OK guys this has had me stumped for months. Thought I had it right about a month ago and still does it. First off let me tell you what I ha e done. I originally took my ls head to the machine shop to have it just trued. But decided to have him shave some extra off to give a little compression bump up. When I installed it on factory timing marks it would not start.I ended up having to rotate both timing gears toward the front of the car three teeth.she ran but sluggish. So sluggish that even with the heavy port and polish 7lb flywheel full exhaust cold air and a weight reduction from hell I got beat by a factory ls with full interior and enginebay. Found out that my autozone head gasket was crap so I had to take it back off. Took it back to the machine shop to have it checked. Well he had to shave a crap more. Now I'm running five to five and a few degrees to get it to run. Was able to move the intake gear back about 4 degrees from the exhaust and it ran better. Now what I mean by running like crap. Up to about 3,4k it screams then its like I hit a brick wall till about 6k and it opens up for about 300 rpms and its like she is over revved and will cut back bad. I've tried putting a custom map in it for my setup but it won't even let it run that good with it. But I did buy from eBay. Any body here have a clue to what's going on. I know it has to be timing but how do I fix it.

 

Wow...you shouldn't be messing with the internals of the motor if you have no idea what the hell you are doing.

When you take material off of the block or head you decrease the distance the timing belt has to travel to make a full revolution. This throws the timing off. If you threw the motor back together and drove it with the timing belt three teeth off you bent valves. Hell no wonder it wouldn't start. If it was that far off between the crank pulley and the cam gears you probably had almost zero compression on all cylinders.

 

Dude you read wrong. I had to put it three teeth to even get enough compression for the motor to run. The valves are not bent. Don't start your gay *** remarks. I've built plenty of motors. This is my first honda motor. Like I said it would not even start when I first put it on. It has to be at 5 teeth now for enough compression. Please if all your going to do is flame then you obviously do not know what to do either. I'm trying to find out if something else could have been tweaked and I don't know and is part of my problem. Thanks for nothing douche

 

I don't know what the hell your on about with moving **** three teeth this way and five teeth that way. If you lined everything up to TDC(crankshaft and camgears) and you moved cam gears multiple teeth, put the belt on, and ran the motor like that you bent valves, plain and simple.

So you've built plenty of engines? Why are you having this seemingly unexplainable problem then. At this stage of the game I've built and blown up enough motors to have a pretty good idea of what works and what doesn't. I've gotten past the expensive learning curve, sounds like you haven't.

Your thread has 150 views and one response. Why? Because no one knows what the hell your talking about. I'm trying to take a decent guess at what your on about.

Line the cams and crank up at TDC. Put the timing belt on from the bottom(crank pulley) up. Wiggle the cam gears a bit in what ever direction they need to go for the belt to slide on. After you accomplish that the crank will be at TDC and the cam gears will be off timing wise because of the material taken off of the head. Run a compression test like this. If you have low or no compression do a leak down test. I will gaurantee, if you have low or no compression you have bent valves.

I don't know what else to tell you dude. Maybe your explaining something in a way that makes sense to you being this is the first honda motor you've built, but to someone that's built quite a few, it makes no logical sense. Make a video or take some pictures because this current method of explanation is not making any sense.

Oh, and I'm not a douche, I'm an *******. There's a difference.

 

it's not about how far the belt has to travel to reach a revolution. it's the fact that when you plain the head, the cam gears become closer to the crank gear. that is what throws timing off. moving the head closer to the crank. how much was taken off altogether? there is going to be a formula for how much timing must be altered for the amount shaved off. what it is, i don't know.
as the op has clearly stated, setting timing at the manufacturers spec results in no compression, obviously a result of the altered cam to crank distance.

first off, what motor is this? and how much was plained? all details, please

 

Which decreases the distance the timing belt has to travel, either way you look at it mechanical timing is thrown off. Reading over what I wrote originally I see how it could have been interpreted that way. I just threw the timing belt bit in as further explanation. I didn't literally mean timing belt travel dictates timing.

