The latest Puzzler answer, about how a car could run badly with a broken timing belt, says that it could, because it was a Subaru, and it had two timing belts. Anyone know which Subaru engines had two (one for left 2 cylinders, one for right 2)? I took a quick look, didn’t find any. @ok4450 - any come to mind?
Just about all of them in the mid-80’s. It’s been so long that I can’t remember for sure if it was the 1.8 and 2.2, but I believe it was all of the first generation of the squared-off body style.
For what it’s worth, I’ve seen this exact problem more than once. Car comes puttering in on 2 cylinders, the right timing belt is broken but the left one (which is the side of the engine with the distributor) still going.
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I thought that was an excellent puzzler too. Was definitely perplexed at first, but finally decided the subject vehicle must have multiple timing belts. The problem was, I couldn’t think of any engines with that configuration. But I figured it had to be a horizontally opposed configuration of some sort. At first I was thinking it was an air-cooled VW Beetle but I don’t believe those engines use timing belts.