Where to begin for the mechanically inept
 

OK here's what happened. I bought my '76 914 2 years ago and it ran great right up until a week ago. In the last 2 years I put 3000 mi on it. It's had 1 oil change and no valve adjustments (they were adjusted just before I got the car). A week ago I started it up and it ran rough. I let it warm up for a couple of minutes - no improvement. I began to drive it. I got about 2 blocks when it made a grinding sound and quit. The starter will not turn the engine over. In neutral the car was hard to push home. I am not mechanically inclined but I'm pretty sure whatever happened was probably pretty bad. The oil was down 1/2 qt and appeared still clean from the last change. Whaddaya think:(

Sounds similar to a problem I just had.

One morning I started the motor and out of the blue, it was running rough. Some small object had worked itself free inside my distributor. After a couple of minutes, the freed part siezed the distributor. The steel distributor drive shaft then tore the snot out of the brass timing gear on the crankshaft. Bad grinding sound. The siezed distributor immobilized the entire engine, and the starter wouldn't crank it. (At some point, the siezed dizzy part actually shot through the distributor housing. Left a hole like a bullet hole.)

I've heard that this (as caused by a siezed dizzy) is pretty rare, but your symptoms sound very familiar. I can't account for the difficult push home in neutral, though.

I wound up rocking the car back & forth a bit in high gear, which freed the motor. I believe in doing so it actually popped the distributor up out of its retainer. The starter could then turn the engine, but that probably wasn't a great idea at the time. Anyway, that's where I began troubleshooting, and I quickly found brass shavings . . .

I can't tell you that my technique was the best approach . . . I have a tendency to just jump in feet first.

Mark

Hi Mark, Thanks for the tip. I just checked and the distributor appears intact. No bullet holes, nothing loose or rattleing around inside.:confused:

My 2.0 hydro-locked on me once. A bad ECU was causing way too much fuel to get dumped into the manifold. It was so much, in fact, that it wound up being more than the volume of the combustion chamber when the piston was at TDC.

Fuel (by itself) is not very compressible. Stopped the starter cold!! Didn't bend anything, happily. I cleared it by pulling the spark plugs, disconnecting the coil, and cranking the starter. I'm told fuel shot up in the air about 15 feet!!!

I'd try that. I'd also remove the valve covers and look to see if anything is obviously different about one valve.

Not sure what else I'd try offhand.

--DD

Pull the valve covers, make sure that the rockers and everything look fine.

Like Dave said, pull the sparkplugs and the Fuel pump relay. Do a compression check.

Eliminate anything external that might lock up the engine. Remove the alternator belt and air pump belt (if you have one). See if the engine cranks over. Remove and check the starter, see if the engine will turn using a screwdriver on the flywheel (NOT the fan). Hopefully it's not an internal problem.