Today was my lucky day, I guess...

[2brokey]

So, it seems before I could get to do anything fun, I've got trouble. I've got a '91 Q45 with +185300 miles on it, and it's not doing very well atm. So, besides me planning on tossing its autotragic which wasn't doing an amazing job on cold starts, and the various other issues I was working on fixing, I think I am now out a motor. It was starting to make noise at higher RPM (+4K) so I figured maybe the timing stuff *wasn't* done after-all. So today, I am driving, and I am not exceeding my self-imposed rev-limit of 3500RPM, and it seemed to be ok until I stopped for breakfast. When I returned to the car and start it up, I hear some fun knocking and scraping sounds! Hooray!!! Since I have been down this road before with a particular VG30DE twice... I figure its the doom song... What I thought was valve-train noise consistently past 4K started 2 days ago. I drove home with the knocking since I was far away and made it by keeping it under 2,500 RPM - mostly between 1,500 and 2,000 RPM.

[BCC93QT]

IDK if this helps/hurts but 185k on plastic timing chain guides @ 21 years old is almost unheard of. Depends where the car has been i guess though. My body doner was a 92 with plastic backed guides @ 203k miles single owner FL car. Still ran though. transmission wouldn't shift higher than 1st. My guess is your chain has not jumped if it still runs/idles.

[2brokey]

Yeah, you're probably right that it didn't jump...but the tensioner more than likely has failed or something.... along with probably shot rod bearings... The motor is dirty inside as well. The car has had a rough life...

Who wants to speculate on what the damage is when I inevitably tear it apart?

I am not done with the G50 platform.