Well, it looks like Grover just might get a little busier in the immediate future: The engine in my wife's Taurus seized up last night. (Yes, there was oil in the engine. I'm not QUITE that brain damaged!) I thought I'd toss the problem out for you all to ponder, seeing as how most of us here are pretty familiar with the greasy secrets of the internal combustion engine. I also posted this to the V6 board. Yeah, I know my Taurus is not a Ford truck, but I figure I might be able to get by with posting this since it's a general engine problem.

For the record, the engine in question is in a 2002 Taurus, and it is the DOHC 3.0. The car has 148,000 plus miles on it.

The seizure occured just after I passed some guy disgracing the Ford name by only going 30mph in a 55 zone. After passing him, the transmission didn't upshift correctly (Hinting at MORE trouble!), and when it finally did, it didn't sound right. Shortly after that, my oil light came on, I began to lose power (and began looking for a place to pull off), then the little dash light that looks like a gear with an exclamation point in it came on, something began to clatter, and the engine died. All this happened in the space of about 30 seconds.

After stopping the car and thereby blocking a gate to one of Central Kentucky's many horse farms, I turned it off then tried to start it. The engine refused to budge. Since getting it home I tried a few more times to see if it would turn over, and this morning I succeeded. Of course, it turns slowly and I heard an expensive-sounding squeak about once a revolution.

So, the question is: What gave out? I have had no trouble with oil pressure in this car, ever, though I have noticed the oil sender has been annoyingly insensitive since we bought the car new. The seizure occurred very quickly (less than 30 seconds after the tranny did its weird little act) and without warning. Am I going to have to pull that engine and tear it down in my driveway in the cold? (I have the tools but no useable garage.) Will it help to squirt a little oil or kerosene on top of the pistons, like you would when reviving an engine that has sat a long time?

I figure Ive been pretty lucky in that I've never had this problem before, and I've been terrorizing America's roads since I got my license back in '75. I remember my dad's C-word truck seized up once, but he was able to get it running again without tearing the engine down. I dearly hope I can do the same for the Taurus, because I really do not want to lay on my back on he cold concrete driveway trying to remove the engine from that car.

 

before you tear down the motor, make sure it is not the tranny that is siezed.

same thing happened to my Mom's 2000 taurus with the 3.0 V6. one of the clutch drums snapped the gear off and basically siezed the car solid. depending on what broke in the tranny, it could cause the motor to sieze up.

so i would look at the tranny first to make sure it is not the cause of the problem before tearing apart the motor.

rgds
Mike

 

Good advice, should be easy enough to check. Pull the bellhousing inspection cover and pull the bolts between the torque converter and the flywheel then see which one turns without making the expensive sounding squeak.

I feel for you, this is not the time of year to be laying in the driveway on the cold concrete.

You might look into a crate engine or tranny. When my Suburban started pumping all of its coolant out of the exhaust last year I found it cheaper to buy a factory crate engine than to rebuild the one I had (plus it was alot faster and easier)

Good luck
Bobby

 

Believe it or not a very similar thing happened to my son's '90 TBird SC a couple months ago. It's a stick, so there were no tranny lights, but the key symptom was that it had a tremendous loss of power and died, then wouldn't even crank. I watched the engine while my son tried to crank it, and I could see the serpentine belt was changing tension as the engine tried to turn. It was the PS pump, it had burned up and finally locked up while the engine was at idle, so there was no belt squealing. So before you get too upset, pull off the serpentine and see if all your accessories will spin freely.

 

Ross,

You are the man! I forgot about stuff like that, now that you mention it I remember many a car being towed with the complaint of the engine locked up. Most of the time it turned out to be the AC compressor that locked up. We would pull the serpentine belt off, start the engine and drive it into the shop.

Bobby

 

This is very true, when the tranny went south on my Mother's foreign econo-box last year, it was cheaper to let the dealer install a factory rebuild than to have it rebuilt locally.

 

I got the engine to turn over today! When it first started turning over, it turned slowly, with that goshawful squeak. This evening I tried again, and it actually tried to start, but during the brief period of time it was firing it shook and squeaked. I think I'm going to pull the oil pan off before I do anything else.

By the way: I like the idea of checking the accessories. That is simple enough to do.

 

This is great advice - some of you may have seen my post a few weeks ago when a similar symptom occurred on my '53 F100. I was thinking the worst, but it turned out to just by my fan pulley bearing.

What's that saying? KISS? Keep it simple, stupid. Once I took a deep breath and realized it could be a number of things, I removed the belt to check the easy ones and that's what it was.