Just bought this van from a church in town, $500, 111,000 miles. It needed a cat, which a buddy of mine and I welded on, some slight body work, had a few misfires. We changed all the plugs/coil packs, did a ton of random interior work, bondo'd the body to seal her up, re-painted, etc. It was running, no SES, no dash lights at all. Seemed to be running well for all intents and purposes.

The A/C pulley sounded a bit loose, it was rattling a bit but we thought it was just the A/C clutch portion which we figured needed to have some play. The A/C blower stopped working 2 days ago. I figured it may be a relay/fuse issue. I removed what I believed was the A/C relay in the distributor box, then tried to start the van, I heard the belt squeal and a faint smell of rubber, so I killed the engine, then tried to turn it over again. No crank, no start.

I guess my main question is like how likely is it that the engine is seized? Does anyone have experience with the V10 Triton from 1997? The oil looked super clean and there's been oil in the van. I haven't yet pulled the belt or thrown on my OBD2, I figured pulling the belt and trying to start the engine would be a good place to start, or to try to turn the engine through the crank.

Really hoping I didn't drop $1,000 into a seized truck!

 

I'm confused. You have a no crank, and of course you have a no start, and from that you are thinking the engine is seized? How about troubleshooting the no-crank before assuming the engine is shot?

 

Well, my OBD2 read nothing. I think you're right I'm probably jumping the gun. I'm not 100% where to start, my first inclination is the pull the belt and see if all the pulleys still spin. It was hard to crank manually. I think it's curious that we were messing with the relays and then the problem started. I've had the van for about 3 weeks and it's always started right up no issue, even when the cat was off it just sounded super loud.

any advice on where to start? thanks for replying

 

Let's review:

1. The van was starting fine.
2. You pulled a relay that you assumed was for the AC.
3. Now your van won't start.

I think I'd put things back the way they were and try it again, before I started ripping anything apart.