JiggaFan

'97 Accord EX 5-spd Sedan

I left this 10mm "service bolt" in the timing belt tensioner assembly! (The white bolt just to the left of the center of the page.)

The guy on that page quotes:Apparently, the hole should've been left empty like this:


So I guess my question is:
I should be able to get this taken care of either tonight or tomorrow. But the car might also be a tad bit off line. I lined up the crank shaft, front balance shaft, rear balance shaft on the balancer belt. But I have a feeling that I didn't line the cam shaft sprocket up with the crankshaft sprocket correctly. The camshaft could be off just a tooth. We knew the "Up" had to be slightly between 12:00 and 1:00, but we didn't use the timing belt cover as a guide the way the article tells you to.

Just in case you all haven't looked at this article yet:
http://www.cybertrails.com/~puf/Hond...meBalNote.html

niedejb

Being of 1 or 2 degrees isnt going to hurt anything. I drove with a cam gear retarded 8 degrees while I was NA with no issues.

Line up everything, remove the bolt and you should be fine.

If you do all that and a compression test shows low numbers (<175psi) you may have bent a valve.

Brandon

But advancing timing on an F22 kills all power, and gets very little torque.

JiggaFan

should I have felt 4 points of resistance when manually turning the crankshaft to check the tension of the timing belt? my buddy said that was the valves going up, down, up, down through one 360 degree turn of the crankshaft.

but I just read something in the haynes manual that said if you feel resistance when turning the crankshaft by hand, you may be hitting a valve?

but i know the crankshaft and cam shaft were lined up correctly! the up marks were very, very distinctive!

also, could some air have gotten into the system when i disconnected the vacuum valve on the valve cover and/or when I lifted the valve cover to release the timing belt cover?

man, something just isn't right. and I don't know if it's that 10mm service bolt causing the dragging.

my buddy also said that we just need to adjust the timing on the distributor cap or something. whatever he was talking about, it was the timing of a component away from the the crank/cam shafts.

niedejb

It will resist some.

If you still have the plugs in, youre compressing the air in the cylinders as well as fighting the valve springs on the cam (stout little guys).

Does it even start?

JiggaFan

yeah, it starts. i've driven 60 miles since the change was completed Wednesday morning. I'm going back over to my buddy's garage tomorrow morning to take that white service bolt out mentioned above.

i'm also gonna check the cam/crank alignment on the timing belt if it isn't tooo much of a pain. hopefully, I can just remove the lower timing belt cover without having to do all the other stuff involved with removing the top timing belt cover. but then again, if I want to inspect the cam/crank alignment, imma have to remove it all.

we're also gonna do the timing adjustment at the distributor to see if that helps any.

JiggaFan

Well, thanks for all the input.

I did go out today and remove that service bolt.
My buddy seemed to think it was tightening the
belt. But I have a feeling that with that bolt
in there, I was loosening the belt during it's
travel. Like, I think the tensioner spring is
supposed to go up above the point that that bolt
restricts it too during the normal travel of the
belt. But with that bolt in there, it wasn't able
to go up in it's travel with the spring like it
should.

I also completeley removed the valve cover this time to check out the timing marks for the cam
shaft sprocket that are on the BACK of the cam shaft sprocket. As the article said, these marks that are 180 degrees apart are
supposed to be exactly lined up with the black
timing belt cover thing (not the upper and lower
timing belt cover that you remove). So when I
took the valve cover off completely and rotated
the crankshaft to its marks, I noticed that the
cam shaft sprocket was off just a tooth. So we
got that lined up.

Then with that lined up, we checked the timing
with the covers on and the timing light. Well, it
appears that the ECU automatically retards the
timing a bit (for better low end torque, right).
My buddy shined the light down there and the 3
dots on the crankshaft pulley were constantly
behind (toward the passenger compartment) the
indicator on the timing belt cover. Once we
looped the ECU with the paper clip as instructed
by the haynes manual, we noticed that the timing was no longer retarded. Then after the engine
reached its operating temperature, we could see that the 3 dots on the crankshaft pulley were
dead on with the indicator on the timing belt
cover.

So I took it for a spin and the torque was there
at about 4000 RPM's or so as it was before the timing belt change. So I guess everything's aligned correctly.:thumbup

but the only problem now is a loud noise seemingly
coming from the exhaust system. and this just
started after the timing belt change earlier this
week. don't know what it could be.:dunno: