Anyone want to give insight on a car problem?

[cally]

Parenting advice is OK too. :sigh:

So the car died in SF at 3 in the morning after the Paul McCartney concert. That's about 35 minutes away. At least they were smart enough to inch it along until they found a safe place to park it and hang in a hotel lobby while they waited for help. That's the parenting part.

Car part: The car was put in neutral while going 70 mph. My youngest hit it and put it into neutral. My older daughter panicked and tried to put it in gear. She was in heavy traffic and just lost power and freaked. She thinks she tried to put it in reverse but none remember any loud noises or jerks. She never got it in gear and ended up pulling over while in neutral. Then tried driving again and the car worked fine but she noticed a slight noise. Drove another 40 miles. Then the car gave a couple of jerks, loud noises, and just seemed broke. She said that she couldn't get any speed. We just drove it. I can go up to 45 mph (these are city streets so I didn't try much more) but it's making sounds and seems sluggish. This car is not worth much. My question is, "Can you put a car into reverse without massive disaster at high speed?" "Could you drive after this?" My husband thinks it's a head gasket, I think it's the transmission, my father--the only knowledgeable one but who is totally biased towards my daughter--thinks there's a chance it's the transmission link wire? My question is, "How much should we spend diagnosing the problem before we ditch the car?"

[BoX o BooX]

1. Is this a manual or an automatic?

This is a key question.

[cally]

2. Automatic..nt

[BoX o BooX]

4. OK, no panicking, and no blame.

If she had gotten even close to getting into reverse on the fly, you would have heard it.

Let's not assume the "post hoc ergo propter hoc" fallacy here. The shift into neutral (which is harmless) and the subsequent attempts to shift back into gear may be totally unrelated to the actual problem or problems involved.

What year, make and model is this car? How many miles?

[cally]

6. 1990 Mazda Protege

Has rust and body damage. It has 99,000.

[BoX o BooX]

12. My advice:

Don't throw good money after bad.

Tomorrow, I am donating my Ford Aspire to charity because it would cost $550 just to drop the transmission and LOOK at it for the problem. This is way too much to spend on my 8-year-old car... and yours is 15 years old.

As far as parenting advice goes, wait for my book, "Benadryl & Duct Tape: Child-Rearing in the 21st Century."

[CanuckAmok]

9. that's what I'm thinking: coincidence.

n/t

[Liberal_Andy]

3. You need to call Click and Clack

on NPR on Saturdays

[southern democrat]

5. What kind of car ?

[CanuckAmok]

7. if it's domestic and any ewer than '79 or so, the transmission will have..

...'fuse gear'. This is a gear with a lower stress threshold than the rest of the gears in the transmission (it's usually plastic). It is designed to fail if too much strss is put on the driveline (i.e. dropping it into reverse at 70mph), in order to save more expensice components inside the tranny or engine, or the u-joint/c.v. joints.

The thing is, if the fuse gear has failed, you *shouldn't* be able to get the car in motion at all.

Take it to a reputable tranny shop, and tell them you're trying to decide if it's worth fixing.

I doubt if it's an engine issue unless:

1) the sudden inrease in rpms was too much of a shock to an engine which was on the brink of failure anyway.

2) a complete coincidence.



on edit: I was going to fix the typos, but there were too many of them, so I changed my mind.

[southern democrat]

8. If car makes noise while in park and revving engine, probably

over reved engine when it went into neutral at high speed. This may have caused engine to spin rod bearing resulting in noise you hear.

[CanuckAmok]

10. I dunno...

I thought about that, but a '90 Mazda would have a decent rev limiter for just that scenario.

on edit: and don't take this the wrong way, but is there a chance you may not be getting the whole story from your kids?

[southern democrat]

11. No I doubt it has and it doesn't take very long to over rev a 4 cly

[cally]

13. Of course

You wouldn't believe how many questions I had to ask to get this far. So what do I need to ask?

On edit: She told me she had put on the gas while in neutral. She may have 'over revved' the engine.

[cally]

14. Thanks all

You all offered some good insights and information. I'm going to let the mechanic look at the car and then decide what to do.