Knowing How the System Works: The Timing Belt (The Break)

One evening, on the way home from work, my 1987 Celica left me sitting on the side of the road.

The engine just quit. I had no idea what happened, but since it was a standard transmission, I shifted to neutral and coasted to the shoulder. Coincidently, right in front of a Ford dealership.

So I walked in, pointed to my car stranded out front, and then withstood the onslaught of sales pitches for a new Ford while I asked to use a phone (pre-mobile phones). An hour later, my car and I, under tow, pulled into the Toyota dealer. 

A day or two later, I got what I thought was a strange phone call from the service manager. He called to tell me the timing belt had snapped and would need to be replaced for about $600. Fair enough. But then he also said,

“We noticed that the distributor cap and wires aren’t genuine Toyota parts. While we have it, we’d like to perform a tune-up, and with that we’ll replace the plugs, distributor cap and wires, etc with genuine Toyota parts.”

“How much will that cost?”

“$300”

“No thanks, just the timing belt, please.”

“Sir, we highly recommend that we perform this tune-up. We can’t guarantee that it will be running correctly unless we do this service.”

I was genuinely confused. Until the second the timing belt snapped, it was running perfectly.

“No, thanks.”

He persisted. So did I. Just the timing belt, please.

I got the call a few days later that it was ready. I paid the $600, hopped in, and pulled out onto the road. As soon as I hit the gas to accelerate, the engine bogged down, missed, backfired, and stalled. 

Now, wait a minute, here. What’s going on?