

Hate to say it, if its not that, the oil pump could have failed and siezed the motor, or something internal failed and is locking the motor. A broken timing chain, is the motor interference fit? Hydro Lock? You didn't drive thru a lot of water when this happened? Pulling the plugs would have let the water out and it would have cranked though.

Have you checked for PCM fault codes? Changed the oil and inpsected the oil for metal particles?

I am gonna go home today and drain the oil and check for particles. I have not taken it through water. I was in my neighborhood on my way to the store when this happened. Its not the starter cause it works fine. It tries to turn it over but I think the engine is seized somewhere. I have no check engine codes. The timing chain is behind the water pump right?

XJjosh said:

I am gonna go home today and drain the oil and check for particles. I have not taken it through water. I was in my neighborhood on my way to the store when this happened. Its not the starter cause it works fine. It tries to turn it over but I think the engine is seized somewhere. I have no check engine codes. The timing chain is behind the water pump right?

Click to expand...

I have never heard of or seen a running engine sieze without warning, usally you will notice a lack of power and squeeling first.
If it just felt like is just shut off then I still say it's electrial.
The first place I would look is the CKP where the distributer was.
They have been known to sieze and it is both electrial and mechanical.
The other thing is the no code, you should have something if only 12 and 55 unless you don't have power to the ECU.

XJjosh said:

Its not the starter cause it works fine. It tries to turn it over but I think the engine is seized somewhere. I have no check engine codes. The timing chain is behind the water pump right?

Click to expand...

I've had a short in the battery cable to the starter, it would kill the car in a second, the starter would turn, but barely. The exhaust manifold melted the battery cable insulation, running to the starter, if the cable touched any bare metal, the motor would die immediately, and the starter would barely crank. BTW this was a '69 Charger, not an XJ, but it could happen to an XJ as well.

The starter could be shorted internally, the soldeniod could have siezed with the gears intermeshed with the flexplate/TC. Don't rule out the starter or electrical yet, just because the battery is new and the starter will turn the motor, just barely, it very well could be the starter or its battery cables, like my '69 Charger.

If the spark plugs are IN it would be extremely hard to turn the motor by hand (with a wrench on the crank bolt). All the spark plugs must be out, to turn the motor by hand just one spark plug in will give considerable resistance from the compression.

You do NOT have to pull the timing chain cover (and water pump) to check if the timing chain is broke. Open the oil fill cap on the valve cover, you should be able to see some of the rocker arms for the valves. Have someone crank the motor, as you watch those rocker arms with a flash light, if the rocker arms move up and down, the timing chain is intact, if the rocker arms don't move as the motor cranks (It will need to do several full rotations of the crank, at least) then your timing chain or cam is broken.

I cant even turn the engine though. I have all the plugs out and it still wont spin. The starter isnt intermeshed with the flywheel cause it still throws the little gear into the flexplate to start the engine. I have mean jeepers creepers HD battery cables and see no problems with them.

XJjosh said:

I cant even turn the engine though. I have all the plugs out and it still wont spin. The starter isnt intermeshed with the flywheel cause it still throws the little gear into the flexplate to start the engine. I have mean jeepers creepers HD battery cables and see no problems with them.

Click to expand...

Anything get hot when you try to turn it over?

not that i can see (or feel)

XJjosh said:

not that i can see (or feel)

Click to expand...

If the battries up and your starter is good and your engine was siezed up the cables and starter should get hot and quick.

how much oil did you have in it when the problem occured?

The normal amount. Could it be anything with pushrods or valves? Something like that stuck?

XJjosh said:

The normal amount. Could it be anything with pushrods or valves? Something like that stuck?

Click to expand...

Click or no click it's more likely the starter is stuck. That Mean Green starter should pull 1000 amps or more if the engine is siezed and cables and connection WILL get hot.
Try turning it over with the headlights on and tell me what happens.