Yes it is, that’s why I’ve already priced out doing a valve job because I know several will be bent.

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.

He doesn’t work on them daily, just a (literal) small town mechanic, and very old lol. I by no means doubt his work, but I also get the impression this type of stuff is out of his comfort zone.