legacycentral bbs

This is my 16 year old son's car. He went thru and intersection that grades down on both sides of the cross street to fast, and I guess the car went a little "Dukes of Hazard". He heard a scrape at the time and the car just died. I think it was a pretty harsh impact. Since then the motor will turn over, but not hitting a lick. That is, not even trying to start, like it would be if you had no plugs installed. I don't see any serious scrapes under the car, but generically I thought that maybe he yanked/cut a wire that cut the ignition system. But now I have had a day to look at it and I'm sort of confused now. I have good bright blue spark at the plugs. Fuel pumping after the filter and wet plugs after cranking. I have replaced with known good (from our parts car) the coil pack, igniter, and cam position sensor. I have tried putting a little ether in the intake, still nuthin. It appears that I have fire, fuel and air, but no start. I'm startin to lean toward a timing issue (ie jumped time). Although the timing belt is only about 6 months old and should not be worn to the point of jumpin time because of wear. I took the two side timing belt covers off to expose the cam pulleys and they do line up with the index marks on the back cover. But when they are lined up, I think the notch in the crank pulley(which I have not removed yet) should be lined up with the 0 degree timing mark, and it is not, even after rotating the whole shebang around several times. Tommorow, I'll remove the crank pulley and center timing cover and hopefully see what's what. In the mean time, if anybody out there has any ideas, suggestions, anti-depressants, whatever. I could really use some ideas in general. Not sure if I'm on the right track.

It's possible the timing belt slipped and now the timing is off. Have you checked for error codes? That's where I would start.


- Chester

I'd suspect timing as well. Forget the 0 deg mark. Just make sure the alignment marks on the pullies & gear align with where they're supposed to.

Since I'm assuming you did the timing belt, you know about the little arrow on the front of the timing gear, and that that is not what you want to align things with.

Also, if you find the timing off, you may want to replace the tensioner. When you compressed it previously, did you compress it very slowly? If not, it could be damaged.

I took of the crank pulley and center timing cover this morning. I discovered the timing belt tensioner only had one bolt in it. The other one had backed out and I guess fallen out when he hit the bump. The other bolt was only in there about three threads. It had pretty severely jumped time. The bolt that fell out was wedged between the water pump pulley and the cogged idler on the bottom. The numerous start attempts grinding on the bolt had ground on the water pump a little, but no functional damage. I inspected everything and luckily nothing was really damaged beyond superficial cosmetic wear. I put everything back in time and slapped it back together, and she fired right up. Previous owner did the timing belt change six months ago, and I guess got a little sloppy with these bolts. They are locktited now and should be good to go. Thanks all. Dirk

Glad to hear it was an easy fix.

Ya these cars were made with rally in mind so that jump couldn't have been that bad

I jumped my 91 sedan on Thursday of this week (6/12) with approximately 18 inches to the bottom of the tires at full suspension travel with no ill effects besides a trunk full of sockets after my toolset flew open.

I even asked for permission beforehand and my GF said yes! Can you believe that? (she was in the car)