Q: I'm buying a car that is not running. The owner thinks it jumped time, the car had started to overheat so he shut it off then I wo

asked by on August 28, 2017

I am buying the mazda not running. The guy says that he thinks it jumped time, when he was driving it home the car started to over heat. He then pulled off, turned the car off and when cooled it wouldn't start again. I'm not thinking it's a timing problem, what's your thought?

My car has 120000 miles.
My car has an automatic transmission.

Sounds like the overheating caused coolant to fill up one of the cylinder or it lost compression from a warped cylinder head. A compression test would need to be done to see if the head is warped and blew the head gasket and warped the head surface and even possibly cracked the head itself.

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