dhamilton

Not one week after finishing up the timing belt job, I'm driving down the lovely Southern California freeway system in heavy traffic, enjoying the steady sound of my newly rejuvenated engine...

When a huge rock, 2-3 feet across, comes catapulting out of the pickup truck in front of me and lands squarely in the middle of my lane, bouncing up and down and conveniently not skidding off to the side of the road or out of my way. Car to the left; car to the right. It's all I can do to keep it from going into the tires, so I hear a mighty whacrack as it hits what I assume at the time to be the oil pan at oh what feels like about a thousand miles an hour.

Assuming catastrophic damage, I watch the oil pressure gauge expecting it to drop to the floor, but it is steady and when I pull over the engine itself sounds fine and does not appear to be leaking any fluid. It's dark, though, so I can't see what the material damage is.

I get back on the road and everything seems fine as long as I'm accelerating. As soon as I let my foot off the gas, though, now there's a sort of whirring/light scraping sound coming from below and maybe slightly behind the gearshift. It's there when the car's in gear, in neutral, or when I have the clutch in, as long as it's moving; it makes no sound at rest or when accelerating. As soon as I let off the gas and coast though, whirrwhirrwhirr. Give the drivetrain some torque and it quiets up again. When I got home there was a slight scent like a burning clutch, but not very strong.

I'm waiting until morning to take a look at it (and now it's supposed to rain all weekend, so it might be a bit before I can get a real good look at it), but what should I be looking for? A few other posts make me think that maybe the engine got whacked out of alignment with the transmission, and when accelerating it leans back into proper position, but while coasting it leans forward back out of alignment. Is it possible that the transmission itself took the hit and something inside got bent? Seems like that would make noise while accelerating as well.

Could the center torsen differential be making a noise like this as well, if it had taken the hit?

Thank you, man with random boulders unsecurely loaded in his old Toyota Hi-Lux, for making my life that much more interesting.

maineman

could be anything....... tell us what you find.