Do you understand what he means by moving something three teeth one way then five teeth the other? That is what I can't put together right now.

He probably doesn't know how much was taken off in total given he said "I was just going to get the head trued, then I told my machinist to take off more to bump the cr. Then the headgasket went and he had to take more off after that."

 

i would have assumed that the tensioner would take up the extra slack. but i think you're right though.

i'm assuming he's just talking about adjusting the cam gears. they must be adjustable. it's the only explaination

op, you DID adjust the valves first, yes?

 

Alright guys. Let me explain again. You have teeth on your can gears. Each one is equal to 10 degrees. To get compression to my motor so that it could run I Had to take the gears on the cams from the original mark for tdc and move it 3 teeth (30 degrees) then it was shaved again and now I'm at 5 teeth (50 degrees). I'm not sure on how much was plained but obviously more than anyone has really experienced. I don't see how your not understanding what I'm saying. They are after market gears but even they only adjust you 10 degrees Max. To go further than that I had to jump over each tooth. It would not start new before it ever ran on tdc factory. DO YOU GET THAT. Never ran on factory timing. It had to be moved 30 degrees adv to get the compression up enough for the motor to fire up. No noise idles and drives down the road just fine. But has no available power when needed. If I had bent valves I would not have a 185 lb reading on all cylinders on my compression test.

 

Also the belt is tight. The adj takes up the slack. I'm not getting the correct ration for the valve train to open correctly or close correctly but I'm close enough to not hurt any internals.

 

Sry forgot. Its an obd1 ls. And as far as I know the bottom in is factory. I have done the port job to my head had the valves reground and re seated to the head. It ran fine with my factory head just not enough power caused from a bad head gasket when I bought the car. Which is why I put the head I was building for my all motor ls. But I got a good deal on a b16 top end (head intake solenoid throttle body) that I decided to do a ls/vtec build turbo on my other motor so I put this ls head on here so I didn't have to deal with the slow setup of being factory. I also have msd ignition an a walbro pump with an adjustable regulator thinking at the time that maybe my compression was way higher than stock and needed more fuel to get it where it should be and it helped but wasn't enough to get out of that curve of **** I dealing with. I know its timing. Have no doubt. Was hoping someone else has felt with an issue like this and what they did to solve it. I was going to degree my can like you would with a set of aftermarket to get the right time but can't not find the schematics I need to so I can

 

re-reading your original post, it sounds more like an issue with vtec

 

Its a non vtec motor and head. I was just putting out there that I bought a b16 head for the motor I'm currently building. This is just an ls head.

 

Bump

 

maybe it's preignition. my thoughts are that around 3k, ignition timing will be advanced, by the ecm, to roughly 35*btdc. clearly you can't set ignition timing as you would on a factory set up, so you can't know where it's at. obviously preignition is going to result in an extreme loss of power, and judging by the engine speed that this is occuring, i'd say it's a possibility. try retarding ignition timing a few hairs. see if that helps

 

I'll give it a try when I get home tonight. Also what would cause my ecu issue. Factory one will rinblike I have explained but the one I had a base tune for my setup up done on idles rough and runs like crap. The 2 stage launch works and my rev limit was moved to 8200 but don't know if it was something the guy did or if my factory is bad. Any way to test them

 

those problems are going to stem from the fact that the valve timing has been altered to such a degree.
as for testing the ecm, i'm sure there is equipment that can. not something that you'd use a typical multimeter for.
as far as my level of education on the matter goes, it's test up to the box. powers and grounds and inputs and outputs, and that's as far as i go. just enough to confirm failure of a module

 

Ran worse actually when I retarded it some. But I did retard the I take by itself about three degrees and that helped a little but further caused problems. So I'm clueless again.. I have a little more kick but the exhaust is siiting at 5 teeth(50 degrees) pass top dead Nd the I take now is 4 3/4 teeth ( about 47 degrees) . It has more power but still loosing in the same area. Does anyone know what the factory cams lift is at 50 thousanths on open and closed. I. An just use my degree wheel and find the right ratio but I'm having a real hard time finding those numbers so I can