Hey all, I've got a big question. I drive a 91 Camaro with a 305 TBI.

Earlier today I was driving down the highway and I happened to look down and see that my temperature gauge was way passed the red. This is not normally something I look at too often which is why I never noticed it going up. I immediately pulled off the highway and shut the car off. Smoke was pouring out of the hood. After I let it cool off, I looked under the hood and noticed that the pulley for the water pump was crooked. I believe the bearings went out in the pump. My question is, do you think that my motor could have serious damage? The temp gauge was basically at 3 o'clock when the red area is at 1 o'clock. I let it sit there for several hours to cool before driving it the rest of the way home, which was only a couple miles away. The pump was rattling like crazy and the serpentine belt was squeaking. I really hope that my engine isn't shot. I have a new water pump that I will be putting on tomorrow and I pray that everything will be okay, but I can't help but feel like my engine is going to be trashed. It probably is, isn't it...

 

As long as you didn't run it boiled dry you are probably
ok-if you did boil it dry while running there is a chance
a head may be cracked-if it misses and blows steam
out the exhaust you will know what happened...
Might be good to do an oil change in case the oil got a
little burnt.

 

Well either way you need a water pump. Put on a new pump and fill it with coolant and you'll see. A lot of bubbles in the cooling system/cooling building up pressure really fast/excessive amount of heat quickly in system or the coolant can smoke means you have some damage. usually overheating a vehicle is okay. Numerous overheats result in engine damage. being your car is older it probably has been overheated before. But just try and hopefully it is okay!

 

I put on the new water pump today and everything looks good. There was a rattle coming out of my motor before and now it's gone. Must have been the bearings going bad, and they finally decided to go out completely. Everything is running great. No smoke or weird noises and the temperature is staying right where it needs to be. Thanks for your input.

 

U got lucky, i had mine overhead before when the PO decided it was best to wire the fan directly to the ignition with tiny wires until one day the switch he installed finally burn out, i reconnected the fan to the original connection and it works better now, now the car reaches operating temperature wich is nice. To blow up one of these motors with just a single short overheat is just not gonna happend sbc are hard as rock. And like Undercover89TBI said u should change your oil after that maybe it got cooked up and its just better to change it before u run into trouble.

 

I'm changing my oil tomorrow first thing. Poor car, it's one thing after another. I haven't had it that long, and whoever had it before me didn't care for it properly. I'm slowly but surely fixing different issues as they pop up. Nevertheless, I love that car. I've been told that small block chevy's are very durable motors, but it was pretty scary when all that happened.

 

thanks, but I didn't tell him to change his oil. but changing your oil often cannot hurt anything!

 

oh my bad i quoted the wrong person sry lol :P/