Hey guys, my friend hit a pole on the driver front of car in his T2, and the fender is up against the power steering pump. We are hoping the engine is still good. The motor has not fired up since the wreck (2 months ago) but when it crashed, it held all fluids, but died since the battery was ejected from the car. Anyway, tonight I went to check compression but the motor turned very slowly. I had the starter connected to a remote starter and my battery....I changed batteries thinking there was not enough juice, and same thing. The engine rotated, could hear slight compression, but due to the 1/3 speed of normal turning, I wonder how tough these motors are and what could cause it to rotate so weakly. No problems at all before the wreck.
Any ideas?

 

You answered your own question. "and the fender is up against the power steering pump."
Check if the pump is bent in a way that the pulley is not aligned properly. It could be dragging when cranking.

 

Just remove (cut) the PS & AC belts.

 

And make sure that the grounds are good. The force of an accident can easily tear them. Also make sure that the battery is fully charged.

 

It seems I had checked the belts in case any were too tight, but it seemed they were all pretty loose. As far as grounds go, I had the jumper cable neg on the starter, the pos on the fattest solenoid bolt as normall, with a remote starter hooked up using 2 different batteries pulled from 2 running cars. Does it seem unlikely a 40 mph collision with a curb and telephone pole would damage the engine? I was expecting the compression to still be good, but was totally surprised when the engine rotated so slowly. I wonder if something inside the motor could have broken from the impact.

 

No one has seen a good engine go bad due to the impact of a collision? I would hate to swap the motor into another car and it not fire up...The only clue to a problem is the weak rotating while starting...I would hate to swap everything into another car to find out another engine was needed.

 

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