1995 LHS Timing Belt/Water Pump

[Bratt81]

I was just wondering if anyone else has had the same problem...

-I have a 1995 Chrysler LHS 3.5-
I was having problems with my temperature rising in my car; it wasn't overheating, but it kept rising about half way up the temp gage. So I was thinking it was the water pump because it was leaking coolant when I was driving it a lot, but when I started taking it only short distances, it quit leaking...
Anyway, I was driving it yesterday (probably only going about 25 or 30 mph) and the timing belt broke. I know it's an interference engine (I think that's what it's called?) and so I'm just wondering if I have to replace the whole engine, or what my chances are that the valves are damaged..... Any advice would help....
Thanks in advance.

[AWP9521]

Well it's one of those how lucky do you feel?

The car doing 25-30 mph may actually be a good thing if you were just cruising at the time and not accelerating, it would be in high gear and not spinning that fast when the belt let go so you could be lucky and not hurt a thing. It's one of them things that if the cams stopped in the right spot and none of the valves were open enough to get hit by a piston as the engine rotated a turn or 2 until it stopped. The converter isn't locked up at that speed so because of the converter slippage the trans wouldn't drive the engine and keep it rotating.

It's really a tough call to determine whether a piston smacked a valve or not without either pulling the heads and doing a visual of the valves to see if they are all seated, or pulling off the rocker covers, Cam Gears and Cam then laying a straight edge across all the valve retainers front to back and see if they are all the same height. If any of the intake or exhaust valves are bent even slightly the retainers will not be even with the rest all the way down the head, the bent ones if any will be noticably lower.

I hope for the best for you should you persue trying to get it going again, good luck.