lesson(s) learned

I drive a 2014Chevy Cruze... and before you all start in on me and this car I know it has problems in it's engineering and designs. For one thing and is quiet common, it leaks engine coolant at the drop of the hat. It can leak from a number of places and does. The problem with that is everything is made of plastic when it comes to housing and fittings.
That design suxs and these cars will always see a time when there are coolant leaks.
Another thing is you can not over rev these engines. It is a little 4 banger @ 1.4 litre (which is about 85 cubic inch for our American friends)
:)

Anyway most small engines ever made since the dawn of man, were always able to rev high with no issues and rev high their whole lives. Not these little engines thou.
What happens is in the top of the engine, there are two cam shafts that are connected and timed at the one end of them. Their lobs push rods into a pumpkin like structure which is where the cylinder values are opened and closed.
When at high revs there is a great risk that the rods jump out place and values are stuck open (or something like that). The engine will run but it sounds like it is gonna blow sky high when this happens, if it runs at all.

Good news is that it can be fixed and long as nothing was bent it can be fixed with no new parts and in about 20 minutes you can have your car running normal again.

When that happened to me I had the car towed back to town (I was about 25 km away or 15.5 miles), and towed it straight to my regular mechanic... but he turned me away. He told me that he will not work on these Chevy Cruze cars. Heck if I know why :eek:
But he did quickly check things and told me the timing must have jumped out of time or something. And he told me to go to the chevy guy downtown, so I did (and another tow truck) :(

That guy was a chevy mechanic who at one time was head mechanic at the chevy dealership, so he must know chevys (you'd think).
So he worked on it and after charging me 2 hours he told me the engine was blown, kaput, done bought the farm.
He found damaged spark plugs and zero compression on two cylinders.
I asked and he said he could replace the engine for 1500 dollars labor and the cost of a new engine ... #%$@%

I took the car across town to my parents Autobody Shop (another tow truck) and called their salvage guy they used often. He had a used engine for 1800 Canadian dollars (that's about 1400 USD).

So I bought the engine and had it delivered to the shop. I was gonna tackle the engine swap myself with some pointers from the guys at the shop. They are Body guys thou and not trained mechanics. But we were gonna be okay with the job :)

Before I got started my brother in-law phoned me and told me to wait for him to come look at the car before I did anything. He is a mechanic but lives about 300 miles away (that's 300 miles... lol, see what I did there)

He showed up the next day and 20 minutes later my car was running just like it never had an issue at all.
No money, no parts just some time and of course I paid my brother for his gas, which was $100 (yous can translate that into USD)

And plus a seal for the cover, which my bro had with him. And we fixed the spark plugs which were closed up a bit, but otherwise no damage to them.
BTW, new spark plugs are very expensive these days, I think they are made outta 'rare earth' minerals or something.
I was able to return the engine for my money back with no related fees,so that was cool.

Lol... I later drove the car to the mechanic who told me the engine was blown and charged me 2 hrs labor to tell me that.
I told him it was fixed in 20 minutes at no charge.
He asked what was wrong with it. I told him for 2 hours labor I would tell him.... haaaa ....the look on his face was priceless :)

So there is all that, which is not even the story I wanted to tell you all :eek:
I wanted to get a second key for the car so I could run it to warm up before driving it during these cold winter days.
I went to dealership and a new key blank is cheap enough, just 29 bucks I think it was... but plus they wanted a 140 Canadian dollar fee to program the key.

I bought the blank and left the building and went home and went on-line to see if I could learn how to program it myself. Which I did.
Turns out with them older Cruzes and if you still have a working key, simply start the car with the original key and let it run about 5 seconds, then turn it off and insert the new key and turn the car on.
That's it, it is now programed and working great including the FOB buttons.

And I saved the gouging cost of 140 Canadian dollars !!!

Moral of the whole story(s) is do some research first before jumping into a high priced fix.

And my Chevy Cruze is a fine looking car (even if it is an engineer's nightmare)

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