There is a very very slight possibility that when the belt broke there was no engine damage. But I sure wouldn’t waste the money on trying to fix a 300k mile engine just to find out it’s trashed…doesn’t make sense to me. 99% of the time when a belt breaks on a interference engine there’s engine damage.
Thanks, cappy, that’s my thinking exactly.
Thanks, Mike. I hope that this info will persuade my dear wife not to attempt a fix.
Rocketman, my wife’s limited research has found some backyard mechanics who figure they can repair the damge for less than the dealer’s estimate, so the repairs become competiitve with a replacement. The thing is though, I meant that it ran clean, quiet, and reliable, which was the engine, and now that is gone. The rest of the car was showing its age - failing windows and door locks, crumpled fenders, etc. If we’d kept all that up to speed, which would have cost two or three thousand, then we’d want to risk putting it back on the road now, and if we’d done that then we’d have replaced the timing belt too, and so for less than what it will cost us to replace the Honda with a newer, lower mileage, better fuel economy model, we could have kept that elegant old Accord like new. I guess when we figure in the loss to the planet when we convert it to scrap, if you’ll pardon the presumption, taking excellent care of the Accord would have been the right course to follow.