Serpentine Belt Broke and Oil leak! Please Advice and Help

[jodemerson]

Hello,
I have a 2002 Boxster S,
I started up after church and about 15 miles down the road on my way home I start hearing a bit of screeching. I didn’t think much of it until I hear pieces of something coming off the car. The serpentine belt shredded and came off. I lost power steering and cooling. The engine overheated and I pulled off on the next exit.
There was oil leaking underneath but I couldn’t identify where it was coming from exactly. I accessed the engine from behind the seats and confirmed my suspicions of the broken belt. About a 1/2 hour later I started it up again and a lot of smoke came out the exhaust (meaning oil in the cylinders I believe) so I shut it off quickly. A few questions and any advice welcome.
Where would the oil leaking from?
Do I have other worries of driving about 2 miles with the belt broken?
Should the engine overheating concern me?
Any estimates or recommendations on parts to get or replace or check?

[tonythetiger]

Surprised nobody has responded, but here I am and quick thoughts.
Don’t drive the car anywhere, or even start it.
When the belt popped, you should have stopped immediately. Overheating is very bad, but having the belt fail could be a symptom of other things. Best cause would be bad pulley or water pump, assuming parts didn’t wedge into the coolant chases. Seeing an oil leak leads me to think things could be much worse.
Share mileage, maintenance history and what you find out with the group and GLWT.




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[particlewave]

Why would you continue to drive it, knowing the belt was out and water pump not running? You should have shut down the engine immediately.

You probably killed it.

[dghii]

Shouldn't have continued to drive but I doubt he killed it. My guess is WP or Alternator, with money on WP.

I had a buddy insist on driving his car about 5 miles to our auto hobby shop with water gushing from WP. I had offered to help him change the WP and told him he needed to tow the car but he wanted to save the $50...

By the time he arrived, the belt had shredded and was wrapped tight around every pulley. What should have been a few hours job took all day as we had to flush multiple times due to impeller pieces everywhere.
Well, the car started and ran fine when job was done. Its been about three years and the car still runs great. Now if I could just convince him to change the oil once a year....

[bcrdukes]

What's the mileage on the vehicle? Any history of the belt ever being replaced?

[thstone]

Serpentine belt failures happen. Not a big deal.

These engines are pretty robust but overheating any engine is never a good thing and the excess heat will often find whatever component is weakest and cause it to fail under the extreme temp condition.

On the good side, M96 engines are not known for blowing head gaskets when they get hot so you're probably ok there.

On the bad side, engine exhaust smoke and an oil leak after overheating the engine is worrisome. If you're lucky, maybe a spark plug tube o-ring leaked or failed due to the excess heat.

First, don't start the engine. Inspect under the car and find the source of the oil leak before you start the engine.

Once the oil leak is understood/repaired, investigate the belt failure. Did something lock up and cause the belt to fail or did it just fail due to wear? Replace the belt and whatever else needs replacing, then re-start the engine to see how it runs and go from there.

Once you get it running, change the oil and filter. The oil is cooked from the overheating.

[78F350]

Originally Posted by thstone

... If you're lucky, maybe a spark plug tube o-ring leaked or failed due to the excess heat. ...

Reading this reminded me of the engine in the $2,000 Boxster I bought a couple years ago. It had overheated in a similar situation, but had a lot of other minor issues as well. The only big issue I saw from the overheating was a couple spark plug tubes that were melted at the end. I bet that is the source of the oil leak if nothing more serious.
Oh no, another...


A bigger danger that might not manifest immediately would be a cooked bearing on the crankshaft. Repeating the advice for future readers: No effective cooling means STOP the Car.