legacycentral bbs

So i've got my new engine and rebuilt transmission bolted into the car and hooked up and last night we tried to start it. The engine turns over but it sounds like its only firing on one cylinder and wont start. Anybody have any ideas? One idea I have is that someone jammed the plugs before i got the engine so im going to pull the plugs out next time. Also i need to resoder the knock sensor wire.

Nobody know? The engine is getting gas and spark so it should be running but its not.

Just a thought, do you have the correct cam sprocket on either side?

This is one of those things where it would be a lot easier to figure it out when you're actually looking at it, hence the lack of replies i bet. A bad sensor, an electrical problem, or a funky fueling problem could all cause the condition you describe. My personal guess is a bad electrical connection somewhere, but ya really need to provide a lot more detail on what was replaced and whatnot, or just metholodically go through the systems you tampered with doing the swap. Sorry to hear of troubles though.

I haven't changed the cams yet, they managed to fail to write my apartment number on the cams when they were delivering so they got delayed since last friday. Should be here tomorrow tho. Right now the only thing i can think of is that the crank sensor is bad. I'm gonna check to see if its firing correctly this weekend with a timing gun.

I just dropped the newish engine in, it has 117k miles and they said it was running good when they took it out. However it looks like they were trying to pick parts off the engine since there are no bolts holding the headers on and the uppipe was kinda loose like someone tried to take it off.


I was wondering if this thread was somehow invisible.

Did you get the timing right? I remember that crank sprocket being a bitch to line up right.

Yeh, timing is right.

no seriously, look on the back side of the drivers side cam sprocket and make sure it has the timing notches in it. that happened to me the 1st time i did the timing belt in my 2.2

Any codes?

I'll have to check the sprocket when im up there on thursday, what happened when you had them mixed up? I dont think there are any codes, I only spent a few mins cranking it and listening. I'll look for that too.

it threw codes for cam and crank sensors. so I checked those, in checking, i noticed that there was nothing for the crank sensor to sense.

Dan,
Let me know if you find a bad sensor. I can probably take care of you in that department...

Which sensor runs the ignition? Is it the crank position sensor or the one by the cam. Thanks matt, i should have it covered if it is since I still have my old engine tho its in pieces but i'll let you know if i do.

both.

So does the one on the flywheel run the tach?

There is no sensor on the flywheel.

There is a crank & cam sensor.

Crank sensor is at the very top of this pic
http://www.main.experiencetherave.com:8 ... P_2703.JPG

Cam sensor is at the top of this pic
http://www.main.experiencetherave.com:8 ... P_2700.JPG


I unfortunately didn't get any pics of the back of the pullies.

The tach is outputted by the ECU, and you won't get any tach signal if one sensor is dead. Both need to be functioning.

ok, the pullies are on the correct sides, the timing was off by only a tooth, but the ignition isn't firing at TDC for some reason. Matter of fact, its firing quite a ways off.

I guess the cam sensor is referred to as the flywheel sensor because they used to be on the flywheel on older cars for the tach. Can the timing be set off by 180 degrees?

Also not sure that the knock sensor working.

Is your coil pack backwards?

nope

OK, are you sure that you're lined up on all the correct timing marks? You align to the notches, not the arrows. It should look like this:

http://www.graphics.cornell.edu/~v/pics/cambelt.pdf

If that (timing belt) is all on correct, the coil pack is correct, and the plug wires are all going to the right cylinder, then I have no idea what would throw your timing off so bad.

The timing is fine, I'm 99% sure that the head on the passenger side is F*cked up. It turns way to easy compared to the driver side one and the spare passenger side head. It feels like the valves aren't opening at all when you turn it. Also there are green spots of paint a little spot off from where the timing mark is. SOoo it looks like somebody messed up the cam or some component inside the head.

Hmm... that's interesting, I noticed the same thing on my Legacy when I last had the timing belt off... the passenger side cam turned WAY easier than the driver's side, which felt like it was indeed moving valves (the resistance varied). I was worried all to shit about this, but then when we put it all back together it runs fine. Had decent compression test results, too. The passenger side cam felt like it had no resistance at all except it's rotational inertia.

Planning to take it apart and see what happened? I'd be interested to see what you find...

Yeh, i'm going to re pull the engine *sigh* and switch it with the heads i know are good. The passenger side head i have laying around has quite a bit of resistance. i held it down on the ground and turned it. So i'll probably put the new cams in the heads and just swap them.

So i took the passenger side head off rather than pull the whole engine out again. Had everything put back together and what do you know? Snapped a head bolt off in the block. It'll be Thursday before i can drill it out and put a diff head bolt in. Somehow we misread inch pounds of torque for ft pounds of torque. At about 150 ft/lbs of torque the bolt snapped, lucky it didnt strip the threads inside instead. Soooo... nothing is ever simple.