So I've been looking at buying a 1990 Mitsubishi Montero in my local area, but the catch is that the engine is apparently "seized". The story goes that the lady took it to a mechanic's shop that did a poor job of replacing the head gaskets or doing some work on the head, the truck ran for about 3 miles apparently and then locked up. The dealership that now has it, took the engine fan off to try spinning the engine which seems strange to me since the fan isn't attached to the crank? Well the engine has oil and coolant so it doesn't feel like it overheated or ran out of oil. Does anyone else have any experience or expertise that they could perhaps provide for this situation. Thank you for your time.

 

If the malfunction happened shortly after the work was done on heads/head gaskets, it is likely that the timing was not set properly. If that were to happen, the engine may have jumped couple teeth on the timing belt and you have pistons making contact with the valves = engine does not want to spin. If that is what happened, you can get it it running with relatively minor repair of the heads (possibly replacing few bent valves). I can't imagine of any other scenario of why engine would seize up so quickly after the work you describe.
The reason they took the fan off was to get to the crank shaft pulley. Then you can try to turn engine by hand.

Are you looking to purchase it? If so, it could be a diamond in the rough, since you can rebuild these engines fairly easily. If the worst comes to worse and the engine is not rebuildable, then you can find a drop in used junk yard engine. At any rate, if you are a fixer upper kind of a person - bargain down down down and give it a try.

 

Yeah the truck is cheap enough and suprisingly clean enough that it would totally be worth it. Thank you so much for your response and that's what I kinda figured, I've only ever done realitively minor work like transmission swaps and stuff nothing with opening an engine.

 

First time for everything