440 died, had to get towed home

[manic_mopar]

Hey all, not sure if this is the right section for this. I was driving home and about a mile or so from the house the engine quit on me. There was no stumbling, no surging, no rough running, it felt exactly like i took my foot off the gas pedal.

Once the car came to a stop, i tried turning it over and it gave me 1 backfire, and wouldnt even try and catch after that. I left it alone in fear of something serious that happened. I started to smell an oil like smell from outside the car which scared me to death. Car had good fuel pressure. I did notice my coil, that is bolted to the intake mani, was extremely hot. Like i couldnt touch it. Possible culprit?

So as of now, i have drained the oil, pulled all 8 plugs, pulled valve covers to make sure it all looked right, and everything seems normal. Everything except the magnetic drain plug.
There were metal shavings stuck to the magnet. Nothing hard or chunky, it was all like metal powder, felt like mud. I attached a pic of it.

So my questions are, what should i be looking into for what made the engine quit? And what would have worn to create that type of metal mush in the oil, and how much should i be worried about that?

I have new ignition system from FBO, new coil, new wiring harness. With the plugs out i turned the crank with a wrench and everything felt and sounded normal. Any insight is appreciated.

 

[manic_mopar]

Regarding the oil smell, i think it came from my breathers on the valve cover. There was oil splatter in the engine bay that i think was doing that. Ive had problems with them leaking oily air before. The exhaust tips were dry and not oily, save for soot.

 

[khryslerkid]

Bring it up on TDC and see if the distributor and valves line up.

How many miles on the engine?

 

[miller]

Powdered metal? Think I'd be looking at some cam lobes, first.

 

[PP1RT]

Powdered metal? Think I'd be looking at some cam lobes, first.

I think it would still run even with a lobe or two ground off. The backfire thing leads to timing suspicions. Loose dizzy or jumped tooth on chain...

 

[Bruzilla]

Had the same problem happen to me twice. Once it was the coil and the second it was the ballast resistor. If the car wouldn't try to restart at all, I would look at the coil.

 

[manic_mopar]

Bring it up on TDC and see if the distributor and valves line up.

How many miles on the engine?

Ill check that this week and see how it looks.

The miles will be a total guess, as my speedo cable was broken for quite a few years before we fixed it. A ballpark guess would be a couple thousand miles at most. The engine rebuild is probably 10-12 years old, and it was not driven long distances the times it did get driven, nor driven very often.

My dad mailed me an endoscopic camera im going to use to get inside where the cam shaft is and inspect the lobes. If anything looks fishy, ill be digging deeper.

Thanks for the ideas so far!

 

[idrivemopar]

Also check the grounding to your engine and to the ECU(does the case of the ECU have good contact with the firewall), if it lost ground, it wont start, and will also just shut off without warning since the coil gets its negative feed via the ECU. Easy way to check is run a negative wire from the coil negative to ground, if it runs, then its an ECU ground issue!!! LOL Ask me how I know!!!

 

[747mopar]

Start with the basics, fuel and ignition. The backfire makes me think ignition like mentioned, have you checked for spark yet and do you have another coil to try out? As for the drain plug, do you clean it on every oil change? That wouldn't concern me much on a fairly fresh engine just because the cam and timing chain are going to create some fine metal on break in but should clear up after that.

 

[66Satellite47]

The motor will still run with a failed, ground down cam lobe. I've been there. Destroyed cam lobes, but still ran OK, just really slow. Metal sludge on the magnet is pretty common. Sounds like electrical.

 

[67 GTX]

A failed cam lobe could result in a loss of oil pressure. I've experienced that twice. The metal shavings are a bit concerning.
I would first check out the car electrically.

 

[The Rebel]

Would the fusible link to the starter relay coming off be the issue?

 

[manic_mopar]

Yall are great. Thanks for all the ideas and places to check. That coil is about 4 or 5 months old from FBO, ill give Don a call and see what he thinks. I have my old coil to try if need be. I tested the ohms on the coil and it's where it should be as far as i can tell.

If i can get that camera inside the engine ill post some pics of the cam.

 

[oldbee]

Check first for 12v coming out of bulkhead conn.

 

[flypaper]

Electrical circuits are weakest link.
I would start there first.
After testing the ballast and coil out
I would be checking the bulkhead..

 

[6PKRTSE]

I had this problem with my Charger. Started shutting down while driving down the road. Sometimes it would start back up, other times it would not. It turned out to be the bulkhead connector going into the firewall. No matter what I tried it would always repeat itself eventually, sometimes I would drive it for weeks thinking it was fixed & then one day it would just die. Finally changed the entire engine harness over last winter. It has been fine all this summer.

 

[manic_mopar]

Well i hope it isnt the bulkhead, because it's brand new. Lol. Everything has been rewired in the past couple months to M&H. Ill double check that all the connections are set right.

 

[manic_mopar]

Hey guys, I just wanted to update yall with what happened. After checking the motor out thoroughly, I decided it is fine. The backfire was probably loaded up fuel from the way the motor shut down suddenly.

So then I started the electrical hunt. The coil was not sparking at all when I left the high output cable dangling against the manifold. I checked about everything I could think of. Plug wires, ground wires, harnesses, etc. I called Don with FBO and he had me check distributor parts, coil, wiring, continuity, etc. After everything checked out correctly, we deduced that I was his first customer with a failed ignition box. He sent me a new one and STILL no spark. So I again started digging around everything I could muster to check and nothing seemed out of place. On a whim, I pulled my tach lead off of the coil neg, so that way there was nothing but the ignition system involved. Sure as **** it sparked! I hooked it all up and she fired right up.

So then the exploration began in finding the ground issue with my tach lead. I couldnt find a break anywhere. I dug all the way in the dash and all the way up to the tachometer itself, and low and behold, a shmooshed tach wire was in between the steering column and the steering column bracket from when we did the dash wiring. I cut it out, rewired, and everything works as it should. Thanks everyone for helping out! Don at FBO is awesome, i highly recommend getting stuff from him, he will help you out with any problems til it gets solved.

The pic below is the part of the tach wire that was squished and ended up grounding out.

 

[The Rebel]

Whew, I'm sure your exhausted from trying to figure it all out. Glad to see it was a small issue and not a huge one.

 

[khryslerkid]

I guess it was almost the same as turning the key off and on until it finally made a good ground and just quit. Could have blew up a muffler!

Glad you found it and thanks for the update