Hello all, I am not a honda forum member so I thought id post here. My buddy has a 2003 Civic SOHC. He got the timing belt done 4 years ago at 70k miles at a local shop. Now the car is at 115k miles and he took it to the Honda dealer in PA for state safety inspection about 2 months ago. upon return of the car, he noticed some noise in the engine - he had a bad feeling about the whole dealer experience but anyway. 3 days ago, he parked the car coming home from work and the next day it wouldnt start. He called me and I heard him cranking the car and it was whiny, like it didnt have compression.... also cranked slow though battery was good. I immediately told him it was the tbelt and told him to put a hole in the tbelt plastic cover as he is not tech savvy and dont have the tools to get the cover off, not as easy as the evos. Through the hole, I could see the tooth on the belt pointing away from the cam gear. Took it to another Honda dealer and he took the cover off and sent him this picture.... attached....

Called up the first dealer and he totally denied doing anything with the t-belt and basically hung up on my buddy. My question is would it be possible for the car to run 45000 miles on a timing belt installed inside out ? Or did the dealer mess something up, did a crappy tbelt job so that motor would fail and then can charge for a full rebuild ? doesnt make much sense at this point.

 

Never seen that before.. totally sux for your friend.. But I don't even think a 4g63 would turn over with a belt like that..

 

Vtec yo!

 

I can't believe it ran that long with the belt like that! That's the reason I don't take my cars to shops you never know what they might do to screw you over.

 

the shop that did the job originally were a bunch of nice guys, but probably didn't know how to do it. They may have done it by mistake though I cannot imagine even a 10 year old making such an obvious mistake. the crazy part is if these guys installed it such, how did it run 46k miles / 4 years ? are t-belt tooth really overrated ? maybe use a thick rubber band instead of t-belts ?