Hello all, was hoping someone could answer a question regarding my vehicle. As I was driving the vehicle just quit on me, all the lights on dash work and vehicle will crank. I heard a slight misfire when I was cranking and some smoke looked like it was coming out of the intake (on the air filter side). There was no CEL or any light that turned on prior to this happening. At first I thought it was the timing belt so I turned it in to a local shop as I did not have the time or resources to do the job myself. The shop later informed me that it was a timing chain, so of course I did my research and sure enough there were 3 chains. The wanted to dig deeper in the engine and were going to charge me over 2500 just to crack it open. I refused and asked if they had done any diagnostics prior to removing the valve cover. They said there was nothing that came up. I towed the vehicle home and proceeded to put the valve cover back on again (they didn't even put it together again and how a valve lifter sneaked out of the valve cover and hid beside the battery is beyond me, they had said it was missing when they opened the valve cover). As I was trying to get the lifter back in I turned the crank, there was no movement of the chains. Which brings me to the question, is there anything that would prevent the movement of the chains when the crank was turned? I put a breaker bar with a 19mm socket on the crank to turn it and there was no movement at all. I still put the lifter back in, I just turned the cam instead with a 15mm socket. The chains did move when I turned the cam. After I put the valve cover on I went and hooked up my scanner and the codes P0340 - P0180 - P0340 came up. Sorry for the long post, I'm hoping someone can help me out.

 

I'll assume you have the 3.5L DOHC engine? It does have the 3 chains as mentioned. The primary chain connects the crank to both intake intake camshafts. The 2 short chains connect from the intake camshafts to drive the exhaust camshafts. You could have failure in any of the chains or sprockets. I would guess it is the primary chain drive system for the car to suddenly quit. If the main drive goes, everything goes. If only 1 of the cam drive chains goes, it would run horrible or barely?
How many miles on engine?