So my sister has a 2011 Chevrolet Malibu with the 2.4 ecotech. She was at a stop light the other day and it just “shut off” in her words. She had it towed to a shop and they confirmed it jumped time (which is what I suspected). They’ve been going to this shop for years and the guy is very nice and honest to them, but he quoted in the ball park of $4,500 to fix it because he just wants to change the engine.
Now I’m very experienced when it comes to cars, have several race cars, build airplanes for a living, etc. I’ve owned VW’s in the past that also jumped time (broken belts/tensioners/etc.) In all those cases I was able to pull the head and do a valve job, install new timing kit, gaskets, etc and it ran just fine afterwards and years to come.
But, the shop told my sister they have tried fixing those 2.4’s in the past and were never able to get them to run right again so it’s not worth it. Then my dad said “he had a buddy at work” with the same issue and he dumped a ton of money into it trying to fix it but never got it right. But if I go online it’s tons of videos of people slapping a valve job, timing kit, and gaskets and sending it out the door.
So what’s the deal? I roughly priced out the parts and I’m thinking somewhere around $300 - $500 to fix it, it’s a 2011 with 60k miles so I think it’s well worth it. But now my parents are hesitant to let my sister put money into it because they are afraid it’s a lost cause.
Also fwiw, while I’m perfectly capable of doing the valve job myself, I’ll honestly probably just have my local machine shop do it because the guy gives me super good pricing. Saves me a ton of time and I have a piece of mind it was all checked out.
Ps: incase it’s confusing anyone, I’m 32 and my sister is 21 and still lives at home, hence my parents involvement in all of it lol.
The 2.4 EchoTech engine is an interference engine. The valves have kissed the pistons. It’s not economical to repair, get a used or rebuilt engine for it. The failure was likely caused by failed tensioners, a common issue with this engine.
It’s not economical to have a shop repair, the hours required are prohibitive. However OP says he can do the work and his buddy does a quality head job, sounds like OP’s plan is invest a couple weekends for his sister to save $3500 or so. If the tensioner tends to fail at 60k there’s gotta be an improved aftermarket model available or at least, 60k is a few more years of use either way - easy decision. I doubt pistons were shattered, might make a dent in the top but she’s not going for 1/4 mile drag times, just trying to get from A to B, a little inefficiency in the firing quality won’t matter here.
Kissed is putting it mildly. More like a non-consensual ramming.
Why wouldn’t it be economical? I roughly priced it out to about $300-$500. That’s for all 20 valves, new set of rockers (which Id guess maybe 1 or two actually broke), new timing set, gaskets, and a coupe TTY bolts.
The cheapest used engine anyone could find was $2500 so their mechanic actually told them to just scrap the vehicle. That’s when I stepped in and said wait a min. why are we scrapping a 60k mile vehicle over a timing chain.
Also, tensioner was my guess as well, those are a high failure point on a lot of the newer 4 cyl stuff, and with such low mileage is the only thing that makes sense.