Here is the REAL reason all those cars get scrapped with low mileage. JCI..Japanese Cumpulsory Insurance. You pay out the wazoo for a car to be insured over three or 5 years old. Their car inspection process is a nightmare. You could slap brand new brakes, every single part, a block away from the inspection station and it will still fail. You can't get the insurance without the inspection. I was just in Tokyo last year for a month at Yokota AFB. The base auto hobby shop scrapped two perfect GVR4's while I was there before I could rob parts off of them..Both had around 80k kilometers, or 40k or so miles on them. But the rubber ring that is the "vibration damper" disintegrates from age, just like wiper blades and window wipers (The rubber on the door that keeps water out of the door where the windows slide). Basically, think of this. The damper is composed of three parts. The first, and most obvious, is the crank pully, or the part that all the belts ride on. Then you have a round piece of rubber, and beneath that you have the actual balancer, which is a hefty little piece of cast iron. This is the part that actually bolts to the crankshaft. The rubber deteriorates..plain and simple. Also, improper belt tensioning techniques kill it. If you, like me, have an alternator belt that squeals no matter how new it is, you crank it down until it doesn't squeal anymore. But if you didn't stage the tightness, and apply the equal tension against the a/c belt, you will pull the lower pully towards the alternator, and you can visually see the crank pulley wobbling. When that happens, and you see ANY WOBBLE AT ALL, it is just a matter of days or months before the pulley separates from the rubber. Mine shot thru my hood at warp nine or so...and shredded my timing cover along with all the belts along the way. Underdrive pulleys are one piece, and while they don't do anything for vibration damping, they don't break into two pieces either..most of the time. So the question is, how old are all your belts? If they have ANY cracks, they are dry and are slipping when water hits them. If they are new, then check your balancer and see if it is wobbling. Just remove the drivers front tire, and the splash shield, and it will be staring you in the face. Put a straight edge across it and see if it is cocked to one side or the other. Start the car and watch to see if it wobbles, or spins in an egg shaped arc. And then replace it either with a new one or an underdrive pulley set. (Although if you have a bumpin' stereo, you'd be better off with a SMALLER pulley on the alternator so it will actually spin faster) When those balancers do fail, I've seen examples like mine, where it exits through some sheet metal, but I've also seen it wedge in between the frame rail and the bottom part of the balancer, and make a racket that sounds like your crank just fell out on the ground. And if you do that, hey, do the timing belt!
Dave
