Dang, spoke too soon. The shop owner called me to chat, always a bad sign...

A piece of metal - possibly used to be a bolt, he couldn't tell - somehow got into the serpentine belt. Bounced around and damaged the fan and water pump pulleys. Then - get this - lodged behind the main crank pulley, grinding away at that pulley as the car ran. Hence the metal flakes distributed about the engine compartment.

He's removing the crank pulley this AM. He is optimistic we won't need anything more than a new pulley. Hope that's true - if the nose of the crankshaft is somehow damaged, I think the car is going to get parted out. A real shame, as this is a nice daily driver 124 sedan - everything works, good paint and interior. Until Tuesday the only problems it had were a slightly droopy headliner and mostly missing hood pad.

Can't find any missing fasteners on the front of the engine. Nothing has been touched under the hood since the water pump was replaced. Can't recall exactly, but think that was last Octoberish. The car has the plastic panels on below the engine compartment, so it seems unlikely that something from the road could get in there. Still, I guess anything is possible.

Why do I always have the interesting problems?