[Beav]

The 318 Dodge I referred to was weird to diagnose. My customer called and said his van drove fine, to his customer's driveway, but would not restart. Sounded like a typical timing chain failure, the starter snap/spins the crank and chain past the breaking plastic teeth of the OE cam gear.

So I went to see the van to confirm before ordering a wrecker. Engines with broken chains/gears sound odd because of compression loss on some cylinders but this one was even more peculiar sounding. I popped the distributor cap off and the rotor would not even budge during cranking which is also odd. When cam gears strip they usually only lose a few teeth and the cam begins to turn again, just out of time. For some reason I turned the front crank pulley and the distributor turned. What could happen that the starter couldn't cause it to turn but the front of the crank could?

The only answer I could come up with was a broken crankshaft and sure enough, after removing the engine, we found the last two throws broken away. Further inspection revealed missing dowel pins, apparently the shop that replaced the tranny didn't transfer them.

I'm not saying this is going to happen to anyone here but building a heavier plate or living in denial could cause a helluva lot more trouble. I just wanted to be clear in my warning.