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Motor seized.

W

WOTFTW

New member
Idk im beginning to think im not good at this whole car thing. i doubt anyone has been following my cars history but here it is... little over 10k miles ago... i bought it with a blown motor. rebuilt it. ran great for about a 1000 miles, but my dad who was helping me out, put the cam position magnet on backwards causing me to break a timing chain, bent valves and rebuilt it again. NOW... i just changed my oil barely 1000 miles ago. and since then my oil gummed up somehow and caused my motor to seize while driving. the only symptoms was a rough start but i was thinking it was a starter motor. i even have one on the way now. but can anyone explain to me how my oil gummed up so badly? its like sludge at this point. did the oil pump go out? thats all i can think to cause this.

Now im debating what direction to go in. Just buy another car, get another short block or do something
 


WOTFTW said:
Idk im beginning to think im not good at this whole car thing. i doubt anyone has been following my cars history but here it is... little over 10k miles ago... i bought it with a blown motor. rebuilt it. ran great for about a 1000 miles, but my dad who was helping me out, put the cam position magnet on backwards causing me to break a timing chain, bent valves and rebuilt it again. NOW... i just changed my oil barely 1000 miles ago. and since then my oil gummed up somehow and caused my motor to seize while driving. the only symptoms was a rough start but i was thinking it was a starter motor. i even have one on the way now. but can anyone explain to me how my oil gummed up so badly? its like sludge at this point. did the oil pump go out? thats all i can think to cause this.

Now im debating what direction to go in. Just buy another car, get another short block or do something
Click to expand...

Pictures of car?

I may take it off your hands.
 
Typically oil will gum up when superheated, or mixed with something foreign (coolant). As far as rebuilding, you did align bore the block and have everything checked before reassembly, right? If not then that would explain why it chucked the motor twice. That mileage just smacks of an improperly rebuilt bottom end. These motors are very picky on that and will often die shortly after what most people consider a standard rebuild.

I'm with dsmuts on this one. For the money you have probably spent rebuilding it twice you could have found a low mileage takout longblock (or complete motor) and been done with it.
 


and yes, everything was bored and machined. however, i did not replace the oil pump for the reason my other cars motor blew and i needed to skip a few things that i wanted which were oil pump, fuel pump and rack and pinion. that is why i asked if this is caused by an oil pump going bad
 
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i dont mind getting a professionally remanufatured motor. im not hurting too bad on money and i want this car to last. i love the car and its very well kept. im breaking it down now. i did notice something however... when the car is in park, i can still turn the front wheels. and i cannot tell a difference from when when its in park and from when its in neutral. any idea why this is? ive had a torque converter go on me before and this was nothing like that
 
Well, seeing as how the steering has nothing to do with the transmission, then I'm not sure what you mean. With the key out of the ignition the steering wheel should lock after you try and turn it a bit. If not, then the lock may be messed up.

If the car is still running when in park or neutral then this is normal. As long as the car is on and running you should be able to turn the wheels. This is your power steering doing it's job.
 
when you turn the wheels when its in park the one rotates forward and the other rotates backward. It's completely normal.
 


for whatever reason with these motors they seem to blow up easier after they have been machined and rebuilt. most have had much better luck getting a used long block and swapping everything over.

when i spun a bearing on my topswap i got a used l67 block with 150k on it and its now over 200k without a problem. i did put in new rod bearings on the last build though for safety's sake. and they are cheap and plentiful. l26 motors with low miles are inexpensive too. check out car-part.com for an engine, they are honestly 250-300 for an l26 with less then 100k. if you go to a pull your own parts junkyard you could possibly get it even cheaper. you could get a used steering rack too and save yourself some more.

im betting that you didnt put rtv on the corners for the lim gasket, didnt use teflon paste (not tape) on the lim bolts, or theres bad coolant orings on the lim and thats why your oil is milky.

if you drain the oil again and with icm unplug and spark plugs out, try to crank the motor to clear out the pistons.
 
when you say tires turn. Do you mean the car will roll front to back as if it's not in park and holding itself with the parking pawl.
 
to clarify on the wheels turning. it is as if the car is in neutral. i can rotate the wheels forward and backwards. i can see the shifter on top of the tranny is moving when i move it from park to neutral or vice versa. im worried that maybe when the motor seized, it may have caused damage to the transmission.

as far as gaskets and o-rings, everything was replaced brand new. i did rtv the corners on the lim. and the oil is not milky, its just gummed up and super thick. i see no metal shavings or anything mixed in the oil. it just has the consistency of cake batter now. which to my understanding is caused by superheating. what could cause this superheating? please correct me if im wrong. im just trying to figure out what happened so i can prevent it from happening again
 
Please give us more detail about when it seized. Were you moving, did the wheels lock, things got ugly?

On the reason behind the oil. I can toss a theory out that depending on how you guys rebuilt things, maybe the bearings started to go and the oil pressure dropped. Low oil pressure means a lot of things will not get the required oil and heat up. That's a theory though. Unless when you rebuilt it there was a lot of assembly lube etc in there? When ever I do a cam swap etc, I do two oil changes right away to rinse any goop out of the motor.
 
So let my try and understand this. You have the car in park. You can get out and push on the rear of the car and it will move? How far will it move in one direction or the other? Just a little or could you put a rope on the front end and tow it no problem? I know that since my park brake is broken that if I give it a shove from the back or front I can rock the car a bit, but the parking pawl catches eventually.

Either the range selector on the trans is bad, or something inside the trans. got jacked up when the motor locked. Not entirely out of the realm of possibility for it to cause a trans issue, although not sure what all could have broken in there. These trans. aren't really my thing. The only 2 things that come to mind are a input or output shaft.
 


Parking pawl moves into what looks like a gear with large teeth that the pawl locks into. This locks the sungear, sungear then holds the diff still.
 
okay this is exactly what happened... changed my oil, old oil was fine. replaced with the same mobil 1 i always use. then i started getting a really labored start which is a sign of a starter going bad so i ordered one. it arrived yesterday actually. there were no other signs of anything wrong. about 1000 miles after my oil change, i was driving from a buddies house... started fine, drove fine until about a mile down the road when the oil light started flickering on and off. then i got a quick chug from the motor and i alreayd knew i needed to check it out when i got home. then about a quarter mile further down the road... rpms dropped to 0 instantly and it just kept coasting. no bangs, no noise. rolled it into a parking lot, checked the oil and i could tell right away based on the cositency that it had seized. towed it in neutral home and parked it in the garage. i always use the parking break so i could not say if this was happening prior or not with the transmission. but when i jacked it up i forgot to loosen the lugs but i figure the tranny would catch it so i could get them off no prob. when i attempted, the wheel just kept turning without catching. so yes, if the car was on the ground i could push it continuously in one direction. i had already disconnected the battery and some wiring by then so idk if that would affect it.

after the cam and rebuild yes, i did change the oil twice within the first 700 miles or so. it has drove fine for about 10k miles now and the oil has not showed any sign of thickening. i used plenty of assembly lube on the bearings. however when the cam bearings were pressed on, the oil passages were halfway lined up with the bearings. the shop stated it would be fine and because of the grooves it would still recieve plenty of oil flow. im beginning to think this may have been the cause of this
 
Are you sure both tires are moving in the same direction? One should move one direction and the other should move the other direction.
 
i can double check. may i ask why they will turn opposite directions? im not really sure on how the internals of a transmission work.
 
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