I put on new heads.
I marked the old timing belt which is one year old to reuse it.
It runs but poorly.

I pulled every plug on the driver side and can't hear anything change. Looked at the plugs, all wet.

When I unhook the battery and try to start it revs up and then comes down and chugs and dies. It will keep going with some additional gas but not driveable.

I verified the plug routing about 5 times. I think that is good.

I'm thinking get a new timing belt and try again? And verify the intake and exhaust cams on the side with the wet plugs are indexed correctly.

What am I missing here? When I pull the timing cover, it should be obvious if it is out of time or not. And if not, it has to be the cams?

 

Plugs wet with what? Oil? Gas? Coolant?

Cam and crank aligned with the TDC marks on the cam backing place and oil pump? Did you rotated the crank 2x clockwise after placing the belt and releasing the tensioner to be sure all marks came back to TDC?

 

I'll assume the plugs have gas on them. Smells like it, anyway. Also some backfire-pop would affirm that. And quite a bit of exhaust fume that smell rich.

Yeah I did get everything to line up as far as I could tell. Crank at zero, cam marks both up. Rotate, same. But if it was just one tooth off. it would continue going farther out each rev? I'm gonna check that next. Now that it has been turned a bunch more times. I can't think of why all the plugs on one side wouldn't fire.

I did pinch the cam sensor wire the first go around. Pulled it out and repaired it and reinstalled. Stupid me did not recheck the timing marks then. Thought I had everything fixed, etc.

 

Don't get fooled by the marks on the belt after you go 2x clockwise....they are only for initial placement on the pulleys. After the rotations, the marks that matter the the marks on the crank and cams lining back up to TDC every 2 revolutions.

 

Ha, Yeah I spent a couple of hours getting fooled by that.

 

I did this once before and it was amazing. It actually ran that time.

 

One member had the pin that holds the cam pulley in position wear or shear off allowing one cam to bounce out-of-time. Symptoms were the same IIRC....one side not firing properly.

Any CEL codes?

Crank bolt torqued to 217 ft-lbs?

 

Yeah I checked those cam pins. I can't get it to throw a CEL. Which seems stupid. Maybe I haven't gone far enough?

 

Plug wires are on: 1-4, 3-6, 5-2 where

5 6
3 4
1 2

Front of engine

 

So the engine will start up, rev for a second then die? Is the Intake hooked up to the MAF sensor?

That is what happens if the MAF sensor is disconnected.

 

Yeah I've done that too. Once bitten, etc. I guess I'm all about making things harder for myself.

The timing is on by the marks. I tested the plug wires, resistance of the coils is .1 or .2 higher than spec but they are all even. The Ohms on the injectors is pretty even. I think the TPS reads ok. Cleaned out the IAC and there wasn't much in there.

 

are you sure you have all vacuum hoses connected? all the sensors connected?

 

Update:

Once cam was not indexed right. I wasn't aware there were two marks on each cam. It isn't really emphasized in the book I have. It is in the FSM but I didn't have one of those at the time. Quick fix though, indexed it right and she fired right up and ran awesome for a bit.

And then it died on me after a couple of miles and pops the P0340. And it won't start. I do have a new timing belt here with new timing belt marks that I'm going to put on.

I did some reading and it seems like the 340 code usually doesn't prevent the motor from running but sometimes it does. There are a lot of threads about the belt jumping or the square key under the crank pulley being sheared. I have a '97 and maybe just certain eras can't run without the sensor, dunno. Timing marks were dead on when I started it but I guess I'll see what happened. Encouraging it ran though.

Anyway, I'm down to ONE problem to fix now. Yeh

 

Oh and when it quit, it was like someone turned off the key. No sputtering.

 

Because the crank pulley is loose... The timing gear crawled forward and I'll guess without that sensor reading it just shut down. I'm totally good at taking that timing cover off now.

 

Boy, you got off easy. There are a lot of worse outcomes to a loose crank pulley than just that--usually the harmonic balancer grenades and sometimes the crank gets fubar'ed. They aren't kidding about that 217 ft-lbs. torque spec. Don't even think about not torquing that one with a good 250 ft-lb. wrench.

 

Most shops that are in the know will sell you a brand new crank pulley bolt. The dealer has a coating of sorts on there like locktite.

 

Update. I just cleaned the bolt up and the bolt hole out and locktited it in. I did buy the big wrench. Put it in 5th gear and clicked it after a few tries. I took the plastic cover off to verify the toothed crank washer looked ok. So far so good and it cranked right up. I just gotta wait now. I learned a lesson about test drives too close to dark.