Well now that DCX has had a look at the car, I'll explain what happened.
On Tuesday afternoon, just over a week ago, I decided I'd replace the clamps on the IC hose under the air box with t-bolt clamps. Since it wasn't a huge job, I decided to do it in the parking lot of the townhouses I live at... bad idea.
I wanted to replace these clamps because I had overtightened one of the OEM clamps and it had faltered. After I had removed the airbox and IC hose, one of the maintenance guys (of the townhouse) came over and told me (very politely) that I really couldn't do that kind of work there in the parking lot, so I'd have to put it all back together and work elsewhere. So I explained what I was doing and put the new clamps in a hurry. There was mistake #2. While I was primarily concerned with making sure I got them on tight, and did so quickly, I never checked for clearances around the bolts of the T-bolt clamps.
Wednesday morning I head out to go to work. On the 490W, about half way to work, I decide to give it some throttle, to see if the boost goes any higher than it did before, but it only boosts to 5psi or so, despite accelerating pretty strong. The accelerator pedal felt odd. I'm confused as to why it only went to 5psi, so I slow down and try again, same thing - this time when I take my foot off the gas, the car keeps going! Now I'm really confused. I quickly try playing around with the gas pedal, even grabbing it with my hand and pulling on the cable. Nothing helps. So now I'm flying down the road and comming up to some traffic ahead. I try braking. It slows the rate of acceleration, but isn't going to prevent me from punting the car ahead of me off the road (I was doing at least 90 or so now, I figure (honestly, I didn't look at the speedometer, nor the tachometer, as they were the least of my concerns).
In desperation, I pull it out of gear. Mistake #3. While the car begins to slow fine (with me braking), the RPMs go through the roof. I put it back in 5th out of desperation to slow the RPMs, but again I'm about to plow into the SUV ahead of me, so I throw it in neutral again, for a few seconds, then realize I can and HAVE to turn it off. I coast to the side of the road.
A co-worker happens to come to spot me as he's comming in for work. He ends up tugging on the throttle cable and I get the car started, it idles fine. At this time, I still haven't realized what caused the problem to begin with.
I decide to just take it easy and get to work, only a couple miles away now, and figure out what's wrong in the parking lot. Mistake #4. As soon as I started back on the 490W, I noticed the car sounded very odd, especially when I was coasting. Less disconcerting, but yet troublesome, was the fact that the accelerator pedal felt awfully weird, and then got stuck at no trottle. So I ended up "bliping" it. While that "released" it from the idle position, it caused it to get stuck at a decent amount of throttle again. Here we go again...
Instead of instantly shutting it off, I make the same mistake again, and my first reaction is to shift into neutral. RPM's go off the board again, and I shut it down, this time substantially quicker than the first. As I'm in the center lane, I check my rear view to see if I can merge to the right and pull over. Before I get a chance to switch from the rear view to the passenger side mirror, I'm stunned by a large plume of white smoke (similar in appearance to Steve Anderson's car's demise run) trailing behind the car. I pull over and notice a trail of oil drippings behind the car. As I come around to the front, I see a pool of oil under the passenger tire. I look under the car to find that it has dumped a large portion, if not all of it's oil. :eeeek:
I walk the rest of the way to work, and end up having the car towed to a dealer. The throttle body got caught on the t-bolt clamp bolt. They didn't want to touch it until someone from DCX could have a look at it, which they finally did today. Obviously, it's not going to be warrantied, which was confirmed today. I can't blame DCX as it'd make no sense to warranty it - I caused the problem which grenaded the engine.
I gave the dealership today the okay to disassemble the engine to determine the entire extent of the damage. They've guestimated it's likely to have caused damage to quite a few different things, including the turbo. From my understanding (and I haven't looked at it since I had it towed away), I made 2 holes in the engine, 1 right through the oil pan, and at least a crack in the crankcase.
This was one of the earliest SRT-4's - the first of the first batch of more than 5 cars, and it had taken a beating before I aquired it, as it was a "factory program car", that I bought with something like 800 miles. Yet it ran perfectly, until I managed to destroy it last week.
I'm depressed, naturally. The predictions from the dealer are around $5,500. And that's at "their cost" and reduced labor rate. This in addition to me having taken out substantial loans to help out two family members, whom are now really wrecking my financial situation in a bad way.
