Car is '04 Infiniti G35 w/6sp manual transmission. I was cruising on the highway around 70 heard slight "clunk", and saw a little bit of smoke come from the hood. The car then acted like it was in neutral (hit gas, revs go up but I'm just coasting). So I pull onto the shoulder, slow down to a stop and then it just dies and won't start.

I got the car back to my house and when I try to start I just hear a spinning noise. It's not a cranking noise, there is no horrible grinding noise, just an electrical spin somewhat high pitch type noise. I pulled the starter and had it tested at Autowherever, and it's fine the teeth look good also. I also was able to look at the flywheel thru the hole when the starter was out, and none of the teeth look broken. When I put the car in neutral, I can rotate the engine with the front crankshaft bolt and the flywheel spins (this is how I was able to see all the teeth on the flywheel).

Did the flywheel somehow break completely from the engine? Is that even possible if I can see it spinning when I rotate the motor manually? Why won't it even start and why do I only hear spinning, not grinding? Anyone have any idea what's going on?

 

Check your transmission housing for cracks. Verify that the area where the starter is didn't crack up.

However, given that the engine died on it's own, I bet there is more to it than just starter/flywheel issues.

 

I kinda sorta already did that.The bellhousing and starter area looked okay. I didn't see any cracks. Obviously since I didn't drop the tranny, I couldn't thoroughly inspect the flywheel, but from what I could see the teeth looked okay. Yeah it definitely wouldn't surprise me if it was more than the starter/flywheel since I heard something go "clunk" while I was driving. I've had trouble with this motor from day 1 (maybe day 65, but you get the picture) Rebuilt POS...

 

Starter and flywheel spins, but no cranking? Sounds like you snapped your flywheel bolts or maybe even the crankshaft given that it shut itself off. If it's the crank it sounds like what's left is still riding in the bearings. Any codes?

Out of curiosity as a fellow 04 6mt owner, how aggressively is this car driven, and what clutch, flywheel, and harmonic balancer do you have on the car?

 

Duder this is from over 3 years ago and his last activity is almost 2 years ago. I doubt he'll respond. At any rate, he has no compression so probably one of his timing chains snapped

 

Oh ****. How did I even find this lol