I parked the car along the curb at ucla and spent the night at the dorms. The car was running perfectly fine, I didn't notice anything different and there were no problems. When I awoke the following morning a friend and I were hungry so we decided to go to mcdonald's. it was approx. 1.5 - 2 miles away. While we were sitting in the drive through, I started to hear a loud noise, kind of like a belt squeaking inside the hood. I couldn't tell if it was from my car or the car to the side of me, so I turned the car off. The noise stopped. When I turned the car back on however, the noise got unbearably loud and sounded like metal on metal, and we noticed the aroma of something burning. I exited the drive through and stopped at the red light. I looked at the gauges, and the oil, battery and temperature gauges were all where they normally should be, bout in the middle to slightly above the halfway mark...well...the car suddenly stalled and I assumed then that it had something to do with the transmission. I knew there was a gas station up ahead, so I tried to start the car again, it had some problems starting up, but then finally started and I was going to drive the block remaining to the gas station. All of a sudden, there was a loud pop under the hood, and all the gauges dropped and I turned the car off and let it coast to the sidewalk, when I exited the car, there was oil all over the ground, leaking from somewhere and I noticed that under the hood, the plastic cap that was covering the pistons (I assume) was cracked...there was smoke everywhere. When the tow truck driver came, he said that somehow something came unloose from the engine and shot up through the pistons and that's what broke the plastic cap. He said he's never seen anything like this before in his 30 yrs of service.

- San Bernardino, CA, USA