Rep Power: 0

I was not at the failure event, as this is my son's car and I got the info second hand. For the past few days, he had been hearing a whine that sounded like a belt or pulley. We made plans to look into that as soon as we got a relatively warm day, but hadn't gotten to it yet. That detail could be a complete red herring. I have no idea if it's relevant. After the event, the timing belt is still intact. Anyhow, he drove to school, everything fine (except the slight whine). That afternoon, he started up and instantly there was a loud grinding sound. Obviously he should have shut it down, but he tried to pull out and within seconds he heard a loud thud and the engine died. He tried to start it back up and it did turn over and run, again with the loud grinding. He shut it down and we had it towed back to the house. There's a fair bit of oil on the underside of the car and at the back of the engine bay, seeming to emanate from the passenger side. My first thought was a blown seal of some sort. He tells me he checked the oil level a couple weeks ago and it was fine. I haven't dug into this process yet, it being cold out and everything in a civic so tightly crammed together. I wanted to get a plan for troubleshooting first. Any thoughts?

 
Rep Power: 223

Guessing you now have a hole in the back of the block

 
Rep Power: 127

Just to clarify, were you only under the impression the timing belt was good because it was still running? Only asking because if it was a visual check, you weren’t looking at the timing belt, because this has a chain.

I suspect this engine’s an oil burner and the chain eventually just stretched out of spec due to a lack of lubrication. Happens if you’re not paying attention.

 
Rep Power: 0

That's correct. I didn't take the timing cover off, but the fact that it still starts up precludes a broken timing chain.

 
Rep Power: 127

Sounds to me like it jumped time, but you won't know for sure until you pull the valve cover off, which only takes about 10 minutes. Unless the engine has like 500k miles on it, the chain shouldn't have stretched unless it's basically been run dry several times.

The whine is dependent on where it occurred. If it was just idling and unaffected by anything else (steering, accelerating, etc), it's probably valvetrain related. That would, again, be caused by low oil. Not sure how long your kid's had the car but two weeks is more than enough time for the level to drop drastically.