the 928 didn't make it
 

And I should have bought AAA with towing insurance before I left. 130 miles into my trip from Oregon to California - timing belt broke. I had it towed all the way home and then jumped in the BMW and made the trip. I'll get into it next week and hope I can tell why it broke - it was a fairly new belt. I'm thinking I should have bought one of the tension gauges instead of eye-balling it.

So did you get the registration all squared away?

Is your '82 Euro a 300hp 4.7L 'S' model, or the 4.5L 928? (both were available in '82 in Europe/RoW)

The belts are very strong. When I bought an engine once the seller used the old timing belt instead of a chain to lift the engine out. It got hung up a couple times and the cherry picker raised the whole front of the car.

My two guesses are that the belt was over tightened and broke or bent some other part, or something else happened.

Sometimes with the early Euro S motors a timing belt doesn't mean bent valves. Maybe it won't be too bad to fix.

Hi,

It's a 4.7L. It never made it to California, so I didn't get the title squared away. I'm going to give the paper work to my brother and let him visit DMV for me.

I'm told there's a puddle of anti-freeze under the 928 right now. It didn't leak before the belt broke :(

I've rescued 3 928's that have been reportedly sitting a while.

In the first operation of the respective motors, every one of them ended-up with leaking water pumps, regardless of other issues.

It happened in each case in my garage, though. Based on this, unless a car was previously and recently a daily driver, I'd tow it home.

In the scope of what things cost real money on a 928, towing is one that is worth it.

Yup, the engine I bought for my 928 wasn't run in sometime, but had plenty of clues that it was recently rebuilt. I just turned the Water Pump pulley to see if the bearings were still ok and it sprung a leak exactly as I turned it. Pump still looked brand new on the outside. These engines hate to sit.

the 928 didn't make it - photo
 

So much destruction. The belt wound around the crank gear and grew to break everything.
http://www.boazli.com/928belt.JPG

Loose belt?

So what failed and broke the belt in the first place?

I see a lot of debris like it might have been mistracking.

I won't speculate on why it broke until I get the belt off. I might be able to get the whole belt/gear off with one pull. The Cam gears and oil pump gear look ok and don't show signs of mis-tracking. The tensioner's push rod is bent - maybe too much pressure...Can I buy just the push rod for the tensioner or am I looking at the whole sha-bang?

It looks like the old square tooth design, so I would replace it all with new HTQ round tooth gears etc.

First find out what is bad. If the tensioner is damaged inside, no point in looking for bits to replace instead of the whole thing.

Why would he change this? I also have the old square tooth gears and it's fine. Wouldn't he have to change ALL (Cam, Oil, Crank, etc) Gears in order to run the newer style belt? Just sayin' that's all.

yes, you have to change it all but it's supposed to be a superior design less prone to slippage.

More Picures of the carnage:
http://www.boazli.com/928belt2.jpg
http://www.boazli.com/928belt3.jpg
http://www.boazli.com/928belt4.jpg

That whole belt was wrapped into a donut around the crankshaft

Did you set the crank to 45 degrees before you took off the damper?

I think you might be able to use the belt to measure counter clockwise back from crank gear starting at the kink and that will show what locked up.

Interesting how the inside of the tensioner roller is so beat up and the outside is still perfectly round.

Makes me think a much stronger belt and all sort of things might break before the belt does.