Thank you!

 

The odds on bet all you need to have done is have the heads rebuilt or replaced. I'd recommend you have the car towed from the Honda dealer to a reputable shop in your area and have the heads pulled.

As for Option #4, yes, some folks do buy cars with bad motors (and/or transmissions); fix them up and either keep them or resell them. The issue here is you will almost never get much for such a car; I'm thinking you'd be lucky to get more than $1,500 for the car, probably considerably less.

 

I do have a reputable independent mechanic in town that I trust and I'm going to have him look at it. I sure hope you're right and it just needs a valve job or something simple like that. When it stalled and my wife called for AAA, they tried boosting it thinking it was a dead battery due to the -24F temperature (although I told her to tell them it wasn't likely since all the lights were on and the car was turning over). I hope that the act of boosting it and trying to start it with jumped timing didn't do additional damage. Thanks for your advice. Sounds like selling as-is isn't the best choice financially.

 

This should be a pretty easy job for your local mechanic, slap some remanufactured heads on there and you'll be good to go.

 

If you have someone look into it, not sure how far "Honda" went.....did the bolt on the timing belt idler/tensioner come out or break?

There is a small note in the service manual to not re-use that bolt.....many have without issue, many have to only have an early failure due to the bolt backing out or breaking.

 

The Honda tech says there's nothing out of place with the timing belt or the tensioner. He has no idea how it jumped time. Something just doesn't seem right to me with an answer like that. How can my cam shafts be off that much but the belt and the tensioner (both new last Aug) look fine???

I'm not a mechanic, so I have no clue. He says it probably had to do with the multiple days in a row of -20F temperatures, something to do with the tensioner fluid freezing and causing the belt to slip. Does that sound possible?

 

Just thinking as I type; if they replaced the tensioner last August with a cheap knock off brand, it is possible the new tensioner didn't like the cold weather.