So the crank no start is a false flag? It didn’t crank? Engine locked? So battery not dead? I believe they should just pull the spark plugs at this point. A whole lotta information missing.
They said they ruled out electronic cause. Is it still possible Spark Plugs could be to blame?
The friend said the time it didn’t start was the first time he attempted to start.
No. You are misunderstanding what is being said. You would pull the plugs to put a scope into the cylinders to take a look for coolant or other issues. It’s an inspection, not the cause.
It is not the spark plugs. The odds of them all failing at the same time is right there with winning the Lottery every year…
There really needs to be some clarification on this. It is stated the starter works and then that they tried to spin the crankshaft and it would not spin.
Surely the engine did not seize up and the starter motor broke the flex plate? A broken flex plate would turn but not crank the engine and besides, a broken flex plate would be noisy.
Or a lunched timing chain?
Have they not considered the data logger which may reveal what happened?
No idea what is going on with them but this should not be a difficult problem to diagnose.
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Remove the spark plugs.
Now try starting the engine.
If the engine turns over and coolant squirts out of any of the spark holes, there’s the problem.
Tester
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We had a forklift at work that the nose cone broke off of the starter and wedged itself against the flywheel, making it impossible to turn the engine over manually. I do not know if this is a possibility. Would be a good random “tried to start it and it just locked up” scenario, though.
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This is a long shot, but not unheard of in rural areas. Mice commonly build nests in cars left for any period of time. These nests are not large and are hidden in small pockets. In the process of build such, they will frequently chew wiring for nesting materials and/or expand an area. This happens at Denver International Airport long-term parking somewhat frequently with both mice and rabbits. The mouse nests can be hard to find.
As I said, rare, but a potentiality in a rural setting.
Not all that rare, I don’t think. I thought of that too, but it wouldn’t “lock the motor up” where you couldn’t manually turn the engine over.
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I was considering the many onboard computers–and speculating based on the potential of one disconnect could halt the entire process–not necessarily freeze-up a motor. I’m afraid I didn’t follow-through the entire post; only the initial conundrum presented.
I’m also a bit suspect of the dealer in question.
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Actually I think there is a lot being lost in translation from the dealer to the friend to the OP. Not clarifying no start, dead battery, etc. It took a long time to find out the dealer had tried to turn the engine over by hand and found it was locked up. A locked engine, depending on the cause would be a prime candidate for a diagnosis of “engine shot”. Anxiously awaiting what caused it to lock up.
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Absolutely baffled. By no means am I qualified to provide mechanical advice. I’m not at all a mechanic–only experienced working on my older cars (50s, 60,s and 70s) when I had them. The initial problem presented just rang a bell. I thought it a viable explanation.
And, I would trade my 2005 pickup anytime to retrieve one of those vehicles. They were much simpler to maintain.
It is a viable explanation for a no start after storage. It was the first thing that came to my mind also. The engine not turning over by hand is the kicker.
81k miles , 2013 age car. Regularly serviced. Running when parked. An idling motor does not break while shutting off. With no history of prior issues.
Timing chain phaser sprockets were rattling for 10k miles? OP says there were no issues when parked. But they do sound quite mechanically challenged. Tech noob? Perhaps.
Yeah I had a timing chain go sitting at a red light but never locked the engine up. Just the opposite.
Look on the bright side maybe. Some years ago at an airport in Central America as I recall, a big passenger jet was parked for 6 weeks b/c there weren’t’ enough tickets sold to justify flying a plane that big, so the airline used their smaller planes instead. Meanwhile the big jet plane sat there while the central American inspects were buzzing around. One of these insects decided to build a nest in the plane’s pitot tube, which is the gadget that the pilot (and the instruments) use to measure the plane’s airspeed. When the plane was put back into service 6 weeks later, full of passengers, it took off ok, but as it gained altitude the blocked pitot tube caused the pressure inside to build up, which looked to the instruments like the plane was flying too fast. The auto pilot cut power to try to slow the plane down, and before the pilot could figure out what was happening, it crashed.
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Insects cause an amazing amount of problems with planes. I know of one guy who had a colony of bees decide to hang out in one of the jet engines of his private plane. He didn’t realize they were there until he started the engine and noticed the temperatures weren’t coming down like they normally did after startup. He shut it down and discovered them at that point - of course, they’d basically turned to glass, and he ended up having to repair it to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars.
His paint shop guys heard the story, so as a joke the next time it was in for paint, they painted a bee on that engine housing, which he thought was funny so it’s still there today. 
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I wonder if we will ever get the official verdict?
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