We are finally all back in Calgary now with all of our stuff we had delivered to my Mom. Not so much for the Rodeo which belonged to my step-father. What happened is Isuzu uses a big shouldered bolt for securing the belt tensioner for the timing belt which controls the valve timing in relation to the crankshaft. Most manufacturer's us a standard shouldered bolt and then put a thick sleeve on it but Isuzu knows better and put really big shoulders on the bolt so it is a specialty bolt. Regardless of that, the bolt snapped at the shoulder but before snapping it bent with the load on it releasing the tension on the belt just enough so the belt had ample opportunity to slip a tooth or more before the bolt actually snapped. I did notice a drop in power but still running before full failure occurred over the course of about 3 seconds. With the bending bolt and then updated cam timing there was a coming together as in the holy spirit of valves and pistons. There was only one cylinder of significance that I could tell using a boroscope into each combustion chamber that had real piston/valve contact. So confirmed bent valves in one cylinder, maybe more and one significantly damaged piston. Keep in mind I'm dealing with the only shop that works on import cars in the large thriving metropolis of Lewistown, Montana which has just under 6,000 people. When the tensioner came off it dropped down onto the crank belt wheel and got thrown around which busted up the lower part of the plastic cover so the cover was trashed and that would have to be replaced to prevent dirt and water from getting in there....try finding that in short order regardless of the cost!!! Any rate, the shop wanted to drill out the bolt and then retap the hole larger for a larger bolt and then have a sleeve machined to match the diameter (standard sleeved shouldered bolt arrangement) I needed and this is without any knowledge of whether the block could take that or not. No idea how much aluminum (yes aluminum block) material is down there and whether this would be possible or not and I was not going to risk it. Knowing I was going to potentially have a compromised block that won't last long and knowing I was going to have a nice winter project to pull heads and rebuild for valves and only hoping I could still drive it home on 5 cylinders (at best) it just didn't seem like a good plan to move forward. At a certain moment you need to cut bait and run so I did. The shop gave me $200 for it which seemed reasonable for a non-running messed up car and now I don't have to dispose of it and pay someone to tow it away. Hopefully he will source a used engine and insert but I just wasn't going to mess with it from long distance and then in a small town (430 miles away). Sadly I had almost $3,000 in it with all the refurbishment that was generously completed under the watchful eye of a good friend of mine in Las Cruces, NM but when you have compounding problems like these, you know you will see more problems down the road. It would have been nice to have a beater 2nd vehicle but this one is not to be. The timing belt itself looked really new with almost no wear on it but no telling how old it really was....regardless, there was nothing wrong with it that I could tell.
As far as I'm concerned, this is simple equipment failure of a single component that destroyed the engine. Sometimes bad luck happens. There was no warning...just within a few seconds it all self-destructed.
